Question

How did the failure of the Cripps Mission contribute to the launch of the Quit India Movement?

Answer 1

Concept:

• A mass movement is usually launched only when the peaceful route has closed, so the question is really asking what door the failed mission shut.
• The source gives the answer in its opening sentence.

Step 1: Note what the mission was expected to achieve.
It was meant to settle the political demands of Indian leaders in return for their support during the war. As long as it was under way, a negotiated outcome still looked possible.

Step 2: Note what its failure left behind.
When it failed, nothing was left on the table. The source says this failure, together with the effects of the Second World War, created widespread discontentment across the country.

Step 3: Note the change in demand that followed.
Gandhiji now called not for concessions but for the complete withdrawal of the British from India, and the Congress Working Committee turned that call into the Quit India resolution at Wardha on 14 July 1942.

Final Answer: The collapse of the Cripps Mission closed the door on a negotiated settlement and deepened public anger, which is what pushed Gandhiji to launch the Quit India Movement demanding immediate British withdrawal.

Answer 2

Concept:

• Comparing this call with the earlier ones shows exactly what made it stand apart.
• Three things were new: the demand, the method and the people who answered it.

Step 1: Compare the demand.
The Non-Cooperation Movement asked Indians to withdraw support from the government and the Civil Disobedience Movement asked them to break particular laws. Quit India asked the rulers to leave the country at once.
Nothing short of the end of colonial rule would satisfy it.

Step 2: Compare the intensity.
The famous words spoken on that occasion, Do or Die, set the tone. The state machinery was almost brought to a standstill in large parts of the country as people threw themselves into the movement of their own accord.

Step 3: Compare who took part.
Thousands of ordinary students, workers and peasants joined, and women such as Matangini Hazra in Bengal, Kanaklata Barua in Assam and Rama Devi in Orissa led from the front. The British used much force and still needed more than a year to suppress it.

Final Answer: The call was historic because for the first time the demand was for immediate freedom itself, the response paralysed the government across large parts of India, and people from every section of society joined in without waiting to be led.

Answer 3

Concept:

• Inclusiveness can be measured on three counts, how many kinds of people joined, from how many places, and in what role.
• The part played by women improved the movement on all three counts.

Step 1: On the count of who joined.
Before this, public political activity in most parts of India was largely the work of men. When women entered it in numbers, half the population was brought inside the struggle for the first time on this scale.

Step 2: On the count of where they came from.
The source names Matangini Hazra in Bengal, Kanaklata Barua in Assam and Rama Devi in Orissa. These are three widely separated regions of eastern India alone, which indicates how far the participation of women had spread.

Step 3: On the count of the role they took.
They are described as taking active part, which means leading processions and demonstrations rather than merely attending them. Facing the force used by the British placed them on the same footing as any other participant.

Step 4: The combined effect.
With women in the front, the movement reached families, villages and towns that had stayed outside politics, and it could genuinely be described as a mass movement of students, workers and peasants rather than a campaign of professional politicians.

Final Answer: Women widened the movement by joining it in large numbers, by doing so in many different regions, and by taking leading roles and facing the same dangers as men, which together turned Quit India into a struggle of the whole people.