After the failed Cripps Mission, the Indian National Congress called on Britain to ‘quit India’. Britain responded by imprisoning the leaders of the INC for the duration of the war. These wartime developments in India gave further cause to calls for outright independence.

Gandhi summed up the Congress position with the following statement,

“It has cost me much to come to the conclusion that the British should withdraw from India, and  it is costing me still more to work out that conclusion. It is like asking loved ones to part, but it has become a paramount duty. And the beauty and the necessity for withdrawal lie in its being immediate. They and we are both in the midst of fire. If they go, there is a likelihood of both of us being safe. If they do not, Heaven only knows what will happen. I have said in the plainest terms that in my proposal there is no question of entrusting the administration to any person or party. That would be a necessary consideration, if the withdrawal was part of a settlement. Under my proposal, they have to leave India in God’s hands – but in modern parlance to anarchy, and that anarchy may lead to internecine warfare for a time or to unrestrained dacoities. From these a true India will rise in the place of the false one we see.”

Source: ‘Implications of Withdrawal’, The News Chronicle (London), 14th May 1942, cited in Mahadev Desai (ed.), Harijan, vol. IX, no. 19, 24 May 1942, pp. 166