World War II, the INA and Quit India

In 1939 India was pulled into another world war without being asked.

The strain was huge. More than 2.5 million Indian soldiers joined, the largest volunteer army in history, and at least 87,000 died. At home there were shortages and high taxes, and because much Indian grain was sent to the war front on Churchill's orders, a terrible famine in Bengal in 1943 killed millions.

Support for Britain was widespread at first. But many Indians came to feel they were making huge sacrifices for a war that was not their own, while their own freedom was still denied.

Subhas Chandra Bose, once a Congress leader, broke from Gandhi's nonviolence, convinced freedom would come only through armed struggle. Escaping house arrest in 1941, he travelled through Afghanistan and Russia to Germany, then to Japan and Singapore.

There, in 1943, he formed the Indian National Army (INA) from Indian prisoners of war and volunteers, and declared the Azad Hind ('free India') government. The INA fought alongside the Japanese in Burma and northeastern India, was defeated, and could not set up a base in India. Many admired his defiance; others criticised his alliance with Nazi Germany and Japan.

Churchill sent Stafford Cripps in 1942 offering Dominion status after the war, with a clause letting provinces opt out of a post-war India. Most leaders, including Gandhi, found the promises not enough and rejected it.

In August 1942 Gandhi launched the Quit India Movement with one call: "Do or Die." The demand was that the British leave India at once.

Almost the entire Congress leadership was arrested, yet the movement went on: strikes, students leaving schools, government buildings attacked, telegraph poles pulled down, with Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan keeping it going underground. Aruna Asaf Ali hoisted the national flag at Gowalia Tank Maidan, and Kanaklata Barua of Assam was shot dead at just 17 while leading a procession to raise the flag at a police station. Viceroy Linlithgow called it "by far the most serious rebellion since 1857".