Quit India Speech: A Reaction that Caused a Revolution in History

Hargobind Vohra Individual Website Junior Division

After fighting for South African civil rights, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi returned to his home country, India, to continue fighting British Imperialism. It was Gandhi who began the revolution against the British government in India. For years, Gandhi led mass non-cooperative revolts trying to acquire independence from Britain, but had achieved little. Finally, in August, 1942, Gandhi called on Indians to Quit India and protest British rule by using non-violent civil disobedience. In response to Gandhis call for immediate independence, the British reacted by arresting the majority of the leadership of the Indian National Congress. The following day, people protested in violent and non-violent ways. Gandhis Quit India Speech was the catalyst that provoked differing religions to unite and to fight for a single cause Indian independence. To gain insight of the Quit India Speech, I researched various sources including newspapers, Internet, and books from the library at my school and at local colleges. Fortunately, I managed to obtain a wealth of multimedia sources of those turbulent times in Indian history. I had heard of the partition of India from my parents before, but I never really knew what happened. In order to gain further insight, I read Mahatma Gandhis autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth. This sparked my interest in documentaries and books about Indian independence and motivated me to choose the Quit India Speech by Mahatma Gandhi as my National History Day topic. Being a novice in web designing, I confronted many challenges while constructing my website, so I decided to challenge myself to make my website unique and distinctive. I learned HTML programing language which was time-consuming, but worth the cost at the end. Because I wanted to protect my work and my sources, I disabled copying on my website. Dividing my time between schoolwork and extra-curricular activities was also grueling. It was my first year

to compete in History Day so I had to learn how to research from scholarly resources and how to put together a process paper and an annotated bibliography according to the given format. Even though the Quit India Speech did not directly bring freedom to India, it caused a revolution by uniting masses, irrespective of caste, creed, and religion to fight against British Imperialism. This reformed people and instead of thinking about their differences, they all united as Indians with a sole aim to attain freedom. Due to the Quit India Speech, people boycotted British Goods and started using indigenous items, thus this movement changed the country in even economic ways. The greatest impact was the British reacted by negotiating to grant India independence. Gandhis non-violent methods inspired civil rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. Mahatma Gandhis legacy still remains today as President Barrack Obama said, I am mindful that I might not be standing before you today, as president of the United States, had it not been for Gandhi and the message he shared and inspired with America and the world.