Quit India Resolution

8 August, not the 13th

The listing dates the resolution to 13 August 1942. The archival record puts adoption on 8 August, at the All India Congress Committee's Bombay session; the Working Committee had adopted its precursor at Wardha on 14 July.

Jawaharlal Nehru moved the resolution and Vallabhbhai Patel seconded it at Gowalia Tank Maidan. The University of Mumbai's history text reports nearly 250 AICC members present with about 10,000 visitors, and 13 members voting against.

What it demanded

The resolution demanded the immediate end of British rule and authorized a mass struggle on nonviolent lines, placing it under Gandhi's leadership.

It warned that if Congress organizations could no longer function, individual participants might have to act within the movement's general nonviolent instructions. It did not authorize indiscriminate violence or sabotage.

After it passed, Gandhi addressed the committee and gave the movement its remembered injunction: 'Do or Die.'

Arrested before dawn broke on it

During the following morning, 9 August, the colonial government arrested Gandhi, Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Patel and other senior Congress leaders.

With central direction abruptly severed, protests, strikes and disturbances began in numerous localities, and lower-ranking activists and local populations increasingly acted on their own.

The failure of the March–April Cripps Mission, which offered a postwar constitution-making process but no immediate transfer of effective power, had produced the demand in the first place.