Women of Quit India Movement: Organising Marches and Reclaiming Space

An aspect of the Quit India Movement that is rarely spoken about is the way it encouraged women to come out of the thresholds of their homes and raise their voice against British rule. With the majority of the men behind bars, women took to the streets, raising slogans, holding public lectures and demonstrations and even making and transporting explosives.

Here are three women who spearheaded the revolution for independence after Gandhi's call of Do or Die:

Aruna Asaf Ali: Aruna Asaf Ali, one of the leading female figures of India’s freedom movement, was a revolutionary Leftist who picked up the mantle of leadership during the Quit India Movement in 1942 after the Congress passed the Quit India resolution — and all its prominent leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, were arrested by the British government. Responding to Gandhi’s call to “do or die”, she defied the British by hoisting the Tricolour on 9 August 1942 at the Gowalia Tank Maidan (now Azad Maidan) in Bombay, giving the movement one of the Quit India Movement’s most enduring images. She was arrested in 1931, and her release was secured only when Mahatma Gandhi intervened after public protests. Other women prisoners refused to leave the premises until she was also released. In 1932, she was arrested again and held in Tihar Jail, where she launched a hunger strike to protest the treatment of other political prisoners. She was moved to solitary confinement in Ambala, and was politically inactive after her release for 10 years until the Quit India Movement. After 1942, her property was seized and sold. She went underground, and edited the Congress’s monthly magazine Inquilab with Ram Manohar Lohia. Known for her independent streak, she even disobeyed Gandhi’s request to surrender herself in 1946. “I have been filled with admiration for your courage and heroism. You are reduced to a skeleton. Do come out and surrender yourself and win the prize offered for your arrest. Reserve the prize money for the Harijan (untouchables’) cause,” he had written.

Tara Rani Srivastava:

When most women were denied basic rights and preferred to stay within the four walls of their homes, Tara Rani Srivastava paid heed to Gandhi’s call for protests and mobilised other women to carry out demonstrations during the Quit India Movement. In 1942, Tara and her husband, Phulendu, launched one such demonstration where they gathered like-minded people and marched towards the Siwan police station. Their objective was to assert the power of a unified India against the British by hoisting the tricolour on the roof of the police station. The police tried to cripple the protest, and the protestors were subject to lathi-charge. When even the sticks failed to break their spirit, the police opened fire. Tara watched her husband get shot and fall to the ground right in front of her eyes. One would have thought that the attack on her husband would make her step back, but Tara did the unthinkable. Rushing to her husband’s aid, she quickly bandaged his wounds with strips of cloth torn from her sari. She continued to march towards the police station where she attempted to hoist the flag. By the time she had returned, Phulbendu had succumbed to his injuries. On 15 August 1942, a prayer meeting was held in Chhapra in honour of her husband’s sacrifice for the country. Despite her husband’s death, the young widow continued to be a part of the freedom struggle until independence and partition on 15 August 1947.

Kanaklata Barua Kanaklata Barua bravely faced the bullets and attained martyrdom while making a fiercely determined effort to hoist the national flag on a police station. Born on December 22nd, 1924, in Gohpur, she lost both her parents by a rather early age of thirteen. Though she lived in a joint family, she had to drop out of her school after the third standard to look after her younger brother and sister. Ever since her childhood, she was drawn towards the freedom movement and nurtured a deep-rooted resentment against foreign rule. The brutal persecution of prominent local leaders like Cheniram Das, Mahim Chandra, Jyoti Prasad Agarwal further enraged her. To gather support for the Quit India movement in the region, Jyoti Prasad Agrawal had established Mrityu Vahini (Death Squad) in Tezpur. Kanaklata Barua, who is also known as Birbala, became an active member of Mrityu Vahini. Following the arrest of all national leaders and raging protests in different parts of the country, the Mrityu Vahini decided to hoist the national flag at Gohpur Police Station on 20th September 1942. Holding aloft the national flag, Kanaklata Barua led the procession raising the ‘Do or Die’ slogan. A heavy contingent of police forces warned them not to proceed and tried to stop the protesters. Unfazed by the warning, they marched ahead. As the police shot at young Kanaklata, she continued to hold the flag and did not allow it to fall to the ground until another freedom fighter, Mukunda Kakati took it from her. He too was shot at by the police and both of them laid down their lives at the altar of the motherland. However, their sacrifice did not go in vain and another freedom fighter, Rampati Rajkhowa ultimately succeeded in hoisting the national flag at the Police Station. Remarking upon the role played by women in the freedom struggle, Mahatma Gandhi had said, “When the history of India’s fight for independence comes to be written, the sacrifice made by the women of India will occupy the foremost place.”

- Smriti Choudhary