Gandhi Arrested: Quit India Movement Erupts
British authorities arrested Mohandas Gandhi at Bombay's Birla House before dawn on August 9, 1942, just hours after he had launched the Quit India resolution demanding immediate British withdrawal from India. The arrest was pre-planned: the government had prepared internment camps and emergency powers well in advance. Gandhi's imprisonment triggered the most violent mass uprising in Indian colonial history. Workers struck, students rioted, and saboteurs destroyed telegraph lines and railway tracks across the country. British forces responded with aerial strafing, mass arrests, and public floggings. Over 100,000 people were imprisoned. Gandhi spent the next 21 months in the Aga Khan Palace in Pune, where his wife Kasturba died in his arms in February 1944.
August 9, 1942
84 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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