Page 155 - DHIS204_DHIS205_INDIAN_FREEDOM_STRUGGLE_HINDI

Indian Freedom Struggle (1707–1947 A.D.)

Notes caught. By the end of 1942, over 60,000 persons had been arrested. Twenty-six thousand people
were convicted and 18,000 detained under the Defence of India Rules. Martial law had not been
proclaimed, but the army, though nominally working under the orders of the civilian authorities,
often did what it wanted to without any reference to the direct officers. The repression was as
severe as it could have been under martial law.
The brutal and all-out repression succeeded within a period of six or seven weeks in bringing
about a cessation of the mass phase of the struggle. But in the meantime, underground networks
were being consolidated in various parts of the country. An all-India underground leadership
with prominent members such as Achyut Patwardhan, Aruna Asaf Ali, Ram Manohar Lohia,
Sucheta Kripalani, Chootubhai Puranik, Biju Patnaik, R.P. Goenka and later, after his escape from
jail, Jayaprakash Narayan had also begun to emerge. This leadership saw the role of the
underground movement as being that of keeping up popular morale by continuing to provide a
line of command and a source of guidance and leadership to activists all over the country. They
also collected and distributed money as well as material like bombs, arms, and dynamite to
underground groups all over the country. They, however, did not see their role as that of directing
the exact pattern of activities at the local level. Here, the local groups retained the initiative.
Among the places in which local underground organizations were active were Bombay, Poona,
Satara, Baroda and other parts of Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra, U.P., Bihar and Delhi.
Congress Socialists were generally in the lead, but also active were Gandhian ashramites, Forward
Bloc members and revolutionary terrorists, as well as other Congressmen.
Those actually involved in the underground activity may have been few but they received all
manner of support from a large variety of people. Businessmen donated generously. Sumati
Morarjee, who later became India’s leading woman industrialist, for example, helped Achyut
Patwardhan to evade detection by providing him with a different car every day borrowed from
her unsuspecting wealthy friends. Others provided hide-outs for the underground leaders and
activists. Students acted as couriers. Simple villagers helped by refusing information to the police.
Pilots and train drivers delivered bombs and other material across the country. Government
officials, including those in the police, passed on crucial information about impending arrests.
Achyut Patwardhan testifies that one member of the three-man high level official committee
formed to track down the Congress underground regularly informed him of the goings on in that
committee.
The pattern of activity of the underground movement was generally that of organizing the
disruption of communications by blowing up bridges, cutting telegraph and telephone wires and
derailing trains. There were also a few attacks on government and police officials and police
informers. Their success in actually disrupting communications may not have been more than that
of having nuisance value, but they did succeed in keeping up the spirit of the people in a situation
when open mass activity was impossible because of the superior armed might of the state.

Dissemination of news was a very important part of the activity, and considerable success
was achieved on this score, the most dramatic being the Congress Radio operated
clandestinely from different locations in Bombay city, whose broadcast could be heard as
far as Madras. Ram Manohar Lohia regularly broadcast on this radio, and the radio
continued till November 1942 when it was discovered and confiscated by the police.

Gandhiji’s Fast
In February 1943, a striking new development provided a new burst of political activity. Gandhiji
commenced a fast on 10 February in jail. He declared the fast would last for twenty-one days. This
was his answer to the Government which had been constantly exhorting him to condemn the
violence of the people in the Quit India Movement. Gandhiji not only refused to condemn the

150 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY