India in 1945: From Quit India to the Brink of Freedom

By 1945 Britain's hold on India was weakening fast. In August 1942 the Indian National Congress launched the Quit India movement demanding immediate British withdrawal; the British arrested Gandhi, Nehru and tens of thousands of others and crushed the protests. While Congress leaders were in prison, Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Muslim League grew stronger, building on its 1940 Lahore Resolution calling for independent Muslim-majority states. The 1943 Bengal famine, in which an estimated three million people died, deepened anger at colonial rule.

In 1945–46 the trials of officers of the Indian National Army, which had fought alongside Japan, provoked widespread sympathy, and in February 1946 sailors of the Royal Indian Navy mutinied in Bombay. These events convinced many British officials that they could no longer rely on Indian soldiers and police. The question was no longer whether Britain would leave, but how, when, and to whom it would hand power.