Who gave the slogan “DO OR DIE” and when ?

Question

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Correct — C, Gandhiji during Quit India Movement. The words are Gandhi's and the occasion is fixed to a single day: 8 August 1942, when he addressed the All India Congress Committee at Bombay, the session that adopted the Quit India resolution. The passage reads: 'Here is a mantra, a short one, that I give you. You may imprint it on your hearts and let every breath of yours give expression to it. The mantra is: Do or Die. We shall either free India or die in the attempt; we shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery.' The speech was delivered in Hindustani, so the phrase as it was actually spoken is karo ya maro, and 'Do or Die' is the English rendering that has passed into the textbooks. In the early hours of the following morning, 9 August, Gandhi and effectively the whole Congress leadership were arrested and the Congress was declared unlawful, which is why the movement that followed ran without its leaders and turned more violent than any Gandhian campaign before it. Every option here bundles a person with a movement, and both halves must hold. Naming Gandhi is not enough on its own, because Gandhi also led the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920 to 1922 and the Civil Disobedience Movement that began with the Dandi March in 1930, and the 'Do or Die' call belongs to neither of them. UPSC has asked this exact discrimination, giving four movements and requiring the candidate to attach the slogan to Quit India rather than to the other three.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Subhash Chandra Bose during Quit India Movement — the movement half is right and the person half is impossible, which is what makes this the most dangerous option on the list. Bose escaped from India in January 1941, more than eighteen months before the Quit India resolution, and spent the whole of the movement outside the country, first in Germany and afterwards in Southeast Asia, where he took command of the Indian National Army in 1943. His own calls are famous and quite different in register — 'Give me blood and I will give you freedom', 'Chalo Delhi' and 'Jai Hind' — and none of them is 'Do or Die'.  (b) Jawahar Lal Nehru during Non-cooperation Movement — wrong in both halves at once, which makes it the weakest option even though it names two of the most familiar items in the syllabus. The Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920 to 1922 was Gandhi's, adopted by the Congress at the Nagpur session and called off by Gandhi himself after the violence at Chauri Chaura in February 1922. Nehru took part in it; he did not author it, and he gave no slogan of this kind either then or later.  (d) More than one of the above — this option is correct only when at least two of the three preceding pairings are true at the same time, so it must be settled by counting rather than by instinct. Option (a) has the right movement and the wrong person, option (b) has both wrong, and option (c) has both right. That is exactly one true pairing out of three, which is not more than one, so the option fails on arithmetic before any question of history arises.

Concept: The Quit India Movement grew out of a specific war-time collapse of trust. The Cripps Mission of March and April 1942 offered dominion status after the war and was rejected; Japanese forces had taken Singapore in February and Rangoon in March and were on India's eastern doorstep; and confidence that Britain could either defend India or concede anything meaningful had drained away. Against that background the All India Congress Committee met at Bombay on 8 August 1942 and passed the Quit India resolution, and Gandhi's speech to it carried the 'Do or Die' mantra. The Government moved before dawn on 9 August, arresting Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Azad and the entire Congress Working Committee and outlawing the organisation, so the movement was leaderless from its first day. What followed was therefore improvised and often violent: strikes, sabotage of railways and telegraph lines, and in several districts short-lived parallel governments — at Ballia in the United Provinces, at Tamluk in Midnapore and at Satara in Maharashtra, the last of which survived longest. Leadership fell to those who had escaped the net, among them Jayaprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia, Aruna Asaf Ali and Usha Mehta of the underground Congress Radio.

State PCS 2024 Q20 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q20 — History PYQ with Answer