Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi launches the 'Quit India' movement.
Soon after the surrender of Hong Kong, the Japanese began a campaign to try to win over their Indian POWs and of the Colony's Indian communities. They attempted to recruit soldiers to the pro-Japanese Indian National Army and they set up the Indian Independence League to provide civilian support for that Army and for Japanese agitation against British rule.
At the start of WW11, Ghandi had originally hoped for some kind of a deal with the British, as, although remaining true to his principle of non-violence, he understood the racism and brutality that Britain was fighting. However, disillusioned by the failure of London to come up with what he regarded as an acceptable guarantee as to India's future, today he launches a campaign of civil disobedience against the Raj. 'Quit India' was not supported by many influential forces in India, and soon Ghandi, Pandit Nehru and most of the Congress Party leaders will be in prison, but today's events will continue to resonate in India and the rest of Asia, including Hong Kong, to the end of the war and beyond. The power of the movement will not depend just on Ghandi's personal prestige, immense though this is; he is articulating discontent and defiance that has now come to be widespread in India:
Quite suddenly the feeling of awe for the state, the izzat or 'face' of the British Raj, which more than troops and police had sustained foreign rule, simply vanished, melting away in the warm monsoon rains.
A major factor in this change in attitude was the general success of the Japanese troops so far and in particular the spectacle of the defeated troops and wretched civilian refugees fleeing through north-eastern India after the Burma rout of early 1942.
Source:
Tim Harper and Chritsopher Bayly, Forgotten Armies, 2004, Kindle Edition Location 4875.