what was the british government immediate reaction to the quit india movement
Quit India Movement The Quit India Movement or the India August Movement, was a movement launched at the Bombay session of the All-India Congress Committee by Mahatma Gandhi on 8 August 1942, during World War II, demanding an end to British Rule of India.[1] The Cripps Mission had failed, and on 8 August 1942, Gandhi made a call to Do or Die in his Quit India speech delivered in Bombay at the Gowalia Tank Maidan. The All-India Congress Committee launched a mass protest demanding what Gandhi called "An Orderly British Withdrawal" from India. Even though it was wartime, the British were prepared to act. Almost the entire leadership of the INC was imprisoned without trial within hours of Gandhi's speech. Most spent the rest of the war in prison and out of contact with the masses. The British had the support of the Viceroy's Council (which had a majority of Indians), of the All India Muslim League, the princely states, the Indian Imperial Police, the British Indian Army and the Indian Civil Service. Many Indian businessmen profiting from heavy wartime spending did not support the Quit India Movement. Many students paid more attention to Subhas Chandra Bose, who was in exile and supporting the Axis Powers. The only outside support came from the Americans, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressured Prime Minister Winston Churchill to give in to some of the Indian demands. The Quit India campaign was effectively crushed.[2] The British refused to grant immediate independence, saying it could happen only after the war had ended.
Indian Rebellion of 1857 After the outbreak of the mutiny in Meerut, the rebels very quickly reached Delhi and declared its 81-year-old Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar, as Emperor of Hindustan. Soon, they also captured large tracts of the North-Western Provinces and Awadh (Oudh). The East India Company's response came rapidly as well. With help from reinforcements, Kanpur was retaken by mid-July 1857 and Delhi by the end of September.[11] Even so, it then took the remainder of 1857 and the better part of 1858 for the rebellion to be suppressed in Jhansi, Lucknow, and especially the Awadh countryside.[11] Other regions of Company-controlled India—the Bengal Presidency, the Bombay Presidency and the Madras Presidency—remained largely calm.[j][8][11] In the Punjab, the Sikhs crucially helped the British by providing both soldiers and support.[k][8][11] The large princely states (Hyderabad, Mysore, Travancore, and Kashmir), as well as the smaller ones of Rajputana, did not join the rebellion, serving the British, in the words of Governor-General Lord Canning, as "breakwaters in a storm."[15]