Indian Independence Movement Quotes

“This historic general election, which showed that the British are well able to distinguish between patriotism and Toryism, brought Clement Attlee to the prime ministership. In the succeeding five years, Labor inaugurated the National Health Service, the first and boldest experiment in socialized medicine. It took into public ownership all the vital (and bankrupted) utilities of the coal, gas, electricity and railway industries. It even nibbled at the fiefdoms and baronies of private steel, air transport and trucking. It negotiated the long overdue independence of India. It did all this, in a country bled white by the World War and subject to all manner of unpopular rationing and controls, without losing a single midterm by-election (a standard not equaled by any government of any party since). And it was returned to office at the end of a crowded term.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Praise to our Indian brothers, and the dark face have his due!
Thanks to the kindly dark faces who fought with us, faithful and few,
Fought with the bravest among us, and drove them, and smote them, and slew.
That ever upon the topment roof our banner in India blew.”
― Alfred Tennyson, Tennyson: Poems

“It was too quiet for hope, and then too loud for safety.

She thought of the people she had lost, of the affection, the smiles, the belonging she could never again take for granted. It was the end of a life, and as she stood there, shivering in the brief night-time chill, it dawned on her that it was the end of her childhood.”
― Radhika Swarup, Where the River Parts

“The Gandhi-Irwin truce, signed in New Delhi on March 5, 1931, marked a turning point in the Indian revolution and in the affairs of the British Empire. Not that Gandhi won much. I was surprised that he had conceded so much, and Nehru was bitter. The Mahatma seemed to have given in on almost every issue. Not even his eloquent defence of what he believed he had achieved, imparted to me in long talks on the succeeding days, convinced me that he had not, to an amazing extent, surrendered. It would take some time for me to realise that Gandhi, with his subtle feeling for the course of history, had actually achieved a great deal. For the first time since the British took away India from the Indians, they had been forced, as Churchill bitterly complained, to deal with an Indian leader as an equal. For the first time the British acknowledged that Gandhi represented the aspirations and indeed the demands of most of the Indians for self-government. And that from then on, he, and the Indian National Congress he dominated, would have to be dealt with seriously.”
― William L. Shirer, Gandhi: A Memoir

“The real reason for Father Braganza's laughter was the history of Amrapur. It was a quaint town, nestled amidst barren mountains. The Hindus and Muslims living there were perpetually warring with each other, reacting violently at the slightest provocation. It had started a long time ago, this squabble, and had escalated into a terrible war. Some people say it started centuries ago, but many believe it started when the country gave one final, fierce shrug to rid itself of British rule. The shrug quickly became a relentless shuddering, and countless people were uprooted and flung into the air. Many didn't survive. Perhaps the mountains of Amrapur absorbed the deracinating wave. People weren't cruelly plucked from the town. They remained there, festering, becoming irate and harbouring murderous desires. And while the country was desperately trying to heal its near-mortal wounds and move on, Amrapur's dormant volcano erupted. Momentary and overlooked, but devastating. Leaders emerged on both sides and, driven by greed, they fed off the town's ignored bloodshed. They created ravines out of cracks, fostered hatred and grew richer. The Bhoite family, the erstwhile rulers of the ancient town, adopted the legacy of their British rulers---divide and conquer.”
― Rohit Gore, A Darker Dawn

“The true father of free India was Subhas Chandra Bose, not Gandhi.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hurricane Humans: Give me accountability, I'll give you peace

“The British," he (Gandhi) said, "want us to put the struggle on the plane of machine-guns where they have the weapons and we do not. Our only assurance of beating them is putting the struggle on a plane where we have the weapons and they do not."
_______Cited by William L Shirer in 'Gandhi: A Memoir”
― M.K.Gandhi, An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth

“The British," he (Gandhi) said, "want us to put the struggle on the plane of machine-guns where they have the weapons and we do not. Our only assurance of beating them is putting the struggle on a plane where we have the weapons and they do not.”
― William L. Shirer, Gandhi: A Memoir

“One of the worst despots in my time in India was the Maharaja of Patiala. When a group of distinguished Indians once charged him with everything from rape to murder, Lord Irwin ordered an investigation – by a British official chosen by the Maharaja. The investigation was secret, and cleared the ruler. Shortly thereafter, the Maharaja withdrew his support for a self-governing India, and was immediately promoted by the King-Emperor to be an honorary lieutenant general in His Majesty's armed services. Though honorary, it was quite a high rank.

____footnote, Chapter 4”
― William L. Shirer, Gandhi: A Memoir

“Sharif Miyan: "I wish I did, though. Own some land, that is. My family owned it once when I was a young man. It's all gone now." Sharif Miyan's eyes had a faraway look in them, as if he could still see the land.

Avi: "Where did it go?"

Sharif Miyan: "We lost it during Partition. My family owned many farms in Punjab---the one in Pakistan."

Avi: "But land does not go anywhere, does it?"

Sharif Miyan: "You are right. Land does not. It's not the people who go away. I know where my land is in Punjab. I can see it. I can walk on it. But it is not mine. Isn't that terrible? I can never forget the day when those landgrabbers held my family at gunpoint and told me to leave. I didn't think I would have to leave the country.”
― Rohit Gore, A Darker Dawn

“So as long as there is a third party in the country, that is, the British, these dissensions will not end. They will go on growing. They will disappear only when an iron dictator rules India for twenty years. For a few years at least after the end of British rule in India, there must be a dictatorship. No other constitution can flourish in this country. And it is to India's good that she should be ruled by a dictator, to begin with. None but a dictator can wipe out such dissensions. India does not suffer from one ailment, she suffers from so many political ills that only a ruthless dictator can cure her of these, India needs a Kamal Pasha.”
― Uttam Chand, When Bose was Ziauddin

“The true father of free India was Subhas Chandra Bose, not Gandhi. Imagine Commander Washington asking his troops to never fire back a single musket ball no matter how many british guns are fired at them. And that's exactly what Gandhi asked of his people. Bose eventually raised the Indian National Army to fight against the British in India. Subhas Chandra Bose is to India what George Washington is to the United States of America. Unfortunately, Bose lost his life in a plane crash in 1945, but had he lived, he would've been the rightful prime minister of India, not Jawaharlal Nehru, who was more of a scholar, than a leader. However, the death of Bose and the struggles of the Indian National Army lighted the fire of revolution in the heart of the entire nation empowering them to revolt against the mighty British Empire, which compelled the British to leave all imperialist authority over India in the year 1947.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hurricane Humans: Give me accountability, I'll give you peace

“If you don't know by now, it was Subhas Chandra Bose who liberated India from British imperialism, and not Gandhi, you are yet to know the history of India.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“The story of the last thirty years of the Raj reveals little evidence of goodwill or wholehearted commitment to India’s well-being. On the contrary, it is an unsettling story of deceit and double-speak.”
― Walter Reid, Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: The British Betrayal of India

“Linlithgow identified the obstacles to progress as Indian political stupidity and British political dishonesty, but he was himself a master of the ability to say something which meant very little, and to decorate it with qualifications like ‘in the light of the then circumstances’, and ‘subject to such modifications as may seem desirable’.”
― Walter Reid, Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: The British Betrayal of India

“India and Burma have no natural association with the Empire, from which they are alien by race, history and religion, and for which as such neither of them have any natural affection, and both are in the Empire because they are conquered countries which have been brought there by force, kept there by our controls, and which hitherto it has suited to remain under our protection. …Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy of India, 1942”
― Walter Reid, Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: The British Betrayal of India

“Churchill had found Linlithgow a congenial viceroy. Both men were for doing nothing for as long as possible.”
― Walter Reid, Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: The British Betrayal of India

“He spoke to me for half an hour, and I am still not sure what he meant to tell me. Every sentence he spoke could be interpreted in at least two different ways. I would be happier were I convinced that he knew what he was saying himself, but I cannot even be sure of that.’ (Wavell, talking about Gandhi)”
― Walter Reid, Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: The British Betrayal of India

“India will never, within any time that we can foresee, be an efficient country, organised and governed on Western lines. In her development to self-government we have got to be prepared to accept a degree of inefficiency comparable to that in China, Iraq or Egypt . . . [W] e cannot continue to resist reform because it will make the administration less efficient.’ - Wavell to Churchill, July 1944”
― Walter Reid, Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: The British Betrayal of India

“Quite how iniquitous they (the Indian Princes) were will never be known, because Corfield told his officials to extract from the files any evidence of what were called ‘eccentricities’ on the part of the princes. No fewer than four tons of eccentricities were burned, to the annoyance of both Mountbatten, who knew just how eccentric royals could be, and Nehru.”
― Walter Reid, Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: The British Betrayal of India

“Section144 (of the Criminal Procedure Code) slowed, confused, sometimes deflected the independence initiative. But the cat never closed in for the kill.That was never the intention. Besides there were, if you will, too many mice.”
― Peter Ward Fay, The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence 1942-1945

“Gandhi did not ask when India would be ready for independence. Gandhi asked when will the British be? Just as he looked for Indians to direct their gaze inward and discover their true selves, so he looked for a transformation, a change of heart, in India's occupiers. They were to recognise that they had no business being in India. They were to recognise that they had never had any business being in India. When that realisation came, they would be allowed to depart with dignity, perhaps even with honour. They would ( Francis Hutchins, India's Revolution) "be permitted to withdraw to compose their memoirs.”
― Peter Ward Fay, The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence 1942-1945

“Of India he (Sir John Strachey) had pronounced (and in reissues of "India: Its Administration and Progress" continually repeated) that nothing by that name existed. "This is the first and most essential fact about India that can be learned.”
― Peter Ward Fay, The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence 1942-1945

“For it was the Englishmen of that day who felt race, thought race, and used the word often and publicly. It was the Englishman who, encountering an Indian or an Egyptian or a Zulu, and observing that he differed, attributed the difference not to circumstance but to blood, not to community or culture but to race.”
― Peter Ward Fay, The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence 1942-1945

“our country doesn't ask for our lives, what it ask for only our honest and love
Happy Independence day!!!
15 Aug.”
― Mohammed Zaki Ansari, "Zaki's Gift Of Love"

“Subhas Chandra Bose not died in a plane crash at the front, had Bhagat Singh not been hanged by the British, and had Gandhi not been killed by a Hindu extremist moron, Bharat, Pakistan and Bangladesh together would be shining as the brightest beacon of multiculturalism on the face of earth.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch