Great Personalities during 1940s

This section highlights a few nationalist figures whose bravery and work kept the freedom movement alive in ways that were often hidden, risky, or unconventional. These are the people who gave the movement its engine when formal leadership was arrested or compromised.

Usha Mehta — the secret broadcaster

• A Gandhian from Gujarat, Usha Mehta organized the Secret Congress Radio during the Quit India period.
• Why this mattered: the British muzzled the press and controlled information. Usha’s radio — shifting locations daily to avoid arrest — transmitted uncensored news, speeches, and motivational messages, keeping morale and organisation alive.
• Though active only a few months, this radio created an internal communications lifeline for underground resistance and symbolised the ingenuity of non-centralised resistance.

Takeaway: Usha Mehta shows how information — clandestine, local, and timely — can sustain a national movement when formal channels are shut.

Aruna Asaf Ali — the bold public face

• Called the “Grand Old Lady” of the movement, Aruna hoisted the tricolour at the Gowalia Tank Maidan (Bombay) on 9 August 1942 when most leaders were already arrested.
• She had a long history of civil courage — hunger strikes in jail to improve prisoners’ conditions, repeated arrests, and refusal to bow to easy authority.
• Post-independence, she continued public service (first Mayor of Delhi), showing the continuity between sacrifice during the struggle and constructive public life after it.

Takeaway: Aruna epitomises public daring — the courage to lead when leaders are gone and to keep visible symbols of freedom alive.

Lakshmi Swaminathan (Captain Lakshmi Sahgal) — the woman soldier and stateswoman

• A medical doctor by training, she led the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, the INA’s all-women combat unit.
• She also served as Minister of Women’s Affairs in the Azad Hind government, married INA officer P.K. Sahgal, and later entered parliamentary politics (CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member; presidential candidate in 2002).
• Her life symbolises the breakdown of gendered restrictions — women could fight, organise, lead, and later take on democratic roles in independent India.

Takeaway: Lakshmi’s trajectory links armed sacrifice to long-term political engagement and women’s public agency.

C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) — the pragmatic Gandhian

Short profile:

• A senior Gandhian leader from Madras, veteran of satyagraha campaigns (Vedaranyam salt march), premier of Madras Province (1937), later first Indian and last Governor-General of India (1948–50), and a Bharat Ratna awardee (1954).

Key points:

• Independent thinker: Rajaji often held distinctive positions — e.g., his disapproval of the Quit India mass agitation and later political moves that reflected his more cautious, administrative bent.
• Post-independence politics: Dissatisfied with Congress economic direction (state-led, socialist-leaning policies), he launched the Swatantra Party (1959) — advocating market-friendly, pro-private-sector policies, opposing land ceilings and state trading.
• Peace advocacy: Rajaji campaigned against nuclear weapons and for world disarmament.

Takeaway: Rajaji represents a strand of Indian leadership that combined Gandhian moralism with conservative economic liberalism and pragmatic governance — a reminder that Congress was ideologically diverse.

Swatantra Party — a political consequence of ideological disagreement

• Formed: 1959, by Rajaji and others.
• Platform: Opposed land ceilings, state control of trade/industry, and collectivist planning; championed individual freedom, private enterprise, and minimal governmental interference.
• Historical role: Provided a constitutional, parliamentary alternative to Nehruvian socialism — it represented elite and agrarian interests uncomfortable with coercive state redistribution.

Takeaway: The party shows how independence-era debates about economy and society continued into India’s democratic politics; political diversity after 1947 had deep roots in wartime and immediate post-war ideological differences.

Bhulabhai Desai — lawyer, negotiator, and defender of INA men

Profile & contributions:

• A leading lawyer and Congress politician from Gujarat, Desai played two historically notable roles:
  1. Defence counsel for INA accused: When the British tried INA officers for treason in 1945, Desai led their defence in a courtroom that became a political stage. The legal campaign around those trials fuelled nationalist sentiment and public protests across India.
  2. Secret negotiations with Liaquat Ali Khan: Desai engaged in exploratory talks with Liaquat (Muslim League) about power-sharing—the Desai–Liaquat understanding—hoping to forge an interim inclusive government. The pact became controversial because it was negotiated without wider party consultation.

Consequence:

• When the talks leaked, Desai faced political backlash and was sidelined; yet his legal defence of INA men cemented his public legacy as a nationalist committed to due process and to the political attempt at compromise.

Takeaway: Desai’s life shows the link between law, politics, and mass sentiment; courtroom battles (like the INA trials) could transform into mass political movements.

The INA trials — why they mattered (brief contextual note)

• After Japan’s defeat, many INA personnel were captured. The British put several INA officers on trial (Red Fort trials, 1945–46).
• Even though legally framed as court-martials for treason, the trials became a national political event: massive public sympathy for INA soldiers, protests, and mutinies in parts of the armed forces followed.
• The trials dramatically shifted public opinion in favour of rapid British exit and convinced many in the army and bureaucracy that sustaining colonial rule would be costly and unstable.

Takeaway: The courtroom turned into a political pulpit; legal processes catalysed huge political consequences.