Eighty-four years ago on this date, Mahatma Gandhi stood before a nation and issued a call that would shake an empire: 'Karo ya maro' — do or die. On 9 August 2026, Union Health Minister J. P. Nadda marked the anniversary of the Quit India Movement with a tribute to Gandhi and the countless unnamed freedom fighters whose sacrifice built the foundation of independent India.

In his post, Nadda wrote that the August Kranti — launched in August 1942 — became 'a decisive chapter in the country's freedom struggle,' awakening a new national consciousness and uniting millions of Indians in the fight for independence. He paid particular homage to the 'innumerable anonymous warriors' whose courage, he said, would continue to inspire future generations toward patriotism and national service.

What the August Kranti set in motion

The Quit India Movement, formally adopted by the Indian National Congress on 8 August 1942 at the Gowalia Tank Maidan in Bombay, was Gandhi's most uncompromising demand yet: immediate British withdrawal from India. Within hours of Gandhi's speech, the British colonial administration arrested him and virtually the entire Congress leadership. What followed was a leaderless, spontaneous uprising — strikes, protests, and acts of civil disobedience that spread from cities to villages across the subcontinent.

The movement did not achieve immediate independence, but it permanently altered the political calculus. It demonstrated that ordinary Indians — farmers, students, women, workers — were willing to risk imprisonment and worse for freedom. That mass mobilisation is widely credited as a turning point that accelerated the path to independence in 1947.

A ritual of remembrance that carries political weight

Annual tributes on 9 August are a fixture of Indian political life, observed across party lines. For the ruling BJP, invoking the August Kranti serves a dual purpose: honouring a shared national inheritance while also anchoring the party's leaders within the broader narrative of India's civilisational pride and sacrifice. Nadda, as both BJP national president and a senior Union minister, occupies a position where such commemorations carry institutional as well as political resonance.

The unnamed fighters Nadda salutes are a recurring motif in these tributes — a reminder that independence was not won by leaders alone, but by millions whose names never made the history books. That emphasis on collective, grassroots sacrifice remains as relevant a political message today as it was in 1942.