The Quit India speech is a speech made by Mahatma Gandhi on August 8, 1942, on the eve of the Quit India movement

Quit India Movement

The Quit India Movement , or the August Movement was a civil disobedience movement launched in India in August 1942 in response to Mohandas Gandhi's call for immediate independence. Gandhi hoped to bring the British government to the negotiating table...

. He called for determined, but passive resistance that signified the certitude that Gandhi foresaw for the movement is best described by his call to Do or Die. His speech was issued at the Gowalia Tank Maidan

Gowalia Tank

Gowalia Tank Maidan is a park in central Mumbai where Mahatma Gandhi issued the Quit India speech on 8 August 1942 decreeing that the British must leave India immediately or else mass agitations would take place...

 in Bombay, since re-named August Kranti Maidan (August Revolution Ground). However, almost the entire Congress leadership, and not merely at the national level, was put into confinement less than twenty-four hours after Gandhi's speech, and the greater number of the Congress leaders were to spend the rest of the war in jail. The Quit India Speech is considered a masterful speech as it motivated the Indian people without causing violence. Many years later, Martin Luther King, Jr., would mimic Gandhi in his "I Have A Dream" speech that promoted nonviolence and equality of races.

See also

• Tryst with destiny
  Tryst with destiny
  Tryst with Destiny was a speech made by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India. The speech was made to the Indian Constituent Assembly, on the eve of India's Independence, towards midnight on 14 August 1947. It focuses on the aspects that transcend India's history...
  
  
• List of speeches