On 8 August 1942 the All-India Congress Committee adopted a resolution demanding ‘the immediate ending of British rule in India’. It also authorised Gandhi ‘to take the lead and guide the nation’ in the ‘Quit India’ satyagraha that followed the adoption of the resolution. Before Gandhi could take any actual steps to lead the campaign, he and the entire Congress leadership were thrown in jail by the Government. Nationwide riots followed, which were put down with an unprecedented show of force.

Accepting his role as the ‘commander’ of the ‘Quit India’ satyagraha, Gandhi gave two speeches, the first in Hindi and the second in English. The text of the latter is given below. Its intended audience included the whole nation as well as the international community, especially the Allied Powers. He coined for the occasion a new mantra – ‘do or die’ (karenge ya marenge).

Ironically, the inspiration for the new mantra came from a stanza in Lord Tennyson's ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ written to commemorate the fate of the British soldiers who perished in the Crimean war:

These lines had a life-long fascination for Gandhi. He first used them in 1904 (CW 4: 216) to praise the heroism of an Indian soldier who had recently perished in action in Tibet, and of other Indian soldiers who had died fighting for Britain ‘during the last sixty years’.