Cripps Mission

The Cripps Mission was a British initiative of March-April 1942, in which the War Cabinet sent Sir Stafford Cripps to India with an offer of full dominion status after the war and a post-war Constituent Assembly, with the added provision that individual provinces and princely states could opt out of the resulting union. It came against the backdrop of Japan's rapid advance through Southeast Asia and the fall of Singapore, which had raised the stakes of securing Indian cooperation in the war effort. Mahatma Gandhi famously rejected the offer as 'a post-dated cheque on a crashing bank', objecting both to its deferred timeline (independence only after the war) and to the opt-out clause, which he and the Congress leadership read as effectively pre-legitimising the eventual partition of India. The Congress Working Committee's rejection in April 1942 marked the point at which the party concluded that negotiation within the existing constitutional framework had been exhausted. The Mission's failure directly precipitated the Quit India Movement: with talks unable to deliver independence, the Congress moved toward an unconditional demand for immediate British withdrawal, culminating in the 8 August 1942 resolution.

• 1 British mission led by Sir Stafford Cripps, March-April 1942
• 2 Offered post-war dominion status and a Constituent Assembly
• 3 Provinces and princely states allowed to opt out of the resulting union
• 4 Rejected by the Congress Working Committee, April 1942
• 5 Gandhi's phrase: 'a post-dated cheque on a crashing bank'
• 6 Context: Japan's advance through Southeast Asia, fall of Singapore
• 7 Directly precipitated the Quit India Movement (August 1942)

Mains answers on the causes of Quit India routinely cite the Cripps Mission's failure as the immediate trigger, distinct from the movement's deeper causes rooted in decades of nationalist mobilisation.