KARO YA MARO? NAY, KARENGE YA MARENGE!
Vagish K Jha
(Education Development Specialist)
We live with some inconvenient truths and some comfortable myths. The truth comes as the challenges
we face. The myth gives us reasons to get along as inevitable or a hope to fight them out. History, however,
is a pursuit that reasons out the truth and analyses the myth. History gives us an ‘insight provided by the
hind sight’ so that we could engage with the truths of the present with serenity. However, half-truth is a
dangerous category. The story I am sharing with you here is one such half-truth of history.
It was today, exactly 70 years ago, on 8th August, 1942, that the final call of independence of was given by
passing the ‘Quit India’ resolution at the annual convention of Indian National Congress at Bombay. The
moment we recall Quit India Movement, the famous slogan of Gandhi ‘Karo ya maro’ that is ‘Do or die’
comes to our mind. The famous ‘do or die’ speech goes like this –
“Here is a mantra, a short one, which I give you. You may imprint it on your hearts and
let every breath of yours give expression to it. The mantra is: ‘Do or Die.’ We shall either
free India or die in the attempt; we shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery.”
(Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (henceforth CWMG) - Vol. 83, June 7, 1942 January 26, 1944, page-201-206)
History books tell us in graphic detail as to how all the prominent leaders of Freedom struggle including
Gandhi were arrested early morning on 9th August, 1942. The mammoth crowd gathered at the Gowalia
tank maidan (known as August Kranti Maidan today) chanted the slogan “Karo ya Maro’ which soon
engulfed the entire nation like a wild fire.
The truth however, is that Gandhi never said ‘Karo ya Maro’!
It might sound sensational but it is true. What Gandhi said actually was ‘Karenge ya Marenge’.
Is it not the same?
No!
There is a world of difference between these two expressions. Karo ya Maro is a dictate, an order given by
a general. ‘Karenge ya Marenge’ is a gentle appeal; a determined resolve; a beautiful individual assertion
aspiring to resonate with the collective hope of the freedom of the country!
Before I go on further on the implications and hidden meanings, let me share the interesting fact of this
mix up. Actually, Gandhi started delivering this speech in Hindi. But as there were delegates from other
non-Hindi speaking areas, he switched over in English. Today, unfortunately, this historic speech is not
available in original form. What we have is its English version only. In English, it has the phrase ‘do or die’,
which could be a translation of Karenge ya marenge as well. But later, when the English text was
translated back into Hindi the ‘do or die’ it became ‘karo aur maro’.
One may, however, ask as to how can we say Gandhi said ‘Karenge ya marenge’ and not ‘Karo ya Maro’?
Where is the evidence?
The mystery is resolved by a small chit that Gandhi had hurriedly written at 5 o’clock in the morning of 9th
August, 1942 just before he was arrested. After the following brief message, he concluded his message
with ‘Karenge ya marenge’ in Hindi. Fortunately, this document has been retrieved from the office of the I
B, DIG, West Bengal. The message, as quoted in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, is as follows:
MESSAGE TO THE COUNTRY1
BOMBAY,
5 a.m., August 9, 1942
Everyone is free to go the fullest length under ahimsa. Complete deadlock by strikes and
other non-violent means. Satyagrahis must go out to die not to live. They must seek and
face death. It is only when individuals go out to die that the nation will survive.
Karenge ya marenge.2
M. K. GANDHI
From the documents in the office of the D. I. G., I. B., West Bengal Government
1 On the morning of August 9, Gandhiji, along with the Working Committee and some
fifty Congress leaders of Bombay, was taken into custody.
2 “We will do or die.”
So, should one take it as an innocent slip? Or is it missing out the very import of the politics of Gandhi? Or,
worse even, does it represent a distorted historical sensibility and bias against Gandhi?
There is another interesting link to the story of Karenge ya marenge. It came as a startling fact to me that
as a student of history, I was never told this! And, in the course of my exploration, it came as a pleasant
shock to me.
Around the same time when Gandhi was sent to jail in 1942, a poem was written in America by an
African-American poet Countee Cullen, who was also a leading figure the Harlem Renaissance. 1 The title
of this poem written in English was ‘Karenge ya Marenge’ (see the full poem at the end of the article). It is
interesting to note that he chose to use the exact phrase used by Gandhi rather than translating it in
English and calling it ‘do or die’, which would have been more natural for him and the readership he was
addressing to. But the decision to keep the exact phrase of Gandhi not only showed just the linguistic
sensibility of a poet. It displayed a deep commitment to history.
It is also startling to know that this poem is dated 19 th August, 1942, just 10 days after the arrest of
Gandhi. I am not addressing an interesting point here that how Gandhi’s phrase had found resonance and
such an exact one, so far in America, at a time when there were hardly well developed channels of
communication. What does need to be emphasized, in passing though, is the interest and appeal that
Gandhi and Indian freedom struggle had created for the rest of struggles going on in the world. The
feeling was mutual and reciprocal to Gandhian approach of embracing and extending unflinching support
to these struggles. A clue to Gandhi’s understanding can be derived from this speech (8 th August, 1942)
also where is defines his meaning of freedom. He says:
“Let me tell you, too, that I do not regard England, or for that matter America, as free
countries. They are free after their own fashion, free to hold in bondage the coloured
races of the earth. Are England and America fighting for the liberty of these races today?
You shall not limit my concept of freedom. The English and American teachers, their
history and their magnificent poetry have not said you shall not broaden the
interpretation of that freedom. And according to my interpretation of that freedom, I am
constrained to say, they are strangers to that freedom which their poets and teachers
have described. If they will know the real freedom, they should come to India. They have
to come not with pride or arrogance but in the spirit of earnest seekers of Truth.”
Isn’t it amazing that when he was not sure about the freedom of India, he was associating with various
other struggles in the world! This world view has to be appreciated to understand the approach Gandhi
took in leading the freedom struggle of India. It is in the same spirit that the fact that ‘Karo ya maro’ slip
needs to be understood.
1 1.
The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the "New Negro Movement", was a cultural movement asserting the
civil and political rights of African Americans centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.
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Gandhi was acutely aware that the movement would not be successful because of him. For that matter
any movement can hope to be successful when people become a willing part of it. He acknowledges this
again here on 8th August, 1942:
“I have taken such an inordinately long time over pouring out what was agitating my
soul to those whom I had just now the privilege of serving. I have been called their leader
or, in military language, their commander. But I do not look at my position in that light. I
have no weapon but love to wield my authority over anyone. I do sport a stick which you
can break into bits without the slightest exertion. It is simply my staff with the help of
which I walk. Such a cripple is not elated, when he is called upon to bear the greatest
burden. You can share that burden only when I appear before you not as your
commander but as a humble servant. And he who serves best is the chief among equals.”
(CWMG- page 201)
With this humility alone, you could aspire to create a place in the heart of the masses that they would
place their lives on platter to you! Gandhi’s contribution to building mass movements was not based on
providing leadership from outside, as an alien, as someone superior, a saviour. He firmly believed that
you have to be an integral part of the society. You need to feel the harmony of the collective will to
modulate it; you need to build upon the given strength of masses. You just have to awaken their self-belief
and self-respect.
This could not be done by the logic of the oppressor. You cannot beat them in their own game. One just
can’t win over brute power by power and violence by violence. It had to be grounded in non-violence. It
had to be soaked in love and compassion. Struggle against the British was also a simultaneous struggle
against the evil that all of us represented in some measure or the other. The anger that Gandhi aspired to
generate was essentially not the one directed towards an ‘outer other’. It was a fight against the internal
enemy at the same time. It was this approach that sublimated Gandhian concept of politics, which gave it
a breezy transcendence to make it universal and utterly simple and humble.
It is the failure to appreciate this essential approach of Gandhi that leads to transform a soft and sublime
call of Karenge ya marenge to an arrogant and dictatorial ‘karo ya maro’!
Karenge Ya Marenge
Wherein are words Sublime or noble? What
Invests one speech with haloed eminence,
Makes it the sesame for all doors shut,
Yet in its likes sees but impertinence?
Is it hue? Is it the cast of eye,
The curve of lip or Asiatic breath,
Which mark a lesser place for Gandhi's cry
Than "Give me liberty or give me death!"
Is Indian speech so quaint, so weak, so rude,
So like its land enslaved, denied and crude,
That men who claim they fight for liberty
Can hear this battle-shout impassively,
Yet to their arms with high resolve have sprung
At those same words cried in the English tongue?
- Countee Cullen
August 19, 1942
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