1942: Key Events

• Sir Stafford Cripps arrives in India amid increasing fears that India might fall to Japan, which bombs the east coast and Calcutta. His proposals to frame a Dominion Constitution and a promise of independence after the war are rejected, especially since they imply Partition.

• Congress launches the ‘Quit India’ movement in August. Violent confrontations lead to massive reprisals as eight British brigades and 57 Indian battalions are used to quell what the viceroy describes as ‘by far the most serious rebellion since that of 1857’.

• Matangini Hazra, a 72-year-old widow, leads a demonstration braving police bullets in Tamluk, Midnapore, becoming one of the icons of the August Kranti movement.

• The Japanese bomb Rangoon and Singapore. Representatives of Indian organisations from Japanese- occupied territories meet in Tokyo and Bangkok, and resolve to raise an Indian National Army (aka Azad Hind Fauj) with Japanese support, consisting mainly of Indian prisoners of war.

• The CPI collaborates with the British following Hitler’s invasion of the USSR and opposes the Quit India movement. It concentrates on organising the Telangana peasantry against the Nizam of Hyderabad and on the Travancore movement against Dewan Ramaswamy Aiyer’s rule.

• Dr Dwarkanath Kotnis, head of a medical team sent to China, dies. Four years later, V. Shantaram? films his story (Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani?) as a nationalist fable.

• Hindustan Motors is the first indigenous car-manufacturing company.

• The Bombay Film Society is formed.

• Major shortages in raw stock; only recognised producers receive a maximum of 11,000 feet for features and 400 feet for publicity trailers. Priority is given to films supporting the war effort, leading to a rash of war movies.

• Filmistan is founded by a breakaway group from Bombay Talkies led by S. Mukherjee? and Ashok Kumar.

• A. R. Kardar? founds the Kardar Studio. First films in Sindhi (Homi Wadia’s Ekta) and Marwari (G. P. Kapoor’s Nazrana).

• V. Shantaram? starts the Rajkamal Kalamandir? Studio on the former Wadia Movietone? premises;

• Homi Wadia starts Basant Pictures.

• Mehboob starts his own production company (becoming a studio in 1952) with the hammer-and-sickle logo.

• K. A. Abbas?, V. P. Sathe and others start the journal Sound, featuring politics, fiction, reviews and essays on Indian film.