NATIONALISM AND POPULAR CONSCIOUSNESS 59 clearly reflected in the message that a tormented Viceroy sent to his Prime Minister in London on 31 August 1942: I am engaged here in meeting by far the most serious rebellion since that of 1857, the gravity and extent of which we have so far concealed from the world for reasons of military security.6 Thanks to strict press censorship, it is difficult to ascertain the actual figure of lives sacrificed for the Quit India Movement. But according to an official admission 1,285 were killed and 3,125 wounded between August and November 1942 alone. As many as fifty-seven and half battalions of army had to be deployed by the Raj to resore order.7 Analysing the country's 'most massive anti-imperialist struggle' Gyanendra Pandey thus contends: Quit India might be fairly summed up as a popular nationalist upsurge that occurred in the name of Gandhi but went substantially beyond any confines that Gandhi may have envisaged for the movement.8 It is, however, generally believed that the 1942 revolt marked a sharp departure frpm the 1920 - 22 and 1930 - 34 outbursts in the pattern of 'radicalisation' of mainstream nationalism. While on earlier occasions the 'breaking of Gandhian barrier' was associated with anti-landlord and anti-capitalist outbursts, the Quit India Movement is thought to have been comparatively bereft of peasant and labour militancy. Pandey, for instance, remarks ... (although) in its second phase, it (the Quit India Movement) had spread out from the bigger cities and towns into the countryside and assumed the for of a mass peasant uprising ... led to very few anti-landlord actions.9 Sumit Sarkar also notes: Unlike in 1919 - 22 and 1930 - 34, the radicalisation process in 1942 was on the whole mainly at the level of anti-British militancy alone, with the very extent of anti-foreign sentiments, as in 1857, possibly reducing internal class tensions and social radicalism.10 What is, however, intended to demonstrate here is that the Quit India Movement m Bengal, where the Revolt had one of its best fruitions did encompass a broad spectrum of social protest. The inherent protest consciousness was expressed through popular revolts and agitations that gathered momentum around the August uprising. Such popular outbursts mostly occurred independently of the Congress organisation. But they gained sustenance from the force of nationalism, a fact usually undermined in the literature on the 'fragmented' nature of Indian identity. FORMS OF POPULAR PROTEST The potentialities of popular protest politics developing outside the Congress parameter but becoming a part of the wider Quit India struggle lay within the Congress strategy itself. Unlike the preceding Congress-led mass struggles Gandhi did not impose a rigid plan of action in 1942. As Jawaharlal himself confessed: Neither in public nor in private at the meetings of the Congress Working Committee did he (Gandhi) hint at the nature of action he had in mind,