August Kranti Maidan (Gowalia Tank)

August Kranti Maidan, still widely known by its older name Gowalia Tank, is an unassuming rectangle of ground near Grant Road that holds one of the pivotal places in the history of Indian independence. On 8 August 1942 the All India Congress Committee met here and passed the Quit India resolution, and Gandhi delivered the speech in which he gave the nation the watchword karo ya maro, do or die. He and the entire Congress leadership were arrested before dawn the next morning, and the movement that followed spread across the country in strikes, sabotage and mass protest that made continued British rule untenable. The maidan takes its older name from the tank where cattle, gai, were once washed, long since filled in as the city grew around it. A stone memorial pillar at one end commemorates the resolution, and a small garden and pathways surround the open ground, which today serves the neighbourhood as a cricket pitch, a jogging circuit and a venue for political rallies and Independence Day ceremonies. There is nothing monumental about the site, and that is much of its interest: the place where an empire was told to leave is now a park where children play. It lies a short walk from Mani Bhavan on Laburnum Road, and the two together make a compact circuit of the freedom struggle in Bombay that takes about half a morning.