Gandhi's role in pretty much everything is overstated. He has become a cult figure, deified since his death in 1948. While Gandhi was an extremely popular figure during the Independence Movement and his role in securing independence was very important, it can and has been inflated.

One reason for this was his relationship with the Nehru family. India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru was Gandhi's protege and favorite. Nehru assumed leadership of the Indian National Congress while still barely a kid, untried and untested, without even the benefit of an election, over many senior and accomplished leaders in the Independence Movement. This was because of Gandhi's support. He maintained his leadership unopposed through Gandhi's unwavering loyalty to him.

The Gandhi connection has historically been used to give legitimacy to the Nehru family, and the Indian National Congress by proxy. It was in Nehru's interest to portray the Independence Movement as the efforts of the Gandhi-Nehru combine - with Gandhi providing spiritual leadership and Nehru the political savvy. Likewise, the Indian National Congress was presented as the party that secured independence for India, and therefore the one entitled to rule.

If you look at the 67-year history of India since independence, Nehru and his family ruled India for 38 of those 67 years, and the Congress Party (with some Nehru family member behind the scenes) for 55 of those 67 years. During this time, Gandhi has been massively elevated. He was declared father of the nation, his birthday became a national holiday (the only national holiday after a person, unless you count Jesus), history curricula were designed to give honor and prominent place to him. You can barely find a speech by a politician that doesn't mention Gandhi.

But while it's true that Gandhi's role in independence has been overblown to the point it eclipses everyone else, it doesn't mean that Bhagat Singh was more important than Gandhi in the Independence Movement. He wasn't.

Ultimately you have to ask the question, why did the British leave? What made it impossible for them to govern India any longer?

The plain fact is that governing India was only possible with the cooperation of the Indians. At the peak of the British Empire, there were 20,000 Englishmen in India, ruling a population of 400 million. They were outnumbered 20,000 to 1. With such ridiculously lopsided numbers, foreign rule is only possible with the support of the locals, which the British had. The bulk of the Indian military, the police, the administration, clerks and bureaucracy -- were composed of Indians, with a token number of British officers in command. This system worked because the Indians accepted orders from their British superiors, and it would break down the day a substantial number of Indians refused to take orders.

This is what Gandhi's "civil disobedience" was all about. He said "no need for violence, no need to fight, just stop taking orders. What are they going to do? Arrest a hundred million people? And put them where, in which jail? How will they control this country if the police stop policing, the taxman stops making rounds to collect taxes, the artisan stops working and producing goods that can be taxed?"

It was a very effective plan and certainly deserves a large part of the credit for getting the British to leave. But reality is complicated, and there is much more. Theoretically, it would have worked, given enough time. But what made the British leave exactly when they did? Was it just civil disobedience? The answer is no.

People like Bhagat Singh, Chadrasekhar Azad, Bose, and others who called for violent resistance certainly played a role. Again, when you have so few British officers running such a huge country, you cannot afford to lose too many to assassination. More importantly, it forced the British to set limits on what they could and could not do.

When Udham Singh killed O'Dwyer for his role in the Jalianwala Bagh massacre, or Bhagat Singh killed Saunders for the police brutality that led to the death of Lala Lajpat Rai, it was a message to the British about what they could or could not get away with. Typically, the British response to challenges to their authority (in India and other colonies) was "shock and awe" -- massive retaliation on a scale that would make the natives think twice about rebelling. But Udham Singh and Bhagat Singh were willing to lay down their lives in revenge, and executing them wouldn't accomplish much, there were thousands of other young men equally willing to die for their cause.

This limited the options of the British greatly. If you wish to impose rule by force, you must have punishments to keep the people in line, but now punishments invite serious consequences, and the process keeps escalating.

Practically, this was the final straw that broke the camel's back. During WWII, most Indians fought for the British against the Axis. But Subhash Chandra Bose argued that Indians shouldn't be fighting for their colonial masters, they should be helping the guys who were fighting the British Empire. He tried to raise an army to fight for the Axis. He didn't get much traction, because Gandhi was strictly opposed to the idea. But he did get a few people who formed a little band and fought the British during WWII.

While they accomplished next to nothing in terms of the outcome of the war, these Indians had committed treason against the Empire and George VI, so the Brits had to punish them. After the war, they were tried, and their officers hanged.

This produced outrage amongst Indians, who considered those officers true patriots. And Bhagat Singh and people like him had created a climate where these kinds of perceived injustices could not be allowed, as they had in the past. Much violence followed, specially among the Indian armed forces, where those hanged officers had friends. The Royal Indian Army mutinied, as did the Royal Indian Air Force, the Royal Indian Navy. A huge military force that had recently been trained in harsh combat in WWII and that outnumbered all British in India a hundred fold, was refusing to take orders from its British commanders.

That was pretty much the point India became ungovernable. Clement Atlee presented his annual "State of the Empire" address to Parliament, in which he said that the Indian military could no longer be considered loyal to King & Crown, they were now a nationalist force that could not be relied on to prop up the empire. And that was pretty much that. The talks of independence, which had been stalled while the British sent endless committees to India to negotiate "semi autonomy" and "dominion status" and a bunch of things that were short of independence, suddenly stopped. The Brits couldn't get out of India fast enough. The schedule was accelerated, "next couple of years" became "next year", then "this year", then "August".

So it was a whole bunch of things that led to the proximate events of independence. But in broad principle, it was the idea held by a sufficient number of Indians that they no longer wanted the British in India which was the cause. This idea originated in the late 19th and early 20th century, when Indians began to travel abroad and began to see the British not just as the rulers of India, but in the context of a colonial power. It was solidified by people like Gandhi. After that, it was just a matter of time. Bhagat Singh probably speeded it along, but it was bound to happen sooner or later anyway.