(a) Japan Storm South-East Asia:
1) The allied forces lost France, Poland, Belgium, Norway, Holland and some parts of Britain's to Germany.
2) Japan's march into South-east Asia and the attack on Pearl Harbour, gives more significance to India.
3) US & China were concerned with halting Japan on its march thus India came on their (allied forces) radar.
4) By the end of 1941, the Japanese forces captured
5)  Philippines, Indo- China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Burma and were waiting to knock at India's doors in the North-East. 
6) The way the South East Asian region fell raised concerns to Britain and the Indian National Congress. The British forces ran without offering any resistance.
7) The Indian soldiers of the British Indian Army were left to the mercy of the Japanese forces.
8) It was from among them that what would later on to become the Indian National Army (INA).
9) Churchill and leaders of the Congress too was worried that Calcutta and Madras might fall in Japanese hands.
10) It was in this situation that the Congress Working Committee, in December 1941, passed a resolution offering cooperation with the war effort on condition that Britain promised independence to India after the war and transfer power to Indians in a substantial sense immediately.
(b) Arrival of Cripps
1) A delegation headed by Sir Stafford Cripps reached India in March 1942
2) Churchill choose Cripps, to head the delegation lent credibility to the mission.
3) Before setting out to India, he announced that British policy in India aimed at 'the earliest possible realisation of self-government in India'.
4) But the draft declaration he presented before he began negotiations fell far short of independence.
(c) Cripps Proposals
1) Cripps promised Dominion Status and a constitution-making body after the war.
2) The constitution-making body was to be partly elected by the provincial assemblies and nominated members from the Princely states.
3) The draft also spelt out the prospect of Pakistan.
4)  It said that any province that was not prepared to accept the new constitution would have the right to enter into a separate agreement with Britain regarding its future status.
5) The draft did not contain anything new.
Rejection of Cripps' Proposals
1) The offer of Dominion Status was too little.
2) The Congress also rejected the idea of nominated members to the constitution-making body and sought elections in the Princely States as in the Provinces.
3) Above all these was the possibility of partition.
4) The negotiations were bound to breakdown and it did.

1) The arrogance displayed by the colonial government and its refusal to find a meeting point between the promise of dominion status at some future date and the Congress demand for the promise of independence after cessation of the war as a pre-condition to support war efforts was drawn from another development.
2) That was the demand for a separate nation for Muslims.
3) Though the genesis of a separate unit or units consisting of Muslim majority regions in the Eastern and North-Western India was in the making since the 1930s, the resolution on March 23, 1940, at Lahore was distinct.
4) There is ample evidence that the Muslim League and its associates were given the necessary encouragement to go for such a demand by the colonial administrators.
5) The resolution, then, gave the colonial rulers a certain sense of courage to refuse negotiating with the Indian National Congress even while they sought cooperation in the war efforts.
6) In many ways the Congress at the time was weaker in the organizational sense.
7) Moreover, its leaders were committed to the idea that the British war efforts called for support given the character of the Axis powers - Germany, Italy, and Japan - being fascist and thus a danger for democracy.
8) Bose was the only leader who sought non-cooperation with the allied forces and active cooperation with the Axis powers.
9) All these were the important markers of 1940. Things however changed soon with the Japanese advance in Southeast Asia and the collapse of the British army.
10) It led to a sense of urgency among the colonial rulers to ensure cooperation for the war efforts in India even while Ilot committing to freedom.
11) Winston Churchill, now heading the war cabinet, dispatched Sir Stafford Cripps to talk with the Congress.