No talk of 1946 Naval Mutiny?

As the nation is celebrating the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav with lot fervour, it is so baffling that nobody is talking about the great 1946 Royal Indian Naval Mutiny that had shaken the very edifice of British Raj in India. There is a view that due to Mutiny, British Raj finally came to an end in 1947. Tragically, the Naval Mutiny of 1946 tends to be relegated to just a footnote, except in scholarly works written by some historians, for the benefit of other historians.

So, what was the naval mutiny? In February 1946, ratings - common sailors of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) - many of whom were veterans of the Second World War, staged a mutiny. These young men, all aged between sixteen and twenty-five, were simmering due to failed promises made at the time of recruitment, horrible working conditions, bad food and abhorrent racial discrimination. They were also politically charged and inspired by the Indian National Army (INA) and thus hungry to play a part in India's freedom movement.

Further, their demands included the release of all Indian political prisoners and soldiers, as well as the withdrawal of Indian troops from places like Indonesia and Egypt, where they had been deployed to suppress uprisings by local independence movements against colonizers. Clearly, they were also imbued with nationalistic fervor.

In his very well-researched book on the Naval Mutiny- '1946: Last War of Independence', author Pramod Kapoor writes- "The Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) whose prominent members like Khawaja Ahmad Abbas, Salil Chowdhury, Pt Ravi Shankar, Balraj Sahni, Ritwik Ghatak, Prithiviraj Kapoor, et al, encouraged and supported the ratings and their uprising." The IPTA had been formed in 1943, three years before the naval uprising. It was openly supporting mutiny. In Karachi, AK Hangal was arrested for protesting against firing on the sailors. We all know AK Hangal as a very accomplished actor.

Within 48 hours of the start of the mutiny, 20 thousand ratings took over scores of ships. They were joined by civilians all across India, particularly those in Bombay and Karachi, and by servicemen in the army and air force. The ratings pulled down the White Ensigns of the Royal Navy and replaced them with three entwined flags- the tricolor of the Congress, the green of the Muslim League and the red of the Communist party- on every ship and shore establishment they controlled. They declared themselves the Azad Hindis. They raised patriotic slogans.

The revolt did not last very long. It was put down in a matter of days by the British, who used a combination of brute force and guile. The British forces had to call in white troops to conduct their operations because Indian soldiers were reluctant to fire on their comrades.

Alas, the Naval Mutiny hardly got any support from the Muslim League. Congress leaders was divided whether to support the rebellion or not "Jinnah and Sardar Patel persuade the ratings to surrender. Only the Communists and some of the Young Turk Socialists elements of the Congress backed the revolt," says Pramod Kapoor in '1946: Last War of Independence'.

Basically, Muslim League was only interested in attaining separate country post passing the resolution for Pakistan on March 23-24, 1940 in Lahore. The party smelled blood after Second World War came to an end. Thus, it was in no mood to take the British government head-on even on the issue of Naval Mutiny. Congress was divided.

Congress leader Aruna Asaf Ali hailed the courage of young ratings. She said, "It was a welcome sign that Indian people had plucked up enough courage to face bullets from machine guns. There was a time when our people shuddered at lathi blows but those days were of the past." Young Congress leaders like Jayaprakash Narayn, Ram Manohar Lohia, Acharya Narendra Dev were also supporting the rebels. However, Gandhi ji, Pt Nehru and Sardar Patel were not supporting the Naval Mutiny.

Even more telling was the fact that after Independence, successive governments in India and in Pakistan refused to re-employ these men in the service, or even to acknowledge them as freedom fighters. Every effort was made to blot out the memory of the mutiny post-Independence.

The mutiny started in Talwar, a signal school located in Colaba in the then Bombay on 18 February, 1946. It soon escalated to involve 78 ships, 21 shore establishments, and over 20,000 rating. It crippled the most formidable navies of Second World War. Naval ships were taken over, armouries broken open and officers, British and Indian, ordered to leave their posts.

Write Pramod Kapoor in '1946: Last War of Independence', "With over three lakh protestors on the streets, the British panicked and ordered armoured cars onto the streets of Bombay to crush public support for the ratings, which had turned violently anti British. As a consequence, nearly 400 people were killed and 1,500 wounded. A cyclostyled leaflet written in Hindi found at Victoria Terminus on 25 February 1946 call upon Indian to kill every white man. When we, Hindus and Muslims, are fighting together for the freedom of our motherland, there is no power on earth that will stop us from achieving the same. Jai Hindi. Jai Hind."

True, the Naval Mutiny had created a fear in the minds of British leadership. Perhaps that was trigger point for them to quit India. Alas, despite the enormity of such an event, the Naval Mutiny is consigned to back waters by historians and political leadership. Sahir Ludhianvi also wrote powerful verse about the mutiny: "Yeh jalte hue ghar kiske hein, yeh kat te hue tan kiske hain, Takseem ke andhe toofan mein, lut te hue gulshan kizake hain. Yeh kiska lahu hai kaun mara."

It is indeed very unfortunate that we have not paid our debt to those unknown rebels who had given their lives for the freedom of India. Finally, more historians and journalists should reveal more and more facts about the forgotten mutiny.

(The author is Delhi-based senior journalist and writer. He is author of Gandhi's Delhi which has brought to the forth many hidden facts about Mahatma Gandhi)