The Royal Indian Navy (RIN) Strike, February 1946

Arun Kumar Sinha

‘‘And a last word to our people. Our strike has been a historic event in the life of our nation. For the first time the blood of the men in services and the people flowed together in a common cause. We in the services will never forget this. We also know that you, our brothers and sisters, will not forget. Long live our great people. Jai Hind.” [The Last Statement, 23 February 1946, the Naval Central Strike Committee]

Indians suffer from many collective amnesia, –the forgotten history of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) naval ratings’ strike is one of them. The colonial historian’s mindset had only one label to designate any collective disobedience among the people whom they armed for their own protection and the label was ‘mutiny’. Be it the rebellion of the native sepoys in the heartland of the peninsula in May 1857, or the uprising of naval ‘ratings’ in February 1946 they mobilised during the Second World War (WW-II), the rulers suffered from a fear psychosis, be it in Delhi or in London, the seats of imperial power. It was the fear that the rifles and the cannons they supplied to the native population may turn against their own chest and their own Flag.This fear triggered labeling a strike of the naval ‘ratings’ to be a ‘mutiny’! It is a historical fact that Clement Atlee, the British prime minister at the end of WWII confided to P B Chakrabarty, the former Chief Justice of Calcutta and the acting Governor of West Bengal in Calcutta, 1956 the real reason behind His Majesty’s (HM) government’s haste in relinquishing British rule in the Hindustani peninsula. Chakrabarty wrote, “When I was the acting Governor, Lord Atlee, who had given us independence by withdrawing the British rule from India, spent two days in the Governor’s palace at Calcutta during his tour of India. At that time I had a prolonged discussion with him regarding the real factors that had led the British to quit India. My direct question to him was that since Gandhi’s “Quit India” movement had tapered off quite some time ago and in 1947 no such new compelling situation had arisen that would necessitate a hasty British departure, why did they have to leave? In his reply Atlee cited several reasons, the principal among them being the erosion of loyalty to the British Crown among the Indian army and navy personnel as a result of the military activities of Netaji…..”[1]

This fear psychosis percolated among the descendants of the colonial masters in the Hindustani peninsula so that there is a collective oblivion to the most striking example of secular unity among the working people of the peninsula apart from the Indian National Army (INA) during the transfer of power in 1946-1947. As historian VinayLal commented at the end of his Article in this forum, “It is a pity that this act of insurrection, coming at the tail end of the long struggle for freedom, has remained hidden from history considering that in its course and outcome it has something in it for nearly everyone, not least for those who think that it hastened the end of the British Raj.”[2] Even after 75 years of the uprising, there is not even a postage stamp to commemorate Balai Chandra Dutta (B C Dutta) in independent India. Dutt was a trained senior telegraph operator in HMIS Talwar who spearheaded the strike in the naval telegraph station there in Bombay. Similar fate of ungratefulness was earmarked in independent Pakistan for Mohammad Shuaib Khan (M S Khan), the leading signal man of RIN hailing from Sialkot. Khan was elected unanimously the president of the Naval Central Strike Committee (NCSC) in HMIS Talwar by the ratings involved in the strike, he was only twenty-three at that time. MS Khan simply vanished into the blue after he migrated to his homeland being deported from Bombay after the unconditional surrender of the strike committee. At last on December 4, 2001, the Naval Mutiny Memorial was inaugurated at Cooperage ground in Colaba, Mumbai. It took 75 years after independence for the Mumbai-based Western Naval Command of India’s ‘independent’ navy to host and organise on March 23, 2022 an official event to commemorate the ‘RIN mutiny’.

Apart from the disgraceful indifference from the government circles, there is another important aspect of this selective amnesia among the ‘Left circles’ regarding the ‘RIN mutiny’. BC Dutt in his memoir lamented much later in 1971, “…we the ratings of the Royal Indian Naval mutiny had become an inconvenient national memory.”[3] This remark also includes the apathy of the ‘Left circles’ in the Hindustani Peninsula. The solidarity of the commoners, the urban plebeians with the naval uprisings were most evident in Bombay, Karachi, and also in Madras, the three most industrialised cities of the Peninsula apart from Calcutta and Kanpur. The ‘last statement’ quoted in the beginning of this piece acknowledges the sacrifice of hundreds of lives on the streets of Bombay and the solidarity on the shores of Karachi, Madras during the ‘ratings’ strike and uprising. This was much before the lives and living of the ‘subalterns’ among the pre-capitalist societies became a subject of animated discussion in the ‘Left circles’. However, such ‘subaltern studies’ never took the Bombay Hartaal (total strike) as the subject of investigation as if the subalterns matter only in pre-capitalist societies. Recently the CPI(M) mouthpiece Peoples’ Democracy comments at the end in a piece to commemorate the role of the Communist Party in solidarity with the RIN strikers on April 12, 2020, “The Communist Party regretted that the Party was not strong enough to rally the stronger parties–Congress and Muslim League–in its attempts to save the striking ratings, prevent their surrender and victimisation. In spite of this, the Communist Party can rightly claim that it had put all its “strength behind our brothers of the RIN, thus helping to prevent their annihilation.”[4] The claim is questionable as it is not known how many times the Communist MPS have introduced even private bills in the Parliament to demand rehabilitation of the ‘ratings’ involved in the uprising dismissed summarily without even their legitimate dues being compensated by the British authorities. The recent research work in an authoritative Ph. D Thesis from Calicut University Kerala reports”, A large number of Malayalees were dismissed from the navy for their participation in the mutiny. Their participation in the revolt was not mentioned in their discharge certificates. ...It is interesting to note that after their discharge from the navy, the ratings returned home in a condition of uncertainty. Most of them recollected with grief that none of the politicians recognised or identified their participation in the mutiny’’.[5] Many of the communist stalwarts originating from erstwhile princely states of Travancore and Malabar were occupants of the seats of government power multiple times in Kerala. Yet they did nothing while in power of the state government.

The Significance Of Remembering The Rin Strike
There is a keen interest in the RIN ‘ratings’ (a modification of the term ‘retinue’. This is the way the naval recruits other than officers were called) uprising in February 1946 only in the twenty-first century. The uprising lasted only five days, from 18-23 February, yet its lightning spread and intense involvement of the ratings sent tremors among the British establishment in London in 1946. Prime Minister Atlee announced in the House of Commons on 19 February 1946 the Cabinet Mission for negotiating the terms of transfer of power within two days of the RIN strike. The Cabinet Mission included Sir Stafford Cripps (President of the Board of Trade), Lord Pethick-Lawrence (Secretary of State for India) and A V Alexander (First Lord of the Admiralty) as members along with Lord Wavell, the then Viceroy of India. The uprising affected almost all the naval bases in the Hindustani peninsula and even in Eden and Indonesian seashore. Such swift spread of agitation became possible as the epicentre of the revolt was HMIS Talwar, the Bombay telecommunication centre. Situated at Wodehouse Road, Colaba, it was the second largest communication base among British imperial naval bases. There are NOW numerous books, research articles in peer reviewed journals, You Tube videos, blogs, etc. reminiscing, analysing the heroic valour displayed by the ratings, all were in their twenties. Such documentation and dissemination of information definitely is encouraging for fresh interpretation and evaluation of the strike. However, there is a visible twist in the tale of this new vigour in reflecting upon the uprising after 75 years have been spent in the slumber of oblivion. There is a mischievous and vile interest in the strike by the present rulers in Delhi as they continue to label as ‘mutiny’. This story of the naval uprising is always a back hand service to show the Congress party in poor light that indeed was so. The then political leadership of undivided India played a very unfortunate indiscrete role in practically toeing the British version (including M K Gandhi and his trusted lieutenant Ballavbhai Patel). However, this sly attempt to resurrect the memory of the strike so as to defame the current dispensation of the Congress party falls flat on their cunning faces. The merits and salient features of the strike that we want to enumerate and discuss here are a loud embarrassment to such cunningness in rewriting history.

The Distinctly Secular Character of The Strike of the Ratings and The Uprising that Followed
The quality of Food served during the period of the War among the Indian ratings was an issue that initiated the hunger strike by the ratings on 18 February 1946 in HMIS Talwar. The call of the hunger strike was ‘No food, No work’. Not only was the inhospitable quality of food that united the ratings, their sense of brotherhood was borne out of the humiliation they received uniformly and daily from their British Commanding Officers (CO). The indignation in receiving very poor quality of food compared to the British and European naval persons bonded them into the act of defiance irrespective of their religious beliefs. Everywhere the anguish and resentment was so intense, every naval rating and later the petty officers all rallied in support of the strike at HMIS Talwar. BC Dutt wrote about the experience of the first meal he shared with his companions on board a ship, “My first meal in the RIN was a new experience. With unwashed hands, body soaked in perspiration, all of us ate from the same plate, tearing bits of chappati and dipping it into the daal. This was my first communal meal. Our batch had representatives from all the communities and the major language groups in the country. The cook lent us an aluminium mug from which all of us drank water. The first meal removed at one stroke the barriers from which the society we came from suffers. I thought it was something really novel to write home about.” [3]

The wall writings that were plastered in HMIS Talwar before the Navy Day function on December 1, 1946 were prominent enough to dare the British navy authorities with this secular spirit of disobedience. The ship that actually fought the battle with the British forces on the shores of Karachi port was HMIS Hindustan. Ironically the sloop was shared with the newly formed Pakistan navy after partition. Pakistan navy could hardly utilise the sloop as it was severely damaged in the gun battle during the uprising. The ratings plastered the slogans like “This is not Mutiny, but unity, Quit India, we are Indian National Navy, Jai Hind” etc., on the walls of the inland establishment HMIS Chamak at Manora island, Karachi. The flags that were hoisted in all the rebel ships and bases after pulling down the Union Jack were of Congress party and of Muslim League, and in some ships such as HMIS Akbar the red flag of the communist party was also hoisted. The secretary of the communist party branch in Karachi was AK Hangal who was interned along with other leaders for calling a Hartaa in support of the ratings of HMIS Hindustan. If one reads out the names of the members of the NCSC one readily finds presence of men of every major creed of religious belief among the members. Two junior petty officers of HMIS Bahadur, Abdul Baqi from Ajmer and Mubaraq Ahmed from Jamnagar were sent for court martial on sedition charges. They could not be tried as they were underage. However, before being released from jail in Karachi these two young petty officers had searching questions for Sir Ghulam Hidyatullah, the Muslim League chief minister of Sindh province. They asked, “What the Muslim League has done to the Muslim masses and especially to the Muslim ratings of the Navy? What consideration has the League Ministry in Sind has shown to the ratings (many of them Muslims), kept behind the bars under its Raj?”[6]

The HMIS Hindustan, docked in Karachi, had an intense exchange of artillery fire, which resulted in the heaviest casualties on any ship during the mutiny [7].

These few incidents during the uprising are cited to demonstrate the secular credentials of the uprising. Men of distinctly separate religious beliefs and customs could mingle among each other and did not hesitate to accept the call for martyrdom. The leaders of the strike approached with equanimity the national leaders of Congress and Muslim league hoping they will support the strike and will work for mitigating their genuine grievances over service conditions and daily life.

The secular fabric among the plebeian masses of Bombay who came out in thousands in support of the appeal of the NCSC is definitely something to remember and highlight. Kamal Dhonde, the communist activist from Parel and treasurer of ParelMahilaSangh died in police firing during Hartaal in Bombay on 22-23 February. Among the hundreds who died out of this indiscriminate firing by British military personnel, at least thirty seven persons who could later be identified were Muslims [8]. The senior most among them were Pyare Khuda Baksh born 1876 and Mohammad Vazir born 1891, and the youngest ones were only 12-13 years old, Ismail Ashgar born 1934 and Fidya Ali, Kayam Ali, both born in 1933. Anwar Hossain, a student of Lahore College hoisted the flags of revolt in Karachi, and died with flags in hand on 23 February 1946 during police firing there. Gandhiji could notice this secular unity among the masses with the RIN ratings in both Bombay and Karachi. However, for some strange reason he found this jointness a threat to his plan of Ahimsa and harnessing independence under leadership of Congress. Gandhiji released a press statement on 3 March 1946 where he stated, “I have followed the events now happening in India with painful interest. This mutiny in the Navy and what is following is not, in any sense of the term, non-violent, action... Why should they continue to serve if service is humiliating for them or India? Action like this I have called non-violent non-co-operation. As it is, they are setting a bad and unbecoming example for India. A combination between Hindus and Muslims and others for the purpose of violent action is unholy and will lead to and probably is a preparation for mutual violence –bad for India and the world’’ [9].

Unfortunately, communal violence spread and engulfed most sensitive parts of the Hindustani peninsula in return for a partitioned transfer of power and a ‘fractured freedom’. This was within a few months after the strike was called off and the ratings surrendered unconditionally to the British navy authorities. The great Calcutta killings on 16-19 August 1946 and the Noakhali riots in in October 1946 caught Gandhiji completely on the wrong foot of assessment about the naval ratings’ uprising. His press statement will always be remembered as a complete misunderstanding of the nationalist natural brotherhood displayed in the spontaneous revolt of the people under the yoke of colonial power. The naval ratings’ strike and consequent uprising was in search of a genuine secular freedom of the Nation of toilers that was at variance with the machinations and cold calculations of the ‘power brokers’ with communal passion. The objective of these plebeian masses was completely nullified and vilified in such partitioned ‘freedom’ brokered on communal grounds whose bitterest fruits of poison we are now consuming.

The British Policy Of Acute Disparity In Pay And Service Conditions, Demobilisation And The Racial Slur And Discrimination
The outburst of disobedience and consequent uprising had these three major reasons behind the phenomenon. Although the February 1946 strike at HMIS Talwar was the most determined effort of expressing disobedience and disloyalty, it was not the first one. A group of victimised ratings published the first account of “The RIN Strike” in 1954 through the People’s Publishing House in Delhi. The very first pages accounted for the reasons of the strike, “Between March 1942 and April 1945 there were nineteen mutinies in the RIN alone. They related to grievances regarding inadequatepay, bad food, uncomfortable accommodation, menial duties and racial discrimination’’.[10] The strength of Indian servicemen in RIN grew by six times between 1939 and 1944. The strength of native naval servicemen in 1944 was around twenty thousand ratings, most of whom joined the rebellion in February 1946. In search of manpower for the ensuing war the British authorities lured the young natives in the Hindustani peninsula with attractive pay package and secured life after service. In fact, navy and airforce required educated persons to operate communication and radar equipment and therefore tried to enlist educated young people in the services. One poster for recruitment in RIN read as, “Are you young and smart? If you are young and smart and between 171/2 and 24 years of age and have studied up to matriculation there are good opportunities and prospects for you in the RIN. Your job will be interesting….”[11] All these recruitment propaganda were myths and were far from reality. As of September 1943 the monthly wage for merchant navy ranks of sailors such as ‘Able seaman’, ‘Leading seaman’, etc. were higher than the pay of RIN ratings. The disparity in pay structure between merchant navy and the RIN was admitted by Admiral John Henry Godfrey, Flag Officer Commanding (FOCRIN), the highest ranking British navy officer in the Hindustani waters as a major issue for desertion and disaffection among the ranks of RIN ratings. Even the Indian officers recruited during the war found acute discrimination in pay and promotion compared to their British and European counterparts. An Indian Lieutenant used to get three hundred and fifty rupees only as monthly salary during the war whereas his British counterpart drew double that amount [12]. The Ph. D thesis mentioned above narrates, “Evidence shows that the RINVR (RIN voluntary reserve) were distressed by the proclamation which stated that only 66 out of 1500 RINVR would be given permanent commissions in the RIN after the war’’ [5].

The immediate future of large-scale demobilisation stared before these recruits in all the services after the war. The British colonial administration faced huge financial crunch to maintain these large manpower and their reserves after the war. So far as the financial planning of the British administration is concerned, “The Financial Advisor dealt another blow by reporting that the price index in the immediate post-war years was likely to be 50 to 100 percent higher than the pre-war period by leaving only Rs 700 to Rs 750 million for the armed forces. In the light of this financial forecast, General Auchinleck realized that despite these plans, the services would have to be soon slashed to the minimum’’ [11]. The RIN had very little planning in demobilisation of the ratings. As late as November 1945 the settlement procedures were not complete for a large number of decommissioned ratings, their kits were seized and they were asked to sign blank receipts instead of being paid. Persons recruited for short term service were discharged even without rail travel fare and the cost of the kits was reclaimed from them.

The most flagrant violation of the conditions of service was the continuous racial discrimination. The undue and unjust preferential treatment of the British officers in matters of services was mentioned by the Indian National Army (INA) in their publications, This rebel army of Hindustani sepoys and officers was constituted by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and the freedom fighter Rashbehari Bose in Singapore after the surrender of the British command in the hands of Japan on 15 February 1942.The Directorate of the Military Bureau of INA in a publication issued in 1943 stated the condition of native military officers as, “differential treatment in the matters of their pay, allowances, clothing, rations, accommodations, service conditions, social privileges, etc., not only in India but in every theatre of war to which they had the misfortune to be posted… In addition, the British officer gets various unofficial privileges such as, choice of stations, choice ofjob, etc.’’ [12] The racial discrimination in the RIN was all too evident in the routine life of the ratings. M S Khan, the leading telegraphist in HMIS Talwar and later the president of the NCSC recounted, “Eighty per cent of the Indian ratings got no cots to sleep on… Ratings sleep on the floor and everywhere. No arrangements were made, no cots provided…” He added: ‘The ships were meant for 100 or 120 people but in wartime or peacetime they (Indian ratings) were crowded to 200 or 220 people. Half of them had to sleep on the upper deck, half on the mess deck and when it rained, boys had no place to sleep. They had to shrink themselves and sit down all night’’ [7]. The overcrowding of the vessels with the ratings and the pathetic food they were served, the complete unhygienic condition of the toilets, etc. all these have been vividly described by B C Dutt and Biswanath Bose in their memoirs of the rebellion.

The posting of Commander Arthur King as CO of HMIS Talwar in January 1946 was the point of ignition of the ratings’ grievances. He was posted there to intimidate the ratings by invoking racial slurs such as ‘Get up you sons of coolies, sons of bloody junglees, you sons of bitches’. etc. The ratings lodged formal written complaint about the filthy language and verbal abuse by the CO to the higher authorities, but that is of no avail. The first person who went in open revolt was RK Singh, a rating in his twenties. On 1st February 1946, he took off the cap and kicked it on the ground in front of the CO and shouted the unthinkable, that he is resigning from the RIN. He was imprisoned in Arthur Jail, Bombay and was put up with hardened criminals. Pramod Kapoor writes, “This act of bravery sparked off cries for rebellion as news of his deliberate act of insubordination spread like wildfire through the barracks’’ [7]. One of the demands that the NCSC put later before rear admiral Arthur Rattray the Flag Officer Commanding (FOC) Bombay was the unconditional release of RK Singh from Arthur Jail.

The Spontaneity And Nobleness Of The Ratings In Their Selfless Initiative To Bring Down Union Jack Of The Colonial Rule:
The rebellion of the RIN ratings and its spread took the British authorities and the ‘political’ leaders in the Hindustani peninsula literally off their guard. The following Table shows the widespread nature of involvement of the ratings responding to the appeal of NCSC in HMIS Talwar [11].

[*It is a correction in the Table [11] taking help from the Ph. D. Thesis [5]]

It is evident from the Table that the strike caught the imagination of the ratings throughout most of the naval bases in Hindustani peninsula (except Ceylon) and its appeal sent ripples even to Eden in West Asia. This was possible because the telegraph operators, the most trained technical staff of naval radio communication were the prime movers of the strike. However, this fact alone is NOT sufficient to explain the outrage and spontaneity of the involvement. There was a new josh (enthusiasm) among them, the leaders called themselves ‘Azad Hindi’ and marked their salute as Jai Hind taking cue from the sacrifice of the INA. The court martial trial of the three senior officers of INA, Colonel Prem Sahgal, Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, and Major General Shah Nawaz Khanat the Red Fort, Delhi in November 1945 worked as catalyst for the ratings in HMIS Talwar and elsewhere as the nationalist newspapers made a wide publicity of the defence of the officers of INA. In fact, the wide publicity of the INA trials among the ranks of RIN and Royal Indian Air Force (RIAF) was conceded as the major reason behind the British authorities’ decision to nip the strike of the RIN and RAIF in the bud. The ratings after their surrender were interned in the ghettos of Mulund, Bombay and were dismissed from service with a tag ‘Disgracefully discharged from His Majesty’s service’. They were not even allowed to retain their rating’s kit. The British navy did not take any chance of trial of the rebellious ratings; they simply dismissed them from service. They became faceless, anonymous, unrecognized number forthe independent Indian and Pakistan navy after the transfer of power.

If one looks at the composition of the NCSC, one is amazed to find the ingenuity and self-initiative of organisation among the rebellious ratings who were mostly in their twenties. One such member was petty officer telegraphist Madan Singh, the vice-president of NCSC, a tall Sikh by belief hailing from undivided Punjab. He gave a detailed interview many years after to one blogger stating, “After the outbreak of the mutiny, the first thing that we did was to free B C Dutt. Then we took possession of Bucher Island (where the entire ammunition meant for Bombay Presidency was stocked) and telephone and wireless equipment, including transmitters at Kirki near Pune. Our quick actions ensured that all naval ships were fully under our command’’.(13) Similar stories of self-initiatives can be chronicled for the ratings of HMIS Hindustan and their comrades in the inland establishments such as HMIS Bahadur, HMIS Chamak in Manora island, Karachi. We quote here from the Article by an Indian author in the scholarly Pakistan journal, Pakistan Perspectives published in 2010 about the rebellion in Karachi naval establishments.

“On 20th ratings of Hindustan had driven away all the officers both British and Indian from their ship and had taken full control of the ship themselves. Thus Hindustan ship heralded the revolt in Karachi... They dragged down the British flag and burnt it to ashes. They headed towards Hindustan. The English officers showered bullets on them and one of the ratings became a martyr. Instead of Congress or Muslim League flag, the ratings unanimously chose the blood-soaked shirt of their deceased comrade as their flag and by sound of cannons paid their homage to this flag... They were joined by the inhabitants of Manora. When the ratings moved in boats towards the ship, Hindustan, the General of the Army sent two platoons of Baluch soldiers to suppress the revolt. When the Baluch refused to fire upon their brothers, the Punjab Regiment, the Sikh Regiment, the Maratha Regiment and even the Gurkha Regiment which were stationed in Karachi followed the example set by the Baluch. This fearless expression of solidarity with the revolting Navymen frightened the British authorities. Then white troops were summoned and Hindustan was surrounded from all sides. The British troops started the attack. The ratings on Hindustan retaliated. The firing and attacks and the counter attacks continued for four hours. Six of the ratings were killed and about thirty wounded’’.[14]

The Merger Of The Rebellion Among The Rin Ratings And The Proletarian Population Of Bombay, Karachi, Madras
The solidarity of native army platoons with their brothers in blue and white berets is a significant pointer to the history of Bombay and Karachi Hartaal. The only time in the history of the city of Bombay the army tanks were rolled out was during 21-23 February 1946 when the southern command Chief from Pune General Rob Lockhart was given charge of military control of Bombay city. The Maratha light infantry refused to fire upon the ratings in Castle Barrack. The pamphlet from the group of ratings reported the exchange of fire in Castle Barrack between British military and the ratings on 21-22 February, “By this time the military officers had realised that Maratha troops could not be used. Actually they had refused to fire against their own brothers in the Navy. British troops were brought over to replace them. They began to fire at the men guarding the gates... By this time a large number of British troops had gathered round Castle Barracks. They were making preparations to attack from all sides and force an entry.... A couple of hand grenades flung at the groups of white soldiers who had gathered there was enough to clear the whole area in a few minutes.... Godfrey had decided to begin an all-out offensive. All Indian troops were removed. British troops swarmed the area of Castle Barracks. The Town Hall became their operations headquarters. By midday there were at least 17 trucks and armoured cars packed with troops armed with light machine-guns, rifles and other weapons held at the ready’’ [10].

Not only the native soldiers came in solidarity with the ratings of RIN, the RAIF pilots stationed in Bombay also refused to fly sorties over the ships in the harbour. According to a recent report, “Over a thousand men in the Royal Indian Air Force camps in Bombay came out in support of the revolt. Ground crews mutinied in Madras, Karachi, Poona, Allahabad and Delhi’’.(15) There was a huge unprecedented expression of solidarity from the workers of the cotton mills of Bombay and the proletarian population in the chawls of Bombay apart from the fraternity and support the RIN ratings received from their brethren in uniform. It is estimated more than three lakhs of protesters were on the streets and lanes of Bombay facing bullets from the British troops. The official figure of deaths in the two days was 187 and unofficially the figure was around 270 [12].

In Bombay the solidarity of the civilian population was most evident in the Fort area, near Gateway of India where crowds gathered to fraternise with the rebel ratings. According to an eyewitness statement, “It was a colourful sight. Everywhere, from all sides they came with baskets of food in their hands. There was everything one could ask for- fruits, milk, bread, vegetables and what not. They were the rations of the poor workers, the struggling poor middle class families, even of well-to-do Indians. The British wanted to starve their heroic brothers in the navy into submission. Motor boats came from the ships and were filled with baskets of food; the ratings were greeted by the people with revolutionary slogans. They were embraced by the crowds. The Hindu, Muslim and Irani shopkeepers took the navy boys into their shops and asked them to take what they wanted. The crowd was delighted to see the rebel ships defiantly flying the Congress, League and Red flags’’ [5].

In spite of the leaders of the Communist Party being thrown in jail the Hartaal was total in the industrial city and port of Sindh province, Karachi on 23rd February. The workers ignored the appeals of the Congress and Muslim League leaders and even the stern warning of the Governor Hiday-tullah was rejected by the masses. The industrial workers and other sections of people all thronged the Idgah Maidan in the afternoon and held the protest meeting against the firing by British troops on HMIS Hindustan. Police fired to disperse the crowds injuring thirty persons in the assembly.

Although the participation of the workers in Karachi and Bombay are well recorded in the literature, the solidarity of the workers in Madras is not much mentioned. There was a widespread Hartaal in Madras on 25 February when workers of various mills and factories came out on the streets, “For the first time in the history of the Great Indian Peninsular (GIP) railways, the administrative staff also struck work in sympathy with RIN ratings. The strike originated in the Chief Accountant’s Office and spread to all other departments. More than 3000 clerks participated in the strike’’ [5]. The strike had such an impact among the population that the “…crowd of about 10,000 stopped the Indo-Ceylone Express between Saidapet and Mambalam by throwing stones at the train. The police opened fire to disperse the crowd, resulting in severe injuries to three people’’ [5].

By all accounts of the strike and later researches, the RIN ratings’ strike crossed several milestones in self-initiative of the workers and the men in uniform in the Hindustani Peninsula. Be it instantaneous and spontaneous in action, of nobleness in bringing a larger picture of self-sacrifice, of integrity and allegiance towards the brotherhood of toilers, the history of the five days of rebellion is unique in the annals of the modern history of rebellion. All the people involved in the strike and Hartaal had an intense desire towards the end of colonial rule that they and their forefathers passed through enormous insult and ignominy. Although Jawaharlal Nehru had a very dubious role during the strike and after as the first prime Minister of independent India, one cannot but agree with his statement, “The RIN episode has opened an altogether new chapter in the history of the armed forces of India”. The pamphlet by ‘A group of victimised RIN ratings’ keeps this statement as the masthead of the Introduction of their pamphlet. The most significant feature that is often been in oblivion is that the uprising of the population was entirely an urban affair, an affair of the plebeian societies of metropolitan cities that were crucibles of amalgamation of people from various languages, culture, religious beliefs and taboos, of commodities and merchandise, and so on. When they rose as a people the momentum generated was a matter of fear and horror to the rulers, their political and state establishments. In this sense, the RIN strike bore resemblance to the Russian revolution in Moscow and Petrograd in July-December of 1917, or the workers’ and the sailors’ councils in Germany in November-December Germany of 1918. In fact, some British eyewitness reports are there contemplating “Soviets” in Bombay seeing the incidents on 21-23 February.

Violence And Its Interpretation From The Victor’s Side
Any upsurge of the people against the ruling establishment is bound to confront violent response of the rulers, this has happened always in history. Particularly in the modern history of rebellion of workers, be it in Petrograd in November 1917, in Munich in November 1918 during the 100 days of Bavarian workers’ republic, in Budapest during Hungarian uprising of workers in October 1956, the workers’ resistance in Prague against the advance of soviet tanks in August 1968, such examples galore in the modern history of workers’ rebellion or resistance. The workers’ solidarity with the RIN ratings in Bombay, Karachi, Madras, Calcutta in February 1946 were no exception to this general trend of history. The workers found the confluence of expression and desire of revolt among the ratings’ demand for better service conditions, better pay, parity in recognition of rights alongwith their British brethren. The ratings’ strike was non-violent hunger strike in nature and they repeatedly appealed for non-violent expressions for protest. However, they had armoury and ammunition in possession, and moreover their rebellion was the spark that ignited the imagination of all native men in uniform alongside the example of INA’s sacrifice for a just, egalitarian national liberation from colonialism. If protests from armed services go beyond the control of the rulers, their response is bound to be violent and aggressive that they will always justify in the name of restoring ‘order’, preserving their ‘rule’.

The problematic is whose ‘rule’ is to be justified and whose ‘order’ is to be preserved? In a recent compilation of essays justifying the existence of violence among the tribal movements of central India, it is written in the Introduction, “Violence is an everyday reality for many who fall through the cracks of restless growth stories across the globe, and they might believe that violence alone makes them heard. Much of the ongoing political battle in Central India is one such story. Tribals who are recklessly displaced and forcefully impoverished through an ongoing process of ‘primitive accumulation’ cannot but resort to more violent forms of protest because they are seen to be dispensable and without stakes of any kind in the new urbanised development model pursued by all of the ‘mainstream’ political parties and ideologies (Corbridge, Harriss and Jeffrey 2013)’’ [15].  In an essay from Ireland in 2006 on a similar topic, the authors recognise the role of violence in the protests as, “While theorists like Georges Sorel and Frantz Fanon gave violence a defining role in revolution, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had regarded it as incidental. Violence, according to their metaphor, was a midwife whose interventions may (or may not) be required during the birth of a new society out of the womb of the old’’ [16].

While such treatise do conjecture over the existence of the doctrine of violence among the oppressed and exploited people, particularly the subalterns, they seldom dwell on the urban milieu of violence by the rulers, the establishments either by the force of arms or otherwise. They seldom bring to the table the principal reasons of revolt of the urban masses, the plebeians and the fallout of their revolts among the ‘political’ circles particularly their interpretation of violence as the reprisal of the urbane disobedience to the ‘rulebook’. It is in this context the RIN strike and the workers’ solidarity and sacrifice is important and relevant to focus the discussion on urban rebellion and transcendence of the ‘rule’ and ‘order’ of the existing regimes over the urban plebeian masses.

References:
(1)  Quoted in “Subhas Chandra Bose, The Indian National Army, and The War of India’s Liberation”, Ranjan Borra, The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1982 (Vol. 3, No. 4), pages 407-439.
(2)  Vinay Lal, “The 1946 Naval Indian Mutiny”, Frontier, Vol. 54, No. 43, April 24-30, 2022.
(3)  B C Dutt, Mutiny of the Innocents, Sindhu Publications Pvt Ltd., Bombay 1971.
(4)  Peoples’ Democracy, ‘‘Communists and The RIN Mutiny”, April 12, 2020.
(5)  Priya P, Royal Indian Navy Mutiry: A Study of Its Impact in South India, Ph.D. Thesis, Calicut University, 2014.
(6)  Biswanath Bose, RIN Mutiny:1946, Northern Book Centre, New Delhi, 1988.
(7)  Pramod Kapoor, 1946, Last War of Independence, Roli Books, 2022.
(8)  Mahino Fatima, ‘‘The Muslim Martyrs of Royal Indian Naval Mutiny of 1946", https://www.heritagetimes. in/the-muslim-martyrs-of-royal-indian-naval-mutiny-of-1946
(9)  Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi’s statement to the Press, 23/02/1946, Poona. http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL089.PDF
(10) A Group of Victimised Ratings, The RIN Strike, Peoples’ Publishing House, New Delhi, 1954.
(11) Anirudh Deshpande, Hope and Despair: Mutiny, Rebellion and Death in India, Primus Books, 2016.
(12) Kalyan Kumar Ghosh, “The Indian National Army-Motives, Problems and Significance’’ Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, January 1961.
(13) Bharat Rakshak Forum, RIN Revolt of 1946, https://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic.php?t=5903
(14)Ajeet Javed, “The United Struggle of 1946”, Pakistan Perspectives, Vol. 15, No. 1, January-June 2010.
(15) Iqbal Javed, “The Great Royal Indian Navy Mutiny of 1946 and beyond–A mortal blow to the British Raj’’, 7 November 2016, https://www. europe-solidaire. org/spip.php?article 46751
(16) Ajay Gudavarthy, Ed. Revolutionary Violence versus Democracy, Narratives from India, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2017.
(17) Christopher J. Finlay, “Violence and Revolutionary Subjectivity”, European Journalof Political Theory, [DOI: 10.1177/1474885106067277]

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