On This Day: Mutiny of 10,000 sailors, 56 ships, begins - Feb. 18, 1946
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Royal Navy rating
In the Royal Navy (RN) and other navies in the Commonwealth, rate and rating are interchangeably used to refer to an enlisted sailor who is ranked below warrant officers and commissioned officers, but may include petty officers and chief petty officers.
Royal Indian Navy mutiny
The Royal Indian Navy mutiny or revolt, also called the 1946 Naval Uprising, was a failed insurrection of Indian naval ratings, soldiers, police personnel and civilians against the British government in India. From the initial flashpoint in Bombay (now Mumbai), the revolt spread and found support throughout British India, from Karachi to Calcutta (now Kolkata), and ultimately came to involve over 10,000 sailors in 56 ships and shore establishments.
The mutiny failed to turn into a revolution because sailors were asked to surrender after the British authorities had assembled superior forces to suppress the mutiny.
The mutiny ended with the surrender of revolting RIN sailors to British authorities. The Indian National Congress and the Muslim League convinced Indian sailors to surrender and condemned the mutiny, realising the political and military risks of unrest of this nature on the eve of independence. The leaders of the Congress were of the view that their idea of a peaceful culmination to a freedom struggle and smooth transfer of power would have been lost if an armed revolt succeeded with undesirable consequences. The Communist Party of India was the only nation–wide political organisation that supported the rebellion. The British authorities had later branded the Naval Mutiny as a "larger communist conspiracy raging from the Middle East to the Far East against the British crown".
The RIN Revolt started as a strike by ratings of the Royal Indian Navy on 18 February in protest against general conditions. The immediate issues of the revolt were living conditions and food. By dusk on 19 February, a Naval Central Strike committee was elected. The strike found some support amongst the Indian population, though not their political leadership who saw the dangers of mutiny on the eve of Independence. The actions of the mutineers were supported by demonstrations which included a one–day general strike in Bombay. The strike spread to other cities, and was joined by elements of the Royal Indian Air Force and local police forces.
Indian Naval personnel began calling themselves the "Indian National Navy" and offered left–handed salutes to British officers. At some places, NCOs in the British Indian Army ignored and defied orders from British superiors. In Madras and Poona (now Pune), the British garrisons had to face some unrest within the ranks of the Indian Army. Widespread rioting took place from Karachi to Calcutta. Notably, the revolting ships hoisted three flags tied together – those of the Congress, Muslim League, and the Red Flag of the Communist Party of India (CPI), signifying the unity and downplaying of communal issues among the mutineers.
The revolt was called off following a meeting between the President of the Naval Central Strike Committee (NCSC), M. S. Khan, and Vallab Bhai Patel of the Congress with a guarantee that none would be persecuted.
Contingents of the naval ratings were arrested and imprisoned in camps with distressing conditions over the following months, and the condition of surrender which shielded them from persecution. Patel, who had been sent to Bombay to settle the crisis, issued a statement calling on the strikers to end their action, which was later echoed by a statement issued in Calcutta by Muhammad Ali Jinnah on behalf of the Muslim League.
Under these considerable pressures, the strikers gave way. Arrests were then made, followed by courts martial and the dismissal of 476 sailors from the Royal Indian Navy. None of those dismissed were reinstated into either the Indian or Pakistani navies after independence.
Background
During the Second World War, the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) had rapidly expanded from a small naval force composed of sloops to become a full–fledged navy. The expansion occurred in an ad hoc basis as operational requirements changed over the course of the war, the naval headquarters was moved from Bombay to New Delhi during this period, the navy acquired a varied assortment of warships and landing crafts, and the naval infrastructure in British India was expanded with improved dockyards, new training facilities and other support infrastructure.
The RIN played an instrumental role in halting the progress of Japanese forces in the Indian Ocean Theatre. The force was involved in escorting allied convoys in the Indian Ocean, defending the Indian shoreline against naval invasions and supporting allied military operations through coastlines and rivers during the Burma Campaign.
Due to the war, recruitments began occurring beyond the confines of the "martial races" composed of demographics who were politically segregated. The ratings were composed of a diverse group, from different regions and religions, mostly from rural backgrounds. Some of them had not even physically encountered Britons before the recruitment. Exponential rises in the price of goods, famines and other economic difficulties eventually forced many of them to join the expanding armed forces of the British Raj. In a period of 4 to 6 years, the recruits underwent a transformation in their mindset. They were exposed to developments from around the world.
In 1945, it was ten times larger than its size in 1939. Between 1942 and 1945, the CPI leaders helped in carrying out mass recruitment of Indians especially communist activists into the British Indian Army and RIN for war efforts against Nazi Germany. However once the war was over, the newly recruited men turned against the British government.
Demobilisation
The demobilisation of the Royal Indian Navy began once the war with Japan ended. Leased ships were paid off, a number of shore establishments were closed and the sailors were concentrated into select establishments for their release from service. Much of the concentration occurred in the naval establishments at Bombay, which served as the primary base for the RIN and hence became over crowded with bored and dissatisfied personnel awaiting their release.
[Dismal living conditions]
The dissatisfaction among the Indian personnel came from a variety of causes such as dismal living conditions, arbitrary treatment, inadequate pay and a perception of an uncaring senior leadership. Despite the wartime expansion, the officer staff of the formed remained predominantly white and the navy was noted to be the most conservative in terms of number of Indian officers. The concentration of the personnel and grievances in its ranks combined with tense interracial relations and aspirations to end British rule in India led to a volatile situation in the navy.
Unrest in the British forces in India
In early February 1946, mutinies broke out in the Indian Pioneers unit stationed in Calcutta, Bengal Province and later at a signals training center at the air base in Jubbulpore, Central Provinces and Berar. According to Francis Tuker, the commanding officer of the Eastern Command, the dissatisfaction against British colonial rule was rapidly growing within the bureaucracy and the police force as well as in the armed forces itself.
HMIS Talwar
HMIS Talwar was a shore establishment, with a signals school at Colaba, Bombay. Following the end of the war, the establishment was among the locations in Bombay where a large number of ratings were deployed.
At 12:30, 18 February 1946, it was reported that all naval ratings below the rank of petty officer at HMIS Talwar were refusing commands from the CO. Eventually, the ratings rebelled, seizing control of the shore establishment and expelling the officers. Over the course of the day, the ratings moved across the Bombay Harbour from ship to ship in an attempt to convince other ratings to join them in the mutiny.
Within a day, the mutiny had spread to 22 ships in the harbour and 12 other shore establishments in Bombay. On the same day, the mutiny was also joined in by RIN operated wireless stations including those as distant as Aden and Bahrain; the mutineers at HMIS Talwar had used available wireless devices at the signals school to establish direct communications with them.
Occupation of Bombay Harbour
On 19 February, the Flag Officer Commanding, Royal Indian Navy, Admiral John Henry Godfrey sent out a communication via the All India Radio, stating that the most stringent measures would be utilised to suppress their mutiny, including if necessary the destruction of the Navy itself.
Over the course of the day, many of the ratings moved into the city armed with hockey sticks and fire axes, causing traffic disruption and occasionally commandeering vehicles.
On the morning of 20 February 1946, it was reported that Bombay Harbour, including all its ships and naval establishments had been overtaken by mutineers. It encompassed 45 warships, 10–12 shore establishments, 11 auxiliary vessels and four flotillas, overtaken by around 10,000 naval ratings.
Charter of Demands
In the afternoon of 19 February, the mutineers at the Bombay Harbour had congregated at HMIS Talwar to elect the Naval Central Strike Committee (NCSC) as their representatives and formulate the Charter of Demands. The Charter of Demands was sent to the authorities and consisted of a mixture of political and service related demands.
Release of all Indian political prisoners;
Release of all Indian National Army personnel unconditionally;
Withdrawal of all Indian personnel from Indonesia and Egypt;
Eviction of British nationals from India;
Prosecution of the commanding officers and signal bosuns for mistreatment of crew;
Release of all detained naval ratings;
Demobilisation of the Royal Indian Navy ratings and officers, with haste;
Equality in status with the Royal Navy regarding pay, family allowances and other facilities;
Optimum quality of Indian food in the service;
Removal of requirements for return of clothing kit after discharge from service;
Improvement in standards of treatment by officers towards subordinates;
Installation of Indian officers and supervisors.
Lack of support
The mutineers in the armed forces received no support from national political leaders and were themselves largely leaderless.
Mahatma Gandhi condemned the revolt. His statement on 3 March 1946 criticized the strikers for revolting without the call of a "prepared revolutionary party" and without the "guidance and intervention" of "political leaders of their choice".
The Muslim League made similar criticisms of the mutiny, arguing that unrest amongst the sailors was not best expressed on the streets, however serious their grievances might be. Legitimacy could only, probably, be conferred by a recognised political leadership as the head of any kind of movement.
The Communist Party of India, the third largest political force at the time, extended full support to the naval ratings and mobilised the workers in their support, hoping to end British rule through revolution rather than negotiation.
It has been speculated that the actions of the Communist Party to support the mutineers was partly born out of its nationalist power struggle with the Indian National Congress.
[Mutineers honored]
More recently, the RIN Revolt has been renamed the Naval Uprising and the mutineers honoured for the part they played in India's independence. In addition to the statue which stands in Mumbai opposite the sprawling Taj Wellingdon Mews, two prominent mutineers, Madan Singh and B.C. Dutt, have each had ships named after them by the Indian Navy.
Impact
Indian historians have looked at the mutiny as a protest against racial discrimination and supply of bad food by the British officials. Furthermore, there was tension between officers (mostly British), petty officers (largely Punjabi Muslims), and junior ratings (mostly Hindu), as well as anger at the very slow rate of release from wartime service.
In 1967 during a seminar discussion marking the 20th anniversary of Independence; it was revealed by the British High Commissioner of the time John Freeman, that the mutiny of 1946 had raised the fear of another large–scale mutiny along the lines of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, from the 2.5 million Indian soldiers who had participated in the Second World War.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Indian_Navy_mutiny
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_rating
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