Beyond the Lines | The uprising of 1946: The story behind India’s freedom at midnight

The year 1946 was poised to be a historic year for the British Empire. The Second World War had ended a few months earlier. Germany and the Axis Powers had been defeated. The Allied forces led by the British, including its Navy, were basking in the glory of a famous victory. Little did they know about the oncoming storm that would blow away any plan. It was in Bombay — the cosmopolitan port city of the British Empire that the first rumblings of a glorious fall would reverberate.

The year 1946 was about to be written into British history as the year of retreat, soon after the victory of 1945. Another year later, the sun finally set on the Empire. A tricolour would rise in its place. However, sadly, the catalyst for this monumental change would be forgotten soon.

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There is a background to the unremembered events of 1946 that led to the departure of the British from India. Between the years of 1942 and 1945, small-scale protests happened in the Royal Indian Navy in places like Bombay and Odisha. Besides, there were nine mutinies on board in this period. Finally, in February 1946, a protest by Indian sailors of the Royal Indian Navy in Bombay over poor treatment, work conditions and the continuing engagement in wars in the region quickly gathered momentum and blew up into a mutiny.

The ratings, angered by the barbaric conduct of British naval officers and inspired by the exploits of the Indian National Army, led by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, which had been fighting against the British and the colonial occupation, decided to come together and take on the British navy. The appointment of a racist officer Arthur Frederick King, as the Commander of the HMIS Talwar, was the trigger to launch the uprising. King’s disdainful and foulmouthed conduct led to the ratings protesting aggressively against him and painting ‘Quit India’ on his car.

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Barely 48 hours into the mutiny, the ratings took over the signal station, ships and naval establishment, as the protests gathered steam and support across Bombay, Karachi and Calcutta. In early February 1946, mutinies broke out in the Indian Pioneers unit in Calcutta and at a signals training centre at the air base in Jubbulpore in the Central Provinces. The protests spread to the Air Force base in Kanpur, dismantling the largest Air Force base in Asia. The movement spread like wildfire, impacting British forces in Singapore.

The ratings had captured British naval assets and were supported by the locals. Hindus, Muslims, and Parsis who were the owners of the local Irani cafes in Bombay gave food and belongings to the protestors. The entire city of Bombay had come out in support of the mutineers, writes Pramod Kapoor, who wrote the book 1946: Last War of Independence — Royal Indian Navy Mutiny. BC Dutt, one of the prime mutineers, who later penned an account of the strike wrote, “Restaurant keepers were seen requesting people to carry whatever food they could to the beleaguered ratings… on the Talwar itself, we received so many food packets sent over the wall that we had enough to eat for a few days.” Though the British sought to barricade and segregate the protestors, they had not bargained for the kind of support that the latter were receiving from the common people.

General Hastings Lionel Ismay had once remarked, “Provided they do their duty, armed insurrection in India would not be an insoluble problem. If, however, the Indian Army went the other way, the picture would be very different.” His words would prove to be prophetic. To quell the uprising, the British called in the army. However, unlike the massacre of Indians in Jallianwala Bagh in 1919, the soldiers in 1946 refused to fire on the naval ratings. The Marathas helped locals in handing over food packets to the naval ratings. The British were running out of patience. The Baluchis, Gurkhas, Punjabis, Marathas, and Garhwalis — Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs — refused to fire on fellow Indians. Led by the common man, the country had stood up as one against the colonial empire.

The refusal of Indian troops to obey the commands of British officers was the final nail in the coffin of the Raj. Two months after the uprising, an enquiry was commissioned in Britain on the mutiny, a typical English response to showcase their sense of justice. The fact is that the British were well and truly rattled. The uprising caused much worry and was discussed in the British parliament. Since the army had refused to function as an organ of governance and supported the naval uprising instead, the British government realised that their time in India was over. It was in 1946 that the British decided to exit from India: the naval uprising is said to have played a big part in forcing the decision on the British.

In little time, the naval mutiny had snowballed into a freedom movement that threatened the careers of veteran national leaders in India and stole the thunder from the ongoing larger political movement to free India. In a few days, the naval ratings had left Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, and Jinnah behind as the entire country rallied behind them.

Sardar Patel had termed it as an act of goondaism and anarchy, according to Kapoor. Maulana Azad issued a statement that India was not in the mood to tolerate a movement (such as the naval mutiny) that suppressed the national spirit. The congress leaders had been in touch with British authorities and tried to assuage British authorities by distancing themselves from the strike. Kapoor writes that while the national leaders supported the just cause of the strike, which was the treatment meted out to the ratings, but backed out once the strike intensified into a full-scale confrontation, they soft-pedalled.

When MA Jinnah was approached by the mutineers in Calcutta, the political leader met them but asked his secretary KH Khurshid to keep the meeting out of the media. An arrogant and abrasive Jinnah chided them and refused to support them. It is unsurprising since the future Qaid e Azam may have seen his movement for a separate nation ambushed by a bunch of common folk who he had no time to spare for.

There was no support from Mahatma Gandhi either, which elicited criticism from sections of the media in India. The People’s Age wrote that the leaders believed that freedom was a gift from the British and hoped to achieve the final settlement on the basis of the Quit India movement. The editorial was critical of Sardar Patel too and believed that the popular leader had ‘no single word of condemnation of the British military who had fired indiscriminately and killed hundreds of innocent lives.

While the key national leaders disappointed the ratings by refusing to back them, Aruna Asaf Ali, the communist leader supported them and met with the leaders. Eventually, the British arrested the ratings leaders and suppressed the uprising. The mutiny’s impact continued to be felt in Karachi and Calcutta, and if ever there was one unifying movement at that time that could have prevented the Partition or at least ensured a less violent Partition, this was one.

To historians, it was probably a chance wasted by the Congress and the Muslim League to achieve independence through the means of an assertive and direct movement that celebrated a strong-willed, powerful and secular struggle: one that could leave a trail of blood in its wake but, it promised to be one that left a legacy of courage and sacrifice. Probably, the insecurity of losing the centre stage to the ordinary ratings must have dominated the minds of all leaders of the freedom movement. None showed the courage or ability to harness the strengths of the uprising.

One leader India could have banked on, to harness the energy of this movement was Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Salil Shyam, a naval rating, who Kapoor describes as a catalyst for the revolt, had returned from the jungles of Malaya to India, where he spoke of the exploits of the Azad Hind Fauj or the Indian National Army to the ratings in Bombay. Shyam’s stories and the leadership of INA galvanised the movement.

Bose’s mysterious disappearance from the scene had helped the British in addressing a movement that was led by strong-willed and capable leaders but it lacked a mercurial thrust that lends an element of unpredictability — which a governing dispensation finds difficult to prepare for and hates to deal with. Bose was a rival that other national leaders had struggled to compete with when he was around. In his absence, Bose had managed to inspire the entire nation but continued to trouble his rivals. The Naval uprising was an example.

In 1967, speaking on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of India’s Independence, British High Commissioner John Freeman admitted that the uprising of 1946 had raised the fear among the British of another large-scale mutiny along the lines of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The year 1946 was India’s second and successful war of Independence. In a travesty of justice, however, India’s leaders, supported by the people in the freedom struggle, failed to respond to the singular movement that was led by the people and needed the support of the leaders.

The spectacular uprising of 1946 will go down in history as a moment of betrayal that would not only go unpunished but rendered insignificant: A tragic outcome of the pivotal movement that led to the British leaving Indian shores in 1947. It is to these freedom fighters and many others such as them that India owes its freedom on the midnight of August 15, 1947.

The writer is the author of ‘Watershed 1967: India’s Forgotten Victory over China’ and ‘Camouflaged: Forgotten Stories From Battlefields’. His fortnightly column for FirstPost — ‘Beyond the Lines’ — covers military history, strategic issues, international affairs and policy-business challenges. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Tweets @iProbal