Piyo Chai Suno Kahani

Not mutiny but unity   

So, Mulund is in the news now for a reason most citizens oppose – the iconic Mahalaxmi racecourse is mooted to be transplanted there.  

Few realise that this north eastern suburb of Bombay has had quite a history of courage under distress. It is vitally associated with the insurrection, which the British dubbed the naval mutiny, a year before Independence.

While national figures like Gandhiji and Vallabhbhai Patel advised restraint, local leaders, including Aruna Asaf Ali and Achyut Patwardhan, supported the brave signallers, stokers and sweepers who protested injustices from February 18, 1946. The Royal Indian Navy (RIN) revolt was signalled in Bombay harbour by Ratings (non-commissioned officers and sailors), whose list of demands sought the release of all Indian political prisoners and naval detainees, withdrawal of Indian troops from Indonesia and Egypt, equal status of pay and allowances, and a formal call for the British to quit the country.

About 500 to 600 of those arrested in thousands, were interned in Mulund prison camps. Among them were MS Khan and Madan Singh, president and vice-president of the Naval Central Strike Committee. With chants of “Not mutiny but unity!” they went on hunger strike before being released and dismissed from service.

Incidentally, the then navy head, Admiral John H Godfrey, had, as an assistant, Ian Fleming, who went on to memorably base the character of “M” in the James Bond books on Godfrey.

Another compelling literary allusion to the event appears in Salman Rushdie’s picaresque novel, The Moor’s Last Sigh. Here, Moraes Zogoiby describes his mother Aurora painting the protesters –“In February 1946, when Bombay, that super epic motion picture of a city, transformed overnight into a motionless tableau by great naval and landlubber strikes, when ships did not sail, steel was not milled, textile mills neither warped nor woofed… she set about capturing history in charcoal.”

Though widely considered a failure, this uprising was one of the last proverbial nails in the coffin of colonialism. Symbolising a significant step towards loosening British control over India, it erupted parallel with the arrival of the Cabinet Mission to discuss the transfer of power.