ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of the Second World War, British India experienced what has been classified as a nationalist ‘upsurge’ (Chandra et al. 1989) against colonial rule. Numerous outbreaks of disorder occurred across India and the pace of decolonisation increased. One of these events was the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy in February 1946.1 Starting on the 18th of February in Bombay, ratings and non-commissioned officers2 of the RIN refused to report for duty, and in some cases eat. Using the telegraphy skills they gathered in the Navy, the sailors began spreading news of their refusal to work across the Indian Ocean. Combined with widespread press reports of events in Bombay, fellow sailors in other naval ships and establishments as far away as Aden and the Andaman Islands began to mutiny. Over the next week, tensions mounted between the sailors and the colonial authorities. Ratings marched through
Bombay, and were accompanied by civil disturbances. In Karachi, sailors on board an old sloop, HMIS Hindustan, exchanged fire with soldiers ashore. The imperial authorities responded by threatening the sailors with destruction. Admiral John Godfrey, commander of the RIN, read a statement out via all India Radio on the 21st of February which told the ratings in no uncertain terms that superior military forces were prepared to attack them if violence persisted (ADM 1/19411). Following a day of tension, the ratings returned to duty in Bombay on the 23rd, and were followed by those in other bases over the next few days. Whilst dwarfed by the later violence of communal rioting in Calcutta in August
1946 and the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, the RIN mutiny is an important, yet often overlooked, moment in the history of decolonisation. Whilst there had been small mutinies amongst allied forces after the end of Second World War, the RIN mutiny was the first time that virtually the whole of a colonial military service had rebelled since the 1857 mutiny/rebellion in India. Around 20,000 sailors refused duty, either violently or in non-violent solidarity. News of the mutiny spread quickly around the world and the colonial authorities were acutely concerned about the threat to their continued ability to govern India, setting up a Commission of Inquiry which ran between April and June, 1946. The mutiny itself had many causes, from nationalist anti-colonialism amongst
some sailors through to more mundane grievances raised by the sailors such as poor treatment and conditions during service, and to search for one ‘key’ cause is somewhat misplaced (Davies 2013a). However, this paper focuses not on the causes of the mutiny per se, but rather on the ways in which the doctrines and lived experiences of life in the RIN, particularly the spaces of the ship, but also life ashore, functioned as social arenas in which the consequences of colonialism played out in distinct ways. This paper draws upon textual sources from a variety of locations to uncover how
mobility formed a key aspect of the RINs attempts to structure and control its sailors, and how in turn, the sailors resisted these disciplinary practices. These include, primarily, the official Reports of the Commission of Enquiry into the RIN Mutiny of 1946, the written transcripts of the oral testimonies given at the Inquiry and the written submissions of witnesses given to the Inquiry beforehand. These sources, together with a number of other archival sources were located in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. Other sources were drawn from the India Office Records collection at the British Library in London, and Admiralty records in the National Archives in Kew, London. Finally, a number of sailors involved in the RIN, both officers and men, have published their own accounts of life in the RIN in the 1940s, which have also been drawn upon in places. Examining these statements allows us to uncover the ways in which discourses and disciplinary practices were played out and resisted by the men affected by them. The paper begins by giving a background to the Royal Indian Navy and the events
of February 1946. It then moves on to situate the paper in relation to discussions about the geography of ships and the sea more generally. Two, later, more empirical sections focus on the practices of discipline and resistance within the RIN. Through these sections, the intersections between temporality and mobility, particularly spatial confinement aboard ship and circulation through wider society show how the mobility of the sailors of the RIN was important to shaping their political outlook. The paper concludes by reflecting on how shipboard life in the RIN is important to not
only our understandings of the ‘geography of the ship’, but also how historical understandings of mobility are equally as important as more contemporary studies.
