The Rin Revolt Of 1946 And Its Significance

The Royal Indian Navy (RIN) revolt began on February 18th, when 1100 naval ratings from HMIS Talwar went on strike in Bombay to protest their treatment, which included blatant racial discrimination, unpalatable food, and abuses. The arrest of B.C. Dutt, a rating, for scrawling "Quit India" on the HMIS Talwar drew widespread condemnation. The next day, ratings from Castle and Fort Barracks joined the strike, and after hearing that the HUJS Talwar ratings had been fired upon (which was false), they left their posts and drove around Bombay in lorries, waving Congress flags and threatening Europeans and policemen, as well as tinkering with a few shop windows. 

 

•    The second stage of these uprisings, when citizens joined in, was marked by a virulent anti-British mood, and the two great cities of Calcutta and Bombay were effectively paralysed. Meetings and processions to show support, as well as strikes and hartals, were quickly overshadowed by the erected barricades. 

 

•    The pitched battles fought from rooftops and byways, the attacks on Europeans, and the burning of police stations, post offices, shops, tram depots, railway stations, banks, grain stores, and even a YMCA centre This was the common thread that ran through all three cases. 

 

•    According to official estimates, the RIN revolt and public outrage in Bombay resulted in the destruction of thirty shops, ten post offices, ten police chowkis, sixty-four food grain shops, and 200 street lamps. The city's normal life was completely disrupted. 

 

•    Thousands of workers took to the streets after the Communists called for a general strike. Strikes by shopkeepers, merchants, and hoteliers, as well as strikes by student workers in industry and public transportation, nearly brought the city to a halt. 

 

•    The rest was done by forcibly stopping trains by squatting on rail tracks, stoning and burning police and military Lorries, and barricading streets. People from all over the county came together in the third phase to show their support. 

 

•    Students boycotted classes, and hartals and procession were held to show support for the students and ratings, as well as to condemn official repression. 

•    Karachi was a major centre of the RIN revolt, second only to Bombay. On the 19th of February, news reached Karachi, prompting the HMIS Hindustan, along with one other ship and three shore establishments, to go on a lightning strike. 

 

•    In Madras, military establishments were subjected to sympathetic token strikes.

 

•    Calcutta, Delhi, Cochin, Jamnagar, the Andaman Islands, Bahrain, and Aden are all places worth visiting. There were 78 ships and 20 shore establishments affected, with 20,000 ratings. 

 

•    In Bombay's Marine Drive, Andheri, and Sion areas, as well as Poona, Calcutta, Jessore, and Ambala units, RJAF men carried out sympathetic strikes. 

 

•    The Sepoys in Jabalpur went on strike, while the Colaba cantonment showed ominous signs of agitation.

 

•    The crowds who faced police fire by temporarily retreating only to return to their posts earned the Bengal Governor's grudging admiration. 

 

•    The RIN uprising is still remembered as a legend. It had a huge impact on popular consciousness when it happened. Even if it was quickly suppressed, a military revolt had a powerful liberating effect on people's minds. 

 

•    The RIN revolt was viewed as an event that signalled the end of British rule almost as definitively as 1947's Independence Day. However, reality and men's perceptions of reality are frequently at odds, as was the case during these dramatic moments in 1945-46. 

 

•    These historical events have been imbued with more than a symbolic significance by contemporary perceptions and later radical scholarship.

 

•    These events have a lot of untapped potential and a lot of realised impact that isn't in line with reality. Their militancy, reach, and effectiveness are depicted in a larger-than-life manner. 

 

•    India is widely regarded as being on the verge of a revolution. The argument goes that the communal unity seen during these events could have provided a way out of the communal deadlock if built upon.

 

•    When we look closely at these uprisings, we can see that the form they took, which was an extreme, direct, and violent confrontation with authority, had some limitations. Only the most militant members of society were allowed to take part. 

 

•    The liberal and conservative groups that had previously rallied to the INA cause, as well as the men and women of small towns and villages who had formed the backbone of mass movements in previous decades, had no place. 

 

•    Furthermore, these outbursts were fleeting, as the tide of popular rage erupted only to fade away all too quickly. Calcutta, which had been a hive of activity from the 11th to the 13th of February 1946, was unusually quiet during the RIN revolt a week later. Despite a seven-thousand ratings strike in Calcutta, which had to be broken by a siege troops, the rest of the city, with the exception of the organised working class, remained subdued. 

 

•    Furthermore, the upheavals were limited to a few urban centres, whereas the INA's general agitation reached even the most remote villages. The authorities were able to quickly deploy troops and effectively suppress the uprising as a result of the urban concentration. The communal unity that was witnessed was more of an organisational unity than a people's unity.

 

•    Furthermore, as was the case in Calcutta on the issue of Rashid Mi's trial, the organisations came together for a specific agitation that lasted only a few days. Calcutta, the site of "the almost revolution" in February 1946, became the battleground of communal frenzy only six months later, on August 16, 1946, according to Gautam Chattopadhaya.

 

•    Despite the Congress, League, and Communist flags being hoisted together on the ships' masts, communal unity was limited during the RIN revolt. The Muslim ratings went to the League for advice on future action, while the rest went to the Congress and the Socialists; Jinnah's advice to surrender was directed solely at Muslim ratings, which dutifully followed it. The belief that communal unity forged in the 1945-46 struggles could have prevented partition had it been pursued further appears to be based on wishful thinking rather than historical possibility. This promise was not fulfilled by the "unity at the barricades." 

 

•    When it comes to the response these uprisings, particularly the JUN revolt, elicited from the colonial authorities, popular perceptions differ from reality. The RAN revolt is said to have shook the mighty British Empire to its foundations. In fact, despite significant deterioration in the bureaucracy's morale and the armed forces' steadfastness by this time, these upsurges demonstrated that the British ability to repress remained intact. 

 

•    A few days after the naval strike, the soldier-Viceroy, Wavell, gave the army a clean bill of health, saying, "On the whole, the Indian army has been most commendably steady." Those who believed that if enough pressure was applied to the British, they would succumb to it were proven wrong. 

 

•    It was one thing for the British government to doubt its own decision to hold the INA trials in the face of army and public opposition. When they were confronted with challenges to their authority, it was a different storey. The British were clear that any threats to the peace had to be suppressed.

 

•    The troops were stationed in Calcutta during the events of November 1945, but the Governor of Bengal preferred to use the police to control the situation. On the 12th of February 1946, troops were called in to Calcutta, and the firing resulted in the deaths of 36 civilians. 

 

•    The ratings were rounded up and returned to their barracks by a Maratha battalion in Bombay, contrary to popular belief that Indian troops in Bombay refused to fire on their countrymen.

 

•    In Bombay, troops subdued not only the ratings, but also the people who had previously provided food and sympathy to the ratings and later joined them in paralysing Bombay. 

 

•    In the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Attlee announced that Royal Navy ships were on their way to Bombay. Admiral Godfrey of the RIN issued a stem ultimatum to the ratings, after which troops surrounded the ships and bombers flew over them. The Amrita Bazar Patrika alluded to Bombay's virtual steel ring. In Bombay, 228 civilians were killed and 1046 were injured.

 

•    The attribution of the sending of Cabinet Mission to the impact of the RIN revolt is a corollary to the above argument. The Bombay Naval strike began on February 18, and R.P. Dutt had yoked the two together many years before. 

 

•    The decision to despatch the Cabinet mission was announced by Attlee in the House of Commons on February 19th.' This is clearly unsustainable. The British Cabinet decided to send the mission out on 22 January 1946, despite the fact that the announcement was supposed to happen a week earlier on 19 February 1946. Others have attributed the British willingness to make significant political concessions at this time to the combined impact of popular militant struggles. 

 

•    However, as we will see in the following chapter, the British decision to transfer power was not simply a reaction to the immediate situation in the winter of 1945-46, but recognition that their legitimacy to rule had been irreversibly eroded over time. 

 

•    The relationship between these uprisings and Congress is viewed as adversarial, or at best, estranged. The Communists, Socialists, and Forward Blocists, or all of them, are thought to have led these agitations. The Congress' role is viewed as one of defusing the revolutionary situation, prompted by a fear that the situation would spiral out of control, or by a concern that disciplined armed forces would be necessary in the free India that the party would soon rule. The Congress appears to be engrossed in negotiations and ministry formation, as well as a desire for power. A different path to independence would have emerged if the Congress leaders had not surrendered to their desire for power.

 

•    The call for these uprisings did not come from Congress; in fact, no political organisation did. People came out in support of the students and ratings, as well as to express their displeasure with the repression that was unleashed. 

 

•    Individual Congressmen, as well as Communists and others, took part actively. The 21 November 1945 demonstration in Calcutta was led by student sympathisers from the Congress, the Congress Socialist Party, the Forward Bloc, and the Communist Party of India. 

 

•    The Congress praised the people's spirit while condemning the government's repression. It did not officially back these movements because it believed their tactics and timing were flawed. The ability and determination of the government to repress was obvious to Congress leaders. Because he saw the British mobilisation for repression in Bombay, Vallabhbhai Patel asked the ratings to surrender. 

 

•    The leaders of Congress were not the only ones who felt the need to bring the country back to peace. In November 1945 and February 1946, Communists joined forces with Congressmen to advise Calcutta residents to return home. During the JUN revolt, peace vans from the Communist and Congress parties toured Karachi.

 

•    Negotiations were an important part of Congress strategy, and they had to be ruled out before a mass movement could be launched. 

 

•    Nehru believed that exploring the option of negotiation before launching a movement was critical in 1946 because the British were likely to leave India within two to five years. On 19 February 1946, the Secretary of State made a New Year's statement and the British Prime Minister announced his decision to send a Cabinet Mission, both implying that India would gain independence soon.

 

However, pressure on the British to reach an agreement had to be maintained, and preparations for a movement (which had been steadily built through 1945 by refurbishing the organisation, electioneering, and spearheading the [NA agitation)) were sought to be maintained. The card of negotiation, on the other hand, was to be played first, while the card of mass movement was to be kept in reserve.