Meanings of Failed Action: Insurrection 1946

First shown in Mumbai, 17 to 25 March 2017 Coomaraswamy Hall Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) IN PARTNERSHIP WITH School of Arts and Digital Industries, University of East London Chemould Prescott Road Vadehra Art Gallery Akara Art Gallery Bhashya Prakashan Published under a Creative Commons SSA license Meanings of Failed Action: Insurrection 1946 is a collaborative project intended as a work of public art. This project is entirely non-commercial in nature. In using archival materials, as sound and visual, from diverse sources, the project asserts that these uses are purely for the purposes of research, education and debate, and that they come within the category of Fair Use for purposes of an art work as specified in Section 52 of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957. http://insurrection1946.in Printed at Archana Press, New Delhi RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- Inside Front Cover.indd 1 3/8/2017 6:01:22 PM MEANINGS OF FAILED ACTION INSURRECTION 1946 Vivan Sundaram and Ashish Rajadhyaksha Soundwork David Chapman RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 1 3/8/2017 5:17:08 PM About thiS Project This is a public art event, addressing a political and historical conjuncture in a form that connects together a diversity of means: of inquiry, of address, of speech. For all its specificity – it was in the end an insurrection led by the sailors of the Royal Indian Navy in Bombay in February 1946 – the incident resonates with questions that have beset modern history: around how political meaning is created, how symbolic action and historical agency may be named: how history is, in the end, both made and not made. Meanings of Failed Action: Insurrection 1946 is presented in the form of a monumental installation. Central to the installation is a 40-foot-long steel-and-aluminium container with colour-coated walls. The ‘hold’, illuminated by a coordinated light design, serves as a performance space where a seated audience hears a 40-minute soundwork that merges archival and contemporary recordings. Voices of participants and eyewitnesses combine with annotative texts and renditions of poetry, music, theatre and sound effect. In the gallery space outside, excerpts from Indian and international newspapers, in multiple languages and with diverse points of view, are collaged to construct a mural of the events and their aftermath; they include graphics and photographs from tabloids, broadsheets, student journals and political pamphlets. Along with these is presented an archive of documents sourced from India and Britain. The Empire’s telegraphic communications around the event come together with original documents from Bombay. New books on the event and renditions of books published at the time form a ‘library’. This is a work of public art in which a little-remembered event becomes a catalyst for developing interventionist strategies – in the city, in the nation – and also, perhaps, to frame an international contemporary. It is a collaboration between an artist and a cultural theorist who place their stakes, with contestatory intent, in unresolved histories. Ashish Rajadhyaksha 2 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 2 3/8/2017 5:17:08 PM inSurrection 1946 On 18 February 1946, a mutiny was declared on HMIS Talwar, the Signal Training Establishment of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN), at Colaba, Bombay. A total of around 10,000 naval ratings took charge of 66 ships and on-shore naval establishments. On the fourth day of the strike the city’s industrial workers joined the struggle, and Bombay closed down. The curfew that followed ended with more than 200 people killed on the streets. Ranged against the strikers was the might of the British armed forces on sea, air and land, threatening ‘if necessary’ to wipe out the navy. There was an attempted dialogue with the nationalist leadership of India, then at the threshold of Independence from British rule. The strike ended on the dawn of 23rd February, when the Naval Central Strike Committee (NCSC) asked for black flags of surrender to be raised. The incident remains a political enigma. It lasted six days. Widely considered a ‘failure’ in its time, seventy years on, the naval insurrection refuses to be assimilated into any single narrative of history. On the one hand, it has been viewed as a relatively minor incident at an especially turbulent moment in Indian politics, between the end of the Second World War and the arrival of Independence. India saw an unprecedented wave of strikes, often violent, between late 1945 and early 1946, across civilian and military establishments. Many of these were in solidarity with members of the Indian National Army (INA), who had led an insurgent war against the British army across Southeast Asia and were being tried in a politically charged spectacle. One view, then, has been to see these disturbances, for all their scale and diversity, as having been efficiently quelled in the end; as at best having hastened the coming of Independence by a few months. On the other hand, there is a view, with which historian Sumit Sarkar concludes his magisterial Modern India: 1885–1947, that, had this insurrection succeeded, India’s struggle for freedom itself might have taken a new turn. It was a challenge to the Empire, shaking up a British patrician state and an imperial order, the full might of which was on display in the events that took place in Bombay during those six days. 3 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 3 3/8/2017 5:17:08 PM In India the naval strike revealed schisms within a nationalist movement that was on the verge of forming the country’s first independent government. What freedom did the ratings stand for? Was it a properly conceived political movement or an invitation to anarchy? Historians, as much as poets and artists, have repeatedly returned, over the years, to explore in it a symbolic topos that is apparently not to be exhausted by political pragmatics. Even a slight shift in focus thus opens up new possibilities for understanding the magnitude of what happened, what could have happened, what it may have meant and may yet mean – for India and indeed the postcolonial order as a whole. 4 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 4 3/8/2017 5:17:08 PM one Sound Prologue of the International two The Pinnacle of Hope three Meanings of Independence four The Everyday, or What Might Have Been five Epilogue: Dust in the Air Suspended 5 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 5 3/8/2017 5:17:08 PM drAmAtiS PerSonAe Admiral John Henry Godfrey, Flag Officer Commanding, Royal Indian Navy: in the voice of actor Simon Miles Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, former Chief of Naval Staff, India: in his own voice Balai Chand (B.C.) Dutt, Communications Officer, HMIS Talwar, author of Mutiny of the Innocents: in his own voice, archival recording sourced from Centre of South Asian Studies (CSAS), Cambridge Colonel Rodney Savage, played by Stewart Granger, from the soundtrack of the film Bhowani Junction (dir. George Cukor, 1956) Commodore Odakkal Johnson, author of Timeless Wake: The Legacy of the Royal Indian Navy: in his own voice Douglas Hadfield, British Radar Officer, Combined Operations in Far East, 1945–46, stationed on the HMS Glasgow: in his own voice, archival recording sourced from Imperial War Museum London (IWM) James Patrick Nagle Creagh, 2nd Battalion Royal Leicestershire Regiment in India: in his own voice, archival recording sourced from Imperial War Museum London (IWM) John Gilbert Steadman, British midshipman on HMIS Jumna and onshore duties with Royal Indian Navy in Great Britain and India: in his own voice, archival recording sourced from Imperial War Museum London (IWM) Lt. Gen. R.N.N. Lockhart, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOCin-C), Southern Command: in the voice of actor Dominic Hingorani M.A. Khan, President, Naval Central Strike Committee (NCSC): in the voice of actor Danish Iqbal Mervyn Jones, author, former member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB): in his own voice, archival recording sourced from Imperial War Museum London (IWM) Namdeo Dhasal, poet: in his own voice, from the soundtrack of Madhusree Dutta’s documentary film Seven Islands and a Metro (2006) Narayan Surve, poet: in his own voice, archival recording sourced from Giranmumbai archives, Tata Institute of Social Science, Mumbai Naval officers in the dungeons of the INS Angre: in their own voices 6 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 6 3/8/2017 5:17:08 PM Punnu Khan, Leading Signalman, HMIS Talwar, and member of Naval Central Strike Committee (NCSN): in the voice of actor Vipin Bharadwaj Report of the Commission of Inquiry – RIN Mutiny 1946 (Chairman: Sir Saiyid Fazl Ali, Chief Justice of the Patna High Court): in the voice of David Chapman Roshan Horabin, Indian wife of British naval officer and eyewitness to the mutiny: in her own voice, archival recording sourced from Imperial War Museum London (IWM) Sahir Ludhianvi, poet and author of the poem ‘Jahaziyon ki Baghavat/The Sailors’ Mutiny’: in the voice of writer and activist Syeda Saiyidain Hameed Sardul Singh, Ghafoor, Rajguru and unnamed Signaller, from Utpal Dutt’s play Kallol (1964): reconstruction of the play in the voice of Shyamal Chakraborty; song in the voice of Rongili Biswas V.M. Bhagwatkar, author of Royal Indian Navy Uprising and Indian Freedom Struggle: in the voice of actor Rishabh Shrivastav Vivek Monteiro, Secretary of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and member, Communist Party of India (Marxist): in his own voice Performances Alaknanda Samarth (actor, reads ‘The Roll Call’) Syeda Saiyidain Hameed (writer and activist, reads ‘The Indian National Congress Party’s response’) Other Sound Sources ‘Please Don’t Say No’, Hugh Bert’s orchestra, vocals by Maurice Concessio (archival recording, Bombay, late 1945, Tajmahal Foxtrot archives) ‘Watch the Navy’, by Leslie Holmes (song released by Imperial Record Company, 1932) HMS Belfast – Steel Fortress (documentary series HC Battle Stations, 2002). Symphony of the Factory Sirens (musical symphony composed by Arseny Avraamov, 1922) Victory at Sea (documentary film by NBC-TV, 1952–53) And original sounds recorded on various locations in Mumbai and Kolkata 7 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 7 3/8/2017 5:17:08 PM one Sound Prologue of the International the Siren ‘After all, we had our battleship Potemkin, but no eisenstein.’ – b.c. dutt, Mutiny of the Innocents (1971) Bombay, 1946. The War is officially over. As in much of southern Asia, military war is only the most visible of several subterranean wars that were also parallelly fought, as wartime deindustrialization creates a mass of peasant-workers in the city. Although ‘demobilization’ is a concept specific to the armed forces,the loss that it evokes echoes at this particular historical juncture across the city’s industrial workforce, including organized trade unions as well as its casual and wage labourers. The siren, common to the city’s naval and military encampments as well as to its mill districts, becomes a symbol of such convergence. Sirens cried out in public in an already abstracted sound, scanning the auditive range in order not to leave anyone out and, in the process, created a unique push–pull signature yelling come here or stay away that people failed to take notice at their own peril. it seemed to be the perfect modernist anthem. – douglas Kahn, Noise,Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts (1999) Sirens merge into hydrophone recordings of ships’ engines together with sounds of textile machinery. Ocean waves crash into rock. Anchors rise, a fog horn sounds, an explosion occurs. Everyday documentary sound from today’s Suparibaug Road, Lower Parel, takes us back to the very spot where army firing killed people on 22 February 1946. Sound quotations from Arseny Avraamov’s composition, Symphony of the Factory Sirens (1922). 8 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 8 3/8/2017 5:17:08 PM two The Pinnacle of Hope ‘in half an hour, the whole british empire went silent.’ When Mervyn Jones, author, son of psychoanalyst Ernest Jones and former member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, was told of his new posting, he ‘hadn’t the slightest desire to go to India – in the Army at all events’, because the ‘British sahibs who ruled there were notorious for their pomposity, their racial arrogance, and their outdated traditions and formalities. . . . As a minor sahib myself, I should be shunned by precisely the sort of Indians with whose aspirations I sympathized’ (from Chances: An Autobiography, 1987). Jones had a first-hand, eyewitness experience of the mutiny, from vantage positions that included the bar of the Taj Mahal hotel overlooking the harbour and the mutinying ships, the Communist Party of India’s office at Sandhurst Road, and from the street at Suparibaug Road when, on 22 February, ‘an Army truck swung round the corner . . . in less than a minute the truck was gone and people were bending over the dead and wounded’. Mervyn Jones (in his own voice, archival recording, source: IWM London) News came in that the Royal Indian Navy ships in Bombay harbour had mutinied. And in support of them the trade unions in Bombay had declared a general strike. So it was a terrific crisis, and I felt I really must go down to Bombay and see what’s going on, I’ll never forgive myself if I missed this opportunity of seeing this historic event. B.C. Dutt, a lowly telegraphist at the Signal Training Establishment of the Talwar, is one of the ‘ring leaders’ of the mutiny. Years later, with his book Mutiny of the Innocents (1971), Dutt would provide the most authoritative account available of the striking seamen’s ambitions, hopes, desires and eventually their frustrations. Over the sound of Morse code, Dutt describes how the communications infrastructure was intrinsic to the mutiny, as well as why the Talwar played such a key role in the event. 9 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 9 3/8/2017 5:17:08 PM B.C. Dutt (in his own voice, archival recording, source: Doordarshan archives) Talwar had the wireless office also. So we sent the message to all the . . . this thing . . . we’re going on strike. The word strike was not known in the fighting forces. We’re going on strike. You will not hear from us any more. We’re closing down. And that message went to Whitehall, that is London, all the wireless stations all over British Empire. And in the message we said clearly that you all, all Indian wireless stations, must go on strike. We are on strike and we’re closing down now. In half an hour’s time the whole British Empire went silent. The confrontation escalates and in a first display of direct military strength, the heavy cruiser HMS Glasgow is posted to take charge of the rebellion. As news of this ship’s arrival in Bombay harbour spreads, the city is rife with rumours that the War has restarted: the harbour is thronged with people waiting to see the famous guns of the Glasgow enter port. Douglas Hadfield, British Radar Officer who had served with Combined Operations in Far East (1945–46), and now on the Glasgow, tells how how they steamed in with their ‘bigger guns’. Douglas Hadfield (in his own voice, archival recording, source: IWM London) We in the Glasgow went up to Bombay at thirty knots, full speed. And the Indian navy saw that our guns were a bit bigger than their guns. . . Waves, sounds of more explosions. Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, former Chief of the Naval Staff of the Indian Navy, has been an influential human rights figure in India. In a preface to a 2015 reprint of Mutiny of the Innocents, published by Bhashya Prakashan, Bhagwat speaks of how the events of February 1946 created a ‘sympathetic link that energized the hearts and minds of our sailors, infantry soldiers, airmen and RIAF pilots, ordinary mill hands, students, workers, citizens in many cantonments, military stations as far afield as Karachi, the Punjab, Calcutta and port cities of the Peninsula’. 10 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 10 3/8/2017 5:17:08 PM Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat (in conversation with Vivan Sundaram) Bhagwat: But you know the British called it a mutiny, I don’t call it . . . we don’t call it a mutiny. We call it an uprising. Sundaram: But you’d say this ‘46 uprising was to your knowledge the first time it had happened in the navy. Bhagwat: No, smaller events had happened . . . Vivan: But of this scale? Bhagwat: Of this scale, yes, definitely. But what was the scale? People have disputed the scale of the uprising. The scale was a very wide scale. As the mutiny takes hold on the Talwar, it is the Indian forces in the army that are initially deployed. However, their loyalty is suspected and British forces then move in. Among those at the Talwar with a company of 90 British soldiers armed with Bren guns is Irish army officer James Patrick Nagle Creagh. He served with the 2nd Battalion Royal Leicestershire Regiment in India. Over the sound of hydrophones Nagle Creagh provides a first-hand account of the Talwar events. Nagle Creagh (in his own voice, archival recording, source: IWM London) We were suddenly told that the Indian army, who was supposed to be putting down the Indian naval mutiny which had started about a week before, couldn’t cope, and the British units were going to take over . . . where we had . . . I think there were something like thirty Indian naval ships that had mutinied, and two large shore establishments that had mutinied. B.C. Dutt (in his own voice, archival recording, source: Doordarshan archives) None of us had seen an Englishman until we joined the navy. We all came from the villages. And we were told by the recruiting officers the great things we were going to do for the Empire and [the] British will be forever grateful to us. A mid-1950s’ propaganda newsreel stresses the importance of the communications infrastructure, India’s centrality to this global system and the role of the navy in it. It also thus highlights a rather different global historical 11 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 11 3/8/2017 5:17:08 PM legacy for the RIN than is usually recognized – and may have been a reason for the anxiety caused by the mutiny in the communications wing. Commentary from Victory at Sea (NBC documentary, 1952–53) India has been a focal point in the world communications systems. And Indians have been seafarers since prehistoric times. In World War II Indian ships and sailors fight in the Battle of the Atlantic, in North Africa, at Sicily. And as the Royal Indian Navy they help defend their homeland against Japanese invasion to keep the sea-lanes open to liberate Burma, to save China. Roshan Horabin, upper-class Bombay socialite, social worker and wife of a British naval officer whom she only refers to as ‘Ivan’, is personally caught in the February events. She provides much of the romance of the orient, the navy and the many spaces of music and dance that brought the great Asian colonial port-cities together. A 1930s British dancehall song (‘Watch the Navy’) by famous wartime singer Leslie Holmes plays as we hear of how the mutiny was ‘all hushed up’. Roshan Horabin (in her own voice, archival recording, source: IWM London) And I was talking to a naval officer some time back and he said, I’ve never heard of the naval mutiny! I said no, it was all hushed up. ‘Jai Hind’ (from the soundtrack of the documentary The Flame Burns Bright, dir. Ashish Mukherjee, 1973) invokes the INA trials that were going on at the same time in 1945–46. A ditty quoted in the memoirs of Lt. Ivor John N. Jukes, Royal Indian Navy Volunteer Reserve (RINVR), is re-recorded and composed to the popular wartime tune, ‘Lili Marlene’. ‘We are the costly farces’ (voices of David Chapman, Jo Shoop, Nick Jacobs) We are the costly farces, Royal Indian Navy With our HDs, our Fairmiles, and our MTVs We seldom, if ever, go to sea Drinking, but never sinking We are the pride of the RIN 12 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 12 3/8/2017 5:17:08 PM A Symphony of fifteen men As riots spread from the Fort Barracks on to the streets, first off Colaba and then off Parel-Lalbaug, Jawaharlal Nehru condemns the Naval Central Strike Committee (NCSC) for its actions: they have, he says, ‘no business to issue such an appeal. . . . Fifteen men, however much I may like them, knowing nothing about the situation in Bombay, in India or the world, having gone over the heads of everyone in Bombay and all recognized political parties, have issued an appeal that there should be a hartal.’ A ‘naval-industrial symphony’ is constructed here by singer Neela Bhagwat from documentary sounds recorded in the Naval Dockyard at Lion Gate, the former Fort Barracks and the eye of the storm. Medley of sounds of lathes, engineering tools and drill machines, recorded by Neela Bhagwat in the Engineering Section of Lion Gate. An Inquiry Committee is instituted to produce a detailed account of the events of February. Chaired by Sir Saiyid Fazl Ali, Chief Justice of the Patna High Court, with two Indian Chief Justices from Cochin and Lahore as its judicial members, a British Vice Admiral and a Major General as its service members, the Report of the Commission of Inquiry – RIN Mutiny 1946 is perhaps the most thorough compilation of what happened, when and why. For all its efforts at objectivity and neutrality, the Report satisfies nobody: neither the British authorities, with the navy effectively dismissing it as inaccurate and one-sided, nor the Indians. Over the sounds of lathes and drilling machines,extracts from this Report are read aloud as an ‘objective’, commentative voice. From the Report of the Commission of Inquiry – RIN Mutiny 1946 (in the voice of David Chapman) On 21st January 1946, the Commanding Officer of Talwar, Lt. Commander Cole, was relieved by Commander King. Slogans again appeared in HMIS Talwar on the night of 1st/2nd February 1946. These were alleged to have been written in anticipation of the visit of the FOCRIN. On 2nd February 1946, a leading telegraphist, B.C. Dutt, who appeared as a witness before us, was placed under close 13 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 13 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM arrest for writing these slogans. This caused considerable excitement in the establishment. A rather different understanding of the historian’s role in times such as these is provided by Dutt’s Mutiny of the Innocents. Although Dutt provides his own record of what happened, his is more a chronicling of experience: of what he and his fellow strikers actually went through, and thus a rather different vantage point from where to view history. A rare archival recording of Dutt himself reading from his book: B.C. Dutt (in his own voice, archival recording, source: CSAS, Cambridge) This was the framework of events which released a force never before faced by the ratings of the RIN. A group of young and determined men tried to harness this force to the cause of the country’s freedom. I was one of them. Dutt continues: By dawn the Talwar was a shambles. The parade ground was littered with burnt flags and bunting. Brooms and buckets were prominently displayed. Political slogans in foot-high letters were staring from every wall. Quit India! Down with the Imperialists! Revolt Now! Kill the British! Taking advantage of the waning lights of the Indian dusk, ‘Jai Hind’ and ‘Quit India’ were printed on the platform from which the C-in-C was to take the salute. The effect on the ratings was sensational. We could not withdraw after this performance. In 1964, Bengali playwright and actor Utpal Dutt produced an immensely popular play Kallol, which was a militant, self-avowedly partisan account of the strike. For this play, the radical singer-composer Hemango Biswas composed one of his most famous songs, ‘Uthilo Samudra Kallol’, which adapted the Marathi powada form of militant music from singer–writer Annabhau Sathe. A new and original rendition of that song is presented here by Hemango’s daughter, Rongili. This rendition departs significantly from how the song is usually performed and accompanied. 14 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 14 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM Title song from Kallol (sung by Rongili Biswas) On that day of winter fog, 1946, Shining through the night of slavery Breaking the tyrant’s prison, The warning siren sounded a new resolve. Sailing the Arabian Sea, Conquering the Atlantic waters, The rebellious Khyber dropped anchor at Bombay. Sardul Singh and Ghafoor sounded the call, Valiant Sardul Singh, ‘Come on, you brave-hearts!’ (Translated by Moinak Biswas) Intercut with this song continues a factual documentary-style rendition of the Report of the Inquiry Committee. Report of the Commission of Inquiry – RIN Mutiny 1946 (in the voice of David Chapman) 18th February 1946:07:30: The situation in HMIS Talwar became mutinous in a real sense of the term when ratings accommodated there refused food. 09:05: Commander King arrived and was informed and then left without giving any orders. 09:45: Commander King returned. When divisions were piped, no rating proceeded to the parade ground except CPOs and POs, Instructors, RIN ratings and WRINs. Ship’s company began their regular work. Flag Officer (Bombay) was informed of the situation. Ratings were completely out of control and were shouting and jeering and were moving about as they pleased. Officers were not given a hearing. 10:10: All WRINs were ordered to leave HMIS Talwar. 10:15: All officers attempted to reason with the ratings without success. 11:30: All small arms and ammunition were removed to Castle Barracks. It was not then anticipated that the mutiny might also spread to that establishment. 15 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 15 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM Kallol, a landmark in the history of radical theatre in modern India, tells the heroic saga from the viewpoint of fictional naval seamen Sardul Singh, Ghafoor and others. A new rendition tells of the first assault on Castle Barracks. This has been recorded on the deck of a boat going up the Hooghly river, against documentary sound of the riverboat engine and fastenings. From Kallol (in the voice of actor Shyamal Chakraborty) Sardul Singh: The whiteskins have attacked Castle Barracks. They’re shooting down unarmed ratings. Rajguru: Let me have a look. They don’t even have a stick to defend themselves. They’re just getting mowed down. Sardul: Signaller, call Talwar. Signaller: Hello Talwar, hello Talwar, Khyber calling, hello, hello. . . Rajguru: They’re just shouting slogans. Sardul: Let’s get our ship into the channel and bring the firinghee bastards within the target of our guns. Ghafoor: Immediately, all hands to action stations. Signaller: There’s no response from Talwar. Hello Talwar, hello Talwar, Khyber calling, hello, hello. Rajguru: They’re smashing the heads of the wounded sailors with their rifle-butts. Sardul: Course north north north. Full steam ahead. Full ahead all engines. Steam pressure. Ghafoor: Eighteen atmospheres. Sardul: Turret Akbar clear, turret Akbar clear, turret Humayun clear? Turret Humayun clear, turrets Akbar, Humayun, Inquilab clear. Sardul: Target Akbar three degrees up north, range one zero. Rajguru: What are you doing? (Translated by Samik Bandyopadhyay) colonial memories Manor House: later named Bombay Castle, this is perhaps the city’s oldest surviving public building. Situated behind the Town Hall, the Mint and the Old Customs House, this was the former Portuguese Governor’s House 16 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 16 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM and then the East India Company’s Government House. Historian James Douglas writes of the ‘lofty gate from which two figures look upon you, Portuguese soldiers bearing aloft the great globe itself, significant emblem of an inflated dominion by sea and land’. In 1946 it is Castle Barracks, the epicentre of the mutiny. Documentary sound footage from the echoing dungeons of the Castle, where pirates were once incarcerated, has naval officers walking through them explaining what these spaces once were. These dungeons are now off limits to civilians. The Dungeons of Castle Barracks (voices of naval officers) Officer: These are dungeons. The dungeons had been . . . you know . . . the Britishers had codified this Manor House and they had made the dungeons probably with a view to keeping the pirates towards the [indistinct] . . . And if you see you find the dungeons with a very high window. B.C. Dutt (in his own voice, archival recording, source: Doordarshan archives) Talwar didn’t even have a gun. It only had wireless operators and signalmen. But Castle Barracks had the seamen. They had the fighters. So we had to draw the Castle Barracks people out. Sirens again. Bombay socialite Roshan Horabin describes her perilous last days in Bombay just before she returned with Ivan to England on the Georgic. In the background, amid live street sounds, plays a jazz composition that was recorded in Bombay in late 1945. This was among the standard tunes played in Churchgate’s many jazz bars in February of 1946. Hugh Bert’s orchestra playing ‘Please Don’t Say No’, with vocals by Bombay’s jazz singer Maurice Concessio (archival recording, source: ‘Tajmahal Foxtrot’ archives) Roshan Horabin (in her own voice, archival recording, source: IWM London) We were told we were going back to England on the Georgic, which was a troop ship, and Ivan was in his uniform. And we took a taxi back to say goodbye. And when we came out, it was one of those days when it was 17 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 17 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM the Indian national day, and everybody had been told, ‘don’t work’, everything had come to a standstill. And as we came out there was this rowdy lot of Indians shouting, in the middle of Bombay, yelling and all that, and they were at that time starting to stone English officers and Englishmen, and they surrounded our taxi and they said, ‘Get out you two.’ And Ivan got out first, and the first thing he did was take his cap off and put it under his arm. Because he had been told that if you wear your naval hat, or naval cap, or any cap, they kick it out, push it out and trample on it. So by putting it under his arm, they didn’t quite know what to do. And when I stepped out in my sari, they were totally thrown to see me, and they looked and somebody said, ‘What is this? What is this? What is this?’ And Ivan said this is my wife Roshan, she is married to me, and today we’re going to England. An influential contribution to popular colonial memory, and to its capacity to absorb contentious recent political history into an orientalist frame, was John Masters’ 1954 novel, Bhowani Junction. Its protagonist, Rodney Savage, is a direct descendant of an earlier Rodney Savage who had, in Masters’ earlier Nightrunners of Bengal (1951), fought in the 1857 Mutiny. Here, the love story between the later Savage and an Indian ‘half-caste’ is framed by the Royal Indian Naval mutiny. The mutiny now provides the motivational context for Savage’s military responsibility at Bhowani, which, ironically, is to protect Gandhi from a communist terrorist assassination attempt. From soundtrack of Bhowani Junction (dir. George Cukor, 1956) (voice of Colonel Rodney Savage, played by Stewart Granger) Unrest was breaking out all over India. In Bhowani, the Congress’ efforts were rewarded by a railway strike in support of the naval mutineers. Savage continues: Hundreds of miles of vital communications were paralysed in as many minutes. Well, that didn’t seem to worry the Congress party. For them the strike was an occasion for 18 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 18 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM full-scale celebration. As long as they kept the strike going the British were hamstrung, so they were gonna keep the strike going. Or bust. Fade back to the sound of rioting. Sirens in the background. Mervyn Jones is watching the events unfold from the bar on the first floor of the Taj Mahal hotel, at the Gateway of India. The Taj was a key venue in wartime and immediately post-war Bombay for the British military, which used it to house officers on bunks in shared rooms. Jones looks down on the mutinying warships in the harbour and wonders what ‘grim humour’ the sailors would be up to next. Mervyn Jones (in his own voice, archival recording, source: IWM London) So – I went to the Taj, and I went to the big bar upstairs, the first floor. The whole Taj has been reorganized today, but at that time there was this big bar which overlooked the harbour. And here we were looking at the harbour, and here were the ships which you could see very clearly, they were close there, they were in the hands of the mutineers, the sailors had taken over and they had sent the officers ashore. As a matter of fact, if such a thing would have happened today, in the modern world, they would undoubtedly have taken them hostage, but that wheeze hadn’t been thought of and the officers were just put into the lifeboats and sent ashore and the sailors were running it. The sailors had trained the guns on the Taj Mahal hotel. Jones continues: Whether this was intended as a real threat or whether anybody was going to bombard the Taj or whether it was a piece of grim humour, I don’t know. But at all events it caused a certain amount of panic. And the senior officers and officials who had their ladies with them were saying, ‘my dear, come and sit over here, don’t go anywhere near the window’. And the saa’bs were a little bit worried that the Taj was going to be bombarded any moment. 19 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 19 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM three The Meanings of Independence what do you hope to achieve by all this? Many years later, Lt. Percy S. Gourgey, RINVR, wrote a short eyewitness account in his monograph,The Indian Naval Revolt of 1946 (1996). Perhaps the most sympathetic attempt to understand the psyche of the striking seamen from a British viewpoint, this small book comprises one-on-one conversations with Punnu Khan, a Leading Signalman and member of the Naval Central Strike Committee (NCSC) on the Talwar. Gourgey and Khan often meet over drinks at Gourgey’s club, where Khan makes several passionate defences of the ratings, their needs, their belief in the Congress and their belief in non-violence, notwithstanding the violence that the mutiny catalysed in the city. This is an improvised reworking of Khan’s speech, mixed over live recordings of sounds from a Kolkata market. Gourgey speaks to Punnu Khan (in the voice of actor Vipin Bharadwaj) ‘What do you hope to achieve by all this’, I asked Punnu Khan and Singh. ‘And how does politics come into this?’ Punnu Khan went on to say, ‘To put it in a nutshell, sir, we want the officers to note and deal with our grievances. For many months and years, our grievances have been brushed aside’. ‘My family consists of poor people who are deep in debt, where will they pay their (land) debts? For this reason we are urgently in need of leave so we can look after our homes, take care of our many problems. I am still owed some back pay. In eight months I am to be demobbed. The World War is over. If I am allowed to leave the navy tomorrow, I would be prepared to do so. All classes in India are suffering the same way’, he said in some pain. Then there was a long silence. ‘We want our opposition to be peaceful. Who can criticize civilians when they show sympathy for our suffering, 20 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 20 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM which is also their suffering? Our common suffering unites us. Mahatma Gandhi has said, ‘My aim is to wipe every tear from every eye.’ If he wants to remove pain and misery, then we who suffer, must we not follow him?’ chaos in the Administration On 19 February, the Secretary of State for India, Frederick PethickLawrence, sends a ‘Most Immediate’ telegram to the Viceroy, Lord Wavell: ‘Press carries rather sensational reports about RIN mutiny and disturbances in Bombay.’ He adds: ‘Presume you will keep me as fully informed as possible in case of Parliamentary enquiry.’ A ‘Private and Most Immediate’ telegram direct from Prime Minister Clement Attlee on 22 February is far more aggressive. ‘You are incorrect in thinking that No. 1200 must now have reached me’, he writes to the Viceroy. ‘For some inexplicable reason, these situation reports have been sent prefixed only “important”. . . . I am about to make my statement in the House of Commons and No. 1200 has not yet come in.’ Attlee goes on: ‘I am also surprised that you should have left it to the War Department.’ ‘After all, this is a matter which goes very far outside the military sphere alone.’ Across these days and then into the coming weeks, London, New Delhi and Bombay are rife with messages making threats, on the telegraph, in print and on the radio, amid immense confusion within the governmental hierarchy as to what is going on in Bombay. On 21 February, Admiral John Henry Godfrey issues an ultimatum on All India Radio. He points to the ‘overwhelming forces at the disposal of the government at this time which will be used to their utmost even if it means the destruction of the Navy of which we have been so proud’ [emphasis added]. This section reconstructs messages on the radio and the telegraph, communication systems that were intrinsic to the mutiny. It also draws from the memoirs, diaries and other writings of Admiral Godfrey, as well as reminiscences of other naval and administrative personnel. These, together with a section of telegrams obtained from the India Office Records of the British Library, the Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and the Churchill College, are separately displayed in the ‘Library’. 21 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 21 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM Admiral J.H. Godfrey, Flag Officer Commanding, Royal Indian Navy (in the voice of actor Simon Miles) A state of open mutiny prevails in which ratings appear to have completely lost control of their senses. To make it quite plain that the Government of India will never give in to violence. To continue this struggle is the height of folly when you take into account the overwhelming forces at the disposal of the Government at this time, and which will be used to their uttermost even if it means the destruction of the navy of which we have been so proud. Nagle Creagh continues his key role in the Talwar, and his fears about how he, together with 90 British soldiers holding Bren guns, could control 2,000 ratings, and whether he would end up creating another ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’. Nagle Creagh (in his own voice, archival recording, source: IWM London): And I arrived to discover that they were threatening to have a muster parade for the sailors, and I appeared . . . and can’t remember how the sailors were summoned, but they shambled along on to the parade ground. And there were 2,000 of them shambling about on the parade ground. And so I got my company, which was about 90-strong, I suppose, and drove them into their own gymnasium. Where I had . . . visions of it being another Black Hole of Calcutta. And 90 Bren guns in the corners . . . and watched to see what happened. Meanwhile Mervyn Jones goes to Lower Parel, to Suparibaug Road in the mill district. He has a terrifying encounter with a British army vehicle: the closest, he says, that he came to death during the entire Second World War. From there he goes to the Communist Party of India office on Sandhurst Road. Mervyn Jones (in his own voice, archival recording, source: IWM London) I went right uptown to the mill district, the factory district, where the working class lived and where the strike was going on. The streets were absolutely thronged. And I 22 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 22 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM was standing among these thousands of people at a large crossroads in Suparibaug Road, when a British army 1500-weight came round the corner driving rather fast, and suddenly everybody threw themselves to the ground and to my absolute amazement there was a machine gun, probably a Bren gun, at the back of the truck and it opened fire. And it all happened – it’s still vivid in my mind – it all happened within seconds. There were people lying on the ground bleeding, people were wounded, I don’t know whether people were killed in the actual incident. From the soundtrack of a naval propaganda film on how to load a Bren gun (HMS Belfast - Steel Fortress, 2002) Shell of the hoist down to loading tray. Breach open . . . switch shelter breach and ram home, cordite charge hoist, out of case and in the tray, ram home charge, close breach, set fuse, and elevate gun to firing position. A good gun crew could do all this in less than eight seconds. Mervyn Jones (in his own voice, archival, source: IWM London) And so I got the feeling that this was rather a dangerous place to be, because if all these Indians turned on the only white man there and wondered if I was a spy doing reconnaissance for the army, or anyhow must be in the army, and so on, it could be quite unpleasant for me. I could get lynched or anything like that. Or of course I could . . . that the incident could be repeated and I could actually get shot. And I had no particular desire to get shot by the British army having survived the war unwounded, you know, so I made tracks from there. And then I decided I would go to Sandhurst Road, to Party headquarters, and ask them what was going on, you know, and what was the line and so on. And I did that, and they were a little embarrassed to see me. They said, ‘Where have you been’, and I said I’d been up at the mill district; they said, ‘My God, it’s not very safe for you, is it?’ ‘It’s not very safe for you to be here.’ 23 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 23 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM Among the many issues of the mutiny were the colonial cultures that had been bred into the armed forces, and more specifically within the Royal Indian Navy. It has been widely held that although the army, with a longer history of working with native soldiers, had appropriate social protocols on how to deal with the ‘natives’, the navy – in contrast, and especially the RIN – did not. The obviously preferential treatment given to both British officers and seamen was a clear cause of resentment, further exacerbated by the evident shift in attitudes after the War officially ended. Nagle Creagh gives his own insider’s summary of the cause of the mutiny. Nagle Creagh (in his own voice, archival recording, source: IWM London) In my opinion, the whole problem had been caused by the fact that the British naval officers who had been in many cases with the Indian navy couldn’t speak the language, couldn’t understand them, didn’t mix upwith them. And this is why the . . . this was a time when all this fermentation going on in India, Independence and all this sort of thing. But at that time, you’ve got to bear in mind that I think there were about forty British battalions in India looking after I don’t know how many hundred million Indians, who were supposed to be [indistinct] but we controlled them very well. Among the most controversial aspects of the entire episode is the stand of the Indian National Congress. The mutiny clearly takes the Congress, and almost all of the political establishment, by surprise: this is important, given subsequent questions of the Inquiry Committee as to whether the ratings were being politically manipulated or not. Most of India’s major political parties are at that time preoccupied with the 1946 Cabinet Mission, led by Secretary of State for India Pethick Lawrence, which has come to India to discuss the terms of Independence with the Congress and the Muslim League. While the public Congress position is effectively one of guarded support conditional upon immediate withdrawal of the strike, there is a clear difference of views among the key leaders. Both Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel are opposed to the strike, if for somewhat 24 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 24 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM different reasons. Jawaharlal Nehru takes the stand that the struggle is misguided mainly because it is insufficiently armed, and thus can only have a symbolic role that is condemned to ineffectiveness. Aruna Asaf Ali remains an enigmatic presence. The mutineers approach her in the belief that she, of the major Congress leaders, would be the most sympathetic to their cause. While she is almost never quoted directly on this event, she is indirectly a major point of reference in both Nehru’s and Gandhi’s speeches, including a major dispute with Gandhi on the difference between constitutional struggle and struggle at the barricades. The present text, in the voice of Syeda Saiyidain Hameed, activist and writer, assembles various textual sources to evoke the political ambiguities posed by the uprising to the Indian National Congress. The response of the Indian National Congress (in the voice of activist and writer Syeda Saiyidain Hameed) February 19, 1946: Naval ratings appeal to Aruna Asaf Ali to intervene on their behalf, to address a meeting and to act as their spokesperson. She advises them to remain calm, and to go and see Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the highest Congress authority in the city at the time. Patel advises all ratings to lay down all arms and go through the formality of a surrender, promising them that the Congress would do its level best to see that there is no victimization. ‘We are not surrendering to the British. We are surrendering to our own people,’ he tells them. In a private mail to Gandhi that day, Patel complains that ‘We are done for, finished, if we don’t stand up to this. She, Aruna Asaf Ali, has wired Jawahar. Jawahar sent me a wire saying that if necessary he would leave important work and come. I replied that he need not. Even so he comes tomorrow.’ The following day, Mahatma Gandhi writes that he has ‘followed the events now happening in India with painful interest. . . . This mutiny and what is following is not, in any sense of the term, non-violent action. Inasmuch as a single person is compelled to shout “Jai Hind” or any popular slogan, a nail is driven into the coffin of swaraj in terms of the dumb millions of India. There is such a thing 25 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 25 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM as thoughtful violent action. What I see happening now is not thoughtful.’ Nehru, on his arrival, commends the ratings for their bravery, but reminds them of the violence at the disposal of the state. ‘Unless it is the violence of the armies, petty insurrectionary type of action must go down before superior violence. If there is going to be violence, it should be on the biggest scale possible at the right time with the right preparation. You do not fight machine guns with rifles. As between two violent opposing forces the big gun tells. When you match a gun with a gun, the big gun always succeeds.’ February 26, 1946: Gandhi expresses ‘great relief that the ratings have listened to Sardar Patel’s advice to surrender’. Replying to Aruna Asaf Ali’s statement that she would rather ‘unite Hindus and Muslims at the barricade than on the constitutional front’, Gandhi argues that ‘even in terms of violence, this is a misleading proposition’, that if the ‘union at the barricade is honest, there must be union also at the constitutional front. . . . Aruna is right when she says that the fighters this time showed grit as never before. But grit becomes foolhardiness when it is untimely and suicidal as this was.’ On 22nd February, amid rumours that the Congress had negotiated the terms of surrender and that the strikers would be let off, Lt. Gen. R.N.N. Lockhart, GOC-in-C, Southern Command, outlines without ambiguity what ‘unconditional surrender’ means in military terms. That day, M.A. Khan, President of the Naval Central Strike Committee (NCSC), sends a ceasefire message to the mutineers that is both a command and a plea. This section is taken from V.M. Bhagwatkar, author of Royal Indian Navy Uprising and Indian Freedom Struggle (1989). M.A. Khan, President, NCSC (in the voice of actors Rishabh Shrivastav and Danish Iqbal) A little after 4 pm the NCSC issued instructions for ceasefire. A signal from Khan, the President: 26 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 26 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM From President, to Establishments, all ships: I hope you will be non-violent. I am meeting the FOB and FOCRIN in Castle Barracks. I shall let you know the latest decision afterwards. Up to that time, you should keep complete peace. Signed, President The following section reproduces Lockhart’s chilling memorandum. It is however performed to reproduce a ‘Carry on Sergeant’ tone and accent. Lt. Gen. R.N.N. Lockhart (in the voice of actor Dominic Hingorani) Directive Number 1: 1. You will visit the Castle Barracks and HMI ships in the harbour tomorrow in the morning. 2. Your task will be to explain to the ships’ companies the meaning of ‘unconditional surrender’. 3. By ‘unconditional surrender’ is meant: a. No conditions whatever can be stipulated by the mutineers. b. They will obey orders and go wherever they are ordered by GOC-in-C Southern Command, as conveyed through subordinate officers (naval or military). c. It will certainly involve ships’ companies being ordered to leave their ships and go ashore, and be moved under military escort to such places as may be directed. 4. You will explain to the men that unconditional surrender does not mean that there will be no inquiry or punishment. On the contrary, there will certainly be an inquiry, and all those who have participated in the mutiny must be prepared to face the consequences of their acts. At the same time you will assure the men that there will be no victimization, by which I mean no vindictive action will be taken. . . . 6. You will also explain that when they have surrendered, any genuine complaints will be most carefully investigated, and every attempt made to rectify them. 7. Finally, you will inform the men that unless they voluntarily surrender, there will be no course left open to me except to issue an ultimatum, i.e. that unless they 27 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 27 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM surrender unconditionally, I shall be compelled to use force as is necessary to bring the present position, i.e. mutiny, to an end. A contrasting voice is that of John Gilbert Steadman, British Midshipman who served aboard HMIS Jumna in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean in 1941, Combined Operations in the Middle East (1943–44), and on-shore duties with Royal Indian Navy in Great Britain and India. John Gilbert Steadman (in his own voice, archival recording, source: IWM London) I said I’m not going to shout at you, punish you. In fact I’m prepared to forget what in fact I don’t know, since I wasn’t here at the time when you refused to obey orders. I don’t know whether you still think that you had a case for this mutiny, and I don’t know why you did it. I do speak a little Urdu, and I understand quite a lot about what you feel. But from now on, I am in command of this space, and you have to do what I tell you. Otherwise I promise you I will have you removed from the Royal Indian Navy, and from your pay and your rations, and you will have to return to your homes, wherever they are in India, and you will find life rather uncomfortable, having led a rather well-fed life in the Royal Indian Navy. And they laughed at that. And so, if anybody wishes to be dismissed from the Royal Indian Navy, let him say so now. Otherwise I will hold nothing against you, I will treat you just as if this hadn’t happened. And then I waited in trepidation, because I thought they’d all take one step forward. Anyway, nothing happened, and they all grinned sheepishly at me, and the Chief Petty Officer said three cheers for the saa’b. [Laughs]. This was the end of the mutiny. Silence. 28 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 28 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM four The Everyday, Or What May Have Been the morning workers’ Shift Narayan Surve’s ‘Girnichi Lavani’ returns us to the siren with a poem that musician and Marathi cultural theorist Amarendra Dhaneshwar once described as a ‘love song to the textile mill’. Much of the radical poetry and music from the city’s working class at this time addresses a particular kind of everyday: an everyday that is a daily, suffocating, metropolitan grind, mainly to be contrasted with the romance of what never could be. In Surve’s song, the wheels and bobbins of the textile loom work ceaselessly, joining threads that break, weaving strands together. However, the cloth that emerges, the silks and malmals, saris and shelas, will dress some beautiful bride somewhere even as the worker, having created this splendour, returns home to no fuel to light the stove. Narayan Surve (in his own voice, archival recording, source: Giranmumbai archives, TISS, Mumbai) It’s seven o’clock and the morning siren sounds its bhoopali And the first shift begins in great style The wheels turn Sounds of textile looms fade into sounds of the city’s local trains, over which the poet Namdeo Dhasal has a vicious romance with the city itself: ‘Bombay My Beloved Whore’. Namdeo Dhasal (in his own voice, from the soundtrack of Madhusree Dutta’s documentary, ‘Seven Islands and a Metro’, 2006) You be faithful to us / You warm up our beds / Play the flute of Eternity / Play around with our dreams / Breathe fire into our sperm / O footloose hussy / O churlish slut / O Khandoba’s concubine / O wanton coquette / O whore with the heart of gold / I won’t go away with you like a 29 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 29 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM ragged beggar / I’ll strip you to the bone / I’ll take you for a ride / I’ll strike you dumb / And go (Translated by Jerry Pinto) Was revolution in any full sense at all possible, or even imaginable, in the Bombay of 1946? Clearly, the ratings’ struggle links with other popular radical-nationalisms in the immediate aftermath of the War, to open new political possibilities. That such revolution was at least conceivable is evident both in the nervous responses of the imperial establishment and among the nationalist leadership. For those who did attempt to imagine what revolution might look like, a clear and direct precedent was another famous naval mutiny, that of the Baltic fleet in another February, of 1917, which had led directly to Russia’s October Revolution. Mervyn Jones speculates on what is clearly on the minds of many: Mervyn Jones (in his own voice, archival recording, source: IWM London) So there was this revolutionary atmosphere, and talking to the Communists during the afternoon and evening when I was there at the Party headquarters and they were wondering if this might be a signal for revolution. Everybody had their memories of the Russian Revolution of 1905 that began with the mutiny of the Black Sea fleet and indeed the soldiers of the Baltic fleet had played a big role in the revolution of 1917, so all this was part of Communist romanticism. And Bombay after all was on strike, the police were not stopping demonstrations. So it was not inconceivable that a Soviet might have been declared, and that Bombay might have been in the hands of revolutionary forces, and this might have spread to the whole of India and who knows what might have happened. And no doubt those in authority from the Viceroy down also thought this wasn’t totally inconceivable. What in fact actually happened was that this was always equally alarming for the Indian National Congress leaders who did not want things to come about in that way. They didn’t want a revolution which might get out of their control. 30 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 30 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM In contrast, Vivek Monteiro, whole-timer of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) working with CITU, offers a more pragmatic account of history and its possibilities. Vivek Monteiro (in his own voice) 1946 was a very brave and very courageous attempt. But to expect that this would go into a national revolt, that it would spread to all sections of the population and lead to an insurrection – probably that was not justified by the objective situation at that time. The British probably saw that there was this potential, and therefore they took their decisions in good time, to give Independence, certainly (this) was significant into pushing the British into conceding Independence, but that’s saying one thing. To say that it had the potential of becoming an alternate path of revolution – that’s something else. I don’t think the second conclusion is really justified. Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat (in his own voice) The Party is always backward, the Party never leads. The people lead. That’s the historical truth. Commodore Odakkal Johnson’s father was an 18 year-old rating at Castle Barracks and a mutineer who was later among those ‘discharged with dishonour from His Majesty’s Service’. Johnson has written this as a story told by his father (Baba) to his son, Josh. He reads from his book Timeless Wake: The Legacy of the Royal Indian Navy in World War II (2013). Odakkal Johnson (in his own voice) Baba paused again but was very sombre. Then he turned to Josh with his face full aglow. ‘One always wishes one joins a mighty service with zeal and leaves it with glory. Sadly, for a number of people in Castle Barracks, they who had fought the War got another dishonour. They received a certificate that said, “Discharged with disgrace from His Majesty’s Service”.’ Josh did not even bring himself to ask if Baba had that honour. 31 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 31 3/8/2017 5:17:09 PM Then Baba continued, ‘Those honourable men, whom no piece of paper could dishonour, walked out with heads held high to build a newly emerging nation. They had faced the waves with resoluteness. Now, they were ready to serve the waves of time with commitment.’ Was it, in the end, all a mistake? If a cornerstone of tragic structures is an error in judgment, the question arises as to whether this was indeed a historic error – and, if yes, what it was and who may have made it. A larger question is now further underscored by a specific crisis that arose at the end of the mutiny. Contrary to all the assurances given by the leadership of the Indian National Congress that there would be no victimization, some 300 ‘ringleaders’ were rounded up and incarcerated in a camp in the neighbouring town of Mulund, where they led their own further struggles including several hunger strikes and demands for humane treatment. By this time, barring the Free Press Journal, the mutiny had disappeared from the newspapers. This question has been asked repeatedly by B.C. Dutt, and he asks it again in this archival recording. B.C. Dutt (in his own voice, archival recording, source: Doordarshan archives) The ratings took it for granted that the leaders would come and give the lead, and we would know how to fight. That is the mistake we did. And then [from] Gandhi, Jinnah, to everybody, appealed to the ratings to put down the guns. Whole lot came. By three o’clock we assembled there, in Talwar, whether to continue fighting or not. What do you do? That went on and on and on, and at five o’clock somebody said look, it’s morning. That was the end. That was the end. What could we do? Silence. 32 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 32 3/8/2017 5:17:10 PM five Epilogue: Dust in the Air Suspended ‘dust in the air suspended marks the place where a story ended.’ – b.c. dutt, Mutiny of the Innocents (1971) Tragic structures posed by the failures of history have been the substance of poetic inquiry. In the years that followed the insurrection, poets, writers and artists have attempted such an inquiry into the lessons of February 1946. Four leading artists who have engaged with the uprising – theatre director Utpal Dutt, artist Chittaprosad, photographer Sunil Janah and the poet Sahir Ludhianvi – are presented centrally in different spaces in this installation. Ludhianvi’s own tragic vision for the nation-in-formation, and his political/poetic questioning of those who now rule India, is read by writer and activist Syeda Saiyidain Hameed. Sahir Ludhianvi’s poem ‘Jahaziyon ki Baghavat’(in the voice of Syeda Saiyidain Hameed) Whose blood is it? (The Sailors’ Mutiny, 1946) O leader of the country and people, just this: Raise your eyes, look us in the face, So we too may hear, tell us too: Whose blood is it? Who has died? The restless sparks of the ground’s burning heart want to know, The blood streams you all couldn’t make your own want to know, The roadside tongue screams, the sea shores want to know: Whose blood is it? Who has died? O leader of the country and people, speak: Whose blood is it? Who has died? 33 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 33 3/8/2017 5:17:10 PM Which passion was it that shook the worn order of life, And in the parched, desolate garden, opened a flower of hope? The people’s blood entered the armies, the armies’ blood into the people. Whose blood is it? Who has died? O leader of the country and people, speak: Whose blood is it? Who has died? The death-bound travellers, who sang of nation and home, were they rogues? Those dashing soldiers, who arose carrying the country’s flag, were they rogues? Those who could not bear the weight of slavery, those royal offenders, were they rogues? Whose blood is it? Who has died? O leader of the country and people, speak: Whose blood is it? Who has died? (Translated by Shad Naved) When the Inquiry Committee was announced and the ratings were invited to testify, many of them were apprehensive about coming forward. Amid larger fears of a biased Committee were concrete anxieties about reprisals. Only a few agreed to testify, but those who did, spoke their minds. These are the names of the striking seamen who are listed, together with their stories, in the Report of the Inquiry Committee, along with the names listed in Biswanath Bose’s RIN Mutiny 1946. They become a roll-call read by the actor Alaknanda Samarth. The Roll Call (in the voice of actor Alaknanda Samarth) Leading Signaller M.S. Khan Petty Officer Telegraphist Madan Singh Chief Petty Officer Basant Singh Leading Signalman Nurul Islam Signaller S. Sengupta Leading Seaman Ashraf Khan Able Stoker Gomez Stoker Mohammed Hussein 34 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 34 3/8/2017 5:17:10 PM Balai C. Dutt R.K. Singh S. Syam Electrical Artificer Izhar Mohammed, HMIS Feroze Store Assistant Mohammed Nasrullah, HMIS Akbar Wireless Telegraphist Operator P.M. Thomas, HMIS Nasik Leading Writer G.R. Rao, HMIS Feroze Petty Officer Radio Mechanic S.K.Chatterjee, HMIS Talwar Telegraphist Abdul Ghafoor Warrant Officer M.G.K. Moorthy Writer T.A. Nathan, HMIS Shivaji Sweeper B. Khotu, HMIS Bahadur and HMIS Sutlej Seaman Tahirullah Topass Damodar Sabapathy Topass Swami Dass Seaman Abdul Latif Wireless Telegraph and Radio Operator T.K. Murthy, HMIS Talwar Engineer C.R. Kumar Manzoor Elahi, Communication Branch Rating T.K. Manikam 35 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 35 3/8/2017 5:17:10 PM worKS in the inStAllAtion Container: Performance Space 40 (l) x 12 (w) x 10 (h) feet Steel-and-aluminium object with hollow interior. interior with benches, sound speakers, light fixtures, ladder and rubber flooring. this massive colour-coated structure, with its tilted walls and steeply angled roof, is an abstraction of a ship and references a formalist aesthetic of construction. Narratives of the Mutiny 42 min eight-channel soundwork played in the interior of the Container. Soundwork merging archival recordings with newly recorded speech, poetry, music and sound effects, sourced from india and britain. it is coordinated with a lights design that uses twenty-six programmed lights to also illuminate the structure. Documentary Mural 40 (l) x 5 (h) feet collage of newspapers published during february 1946, printed as a mural on matt vinyl. Selections from over a hundred newspaper reports from india and britain of february 1946 are densely collaged. they reconstruct a political conjuncture: the last year of the empire and the threshold of independence. they include political drawings by chittaprosad published in People’s Age, and a photograph by Sunil janah in The Student, the journal of the All india Students’ federation. The Stage reproduction of the painting RIN Bombay Naval Mutiny (1962), by chittaprosad, on easel. installation apparatus including stage lights, flagmast, metal-cast models of telegraph machines. An iconic painting on the 1946 insurrection by a major artist working with the communist Party of india, known for his graphic representations of its struggles. The Library Archival documents, original and reproduced, placed on tables, in vitrines and projected on walls. 36 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 36 3/8/2017 5:17:10 PM Crossed wires Reproductions of fifteen telegrams, including several marked ‘Secret and most immediate’, between the british Prime minister, the viceroy of british india, the Secretary of State, the military department and the Governor of bombay (source: India Office Records, British Library). Files original pre-independence police documents from the private collection of t.r. Srinivasan and n. Sanjeeva rao, iPS. they include clippings of newspapers covering the events of early 1946 with police jottings and official correspondence on the nature of the reportage. Books Seven books on the insurrection, scanned and re-bound, placed on table, available for reading. The Indian Annual Register of January–June 1946 (vol. 1, 1946); r. Palme dutt, Britain’s Crisis of Empire (1949); Subrata bannerjee, The RIN Strike (People’s Publishing house, 1954), with a preface by communist leader e.m.S. namboodiripad; biswanath bose, RIN Mutiny: 1946 (1988);v.m. bhagwatkar, Royal Indian Navy Uprising and Indian Freedom Struggle (1989); dipak Kumar das, Revisiting Talwar: A Study in the Royal Indian Navy Uprising of February 1946 (1993); and Percy S. Gourgey, The Indian Naval Revolt of 1946 (1996). Photograph Sunil janah’s photograph of dead bodies of indians killed during the february insurrection: on page 175 of janah’s Photographing India (published in 2013), covered with transparent slab. the photograph was taken by janah when he jumped into a hospital compound with dead men piled in a heap. A transparent sheet placed on the image in the book offers a posthumous burial. Projections Still images in two loops of six minutes each, from miniature projectors. one projection shows the everyday life of the royal indian navy, including images of life ashore and on board ships. these include naval propaganda used for recruitment, contrasted with evidence taken from the Inquiry Committee Report of 1946. the other projection shows a selection of diary jottings, letters and private notes of british army and naval officers stationed in India, commenting on the mutiny and on other political uprisings taking place within the armed forces. 37 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 37 3/8/2017 5:17:10 PM creditS And AcKnowledGmentS INSTALLATION Container: Performance Space concept and design:vivan Sundaram Structural design and execution of the container: G. Girish Kumar (Grc Projects Pvt. ltd, delhi) Acoustics consultant:viren bakhshi fabrication: hardev Singh hanspal (hanspal technocrafts, delhi) lights management: delhi lights contribution of artworks: Arun dev, balagopalan b., Krishna Kumar; and Pravat m., Susanta mondal Sound Sound composition, recording, mixing, editing: david chapman Additional sound recording(the Kolkata sections): Sukanta majumdar Narrative concept: Ashish rajadhyaksha text: Ashish rajadhyaksha,valentina vitali Lights concept:vivan Sundaram Assistance: Arghya lahiri, daulat vaid lights programming: bishen Singh Production control: daulat vaid Production team: balagopalan b., nihal Kardam Documentary Mural concept: Ashish rajadhyaksha design inputs: hilal Ahmad Khan, with vivan Sundaram The Stage design:vivan Sundaram The Library concept and design: Ashish rajadhyaksha,valentina vitali,vivan Sundaram 38 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 38 3/8/2017 5:17:10 PM Files Selection and access: Shekhar Krishnan, Prarthana Patil Photograph design:vivan Sundaram DOCuMENTATION Photography Gireesh G.v. RESEARCH valentina vitali, Ashish rajadhyaksha research support (delhi): Pranjali Srivastava Archives consulted centre of South Asian Studies (cambridge); centre for Studies in Social Sciences (Kolkata); churchill Archive centre, churchill college (cambridge); communist Party of india, Ajoy bhavan (delhi); colonial film database (british film institute, imperial war museum, british empire and commonwealth museum); doordarshan archives (delhi); India Office Records, British Library (London); Imperial War Museum london; maharashtra State Archives (mumbai); maritime history Society, western naval command (mumbai); national Archives (delhi); national maritime museum, Greenwich (london); nehru memorial museum and library (delhi); P.c. joshi Archives, jawaharlal nehru university (delhi); Tajmahal Foxtrot archives; tata institute of Social Sciences (mumbai);v.v. Giri national labour institute (noidA). MEDIA OuTREACH AND COLLATERAL EVENTS bombaywala blog/Simin Patel ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Abhijit bhattacharya (cSSSc), Abhishek mathur, Alaknanda Samarth, capt. Amit jain, Anjali monteiro (tiSS), Ashok bannerjee (citu, mumbai), bishnupriya dutt, cAmP (mumbai), darryl d’monte, 39 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 39 3/8/2017 5:17:10 PM datta ishwalkar (mumbai Girni Kamgar Sangharsh Samiti), delhi Art Gallery, dinesh iqbal, dominic hingorani, Gauhar raza, Geeta Kapur, Girish Karnad, hilal Ahmad Khan, indira chandrasekhar, o.P. jain (Sanskriti foundation), jo Shoop, jonathan bell, K.P. jaishankar (tiSS), Kaiwan mehta, Kiran nadar museum of Art, lakshmi Subramanyam, mahesh bhartiya (bhashya Prakashan), moinak biswas, naina bhattacharya, naresh fernandes, neela bhagwat, nick jacobs, commodore odakkal johnson, Prarthana Patil, Priya Sen, rajat Kapoor, ram rahman, rishabh Shrivastav, Samik bandyopadhyay, Shad naved, Shaina Anand, Shekhar Krishnan, commodore m.m.S. Sher Gil, Shireen Gandhy, Simon miles, tanya moulson, tapati Guha-thakurta, c. uday bhaskar,vijay K. Patil, vikas jaiswal,vipin bharadwaj,virchand dharamsey, Admiral vishnu bhagwat,vivek monteiro Anuradha Kapur is gratefully acknowledged for enabling the realization and staging of the performance. 40 RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- text pages.indd 40 3/8/2017 5:17:10 PM ViVan Sundaram (born 1943) studied painting in Baroda and London. Since 1990 he has made sculpture, installation, photography and video. His major works include the installations Memorial (1993), Sher-Gil Archive (1995) and History Project (1998); Re-take of Amrita (1991–92), digital photographs; video installations, Tracking (2003) and Black Gold (2012); Gagawaka (2011) and Post Mortem (2013–14), where he crossed over into fashion performance; and 409 Ramkinkars (2015), a collaboration with theatre directors. Sundaram has exhibited in the Biennales of Sydney, Seville, Taipei, Sharjah, Shanghai, Havana, Johannesburg, Kwangju, Berlin, and in the Asia-Pacific Triennial, Brisbane. He has had solo shows outside india at the Fowler museum, Los angeles (2015); Sepia international, new York (2006, 2008); Walsh Gallery, Chicago (2005, 2008); and Photographers Gallery, Copenhagen (2003). He has curated many exhibitions as well as organized a number of artists’ workshops, both national and international. The Kasauli art Centre, started by him in 1976 and which functioned actively till1990, is now called the Kasauli art Project, under the Sher-Gil Sundaram arts Foundation set up in 2016 by him and his sister navina Sundaram.Vivan Sundaram is the editor of a two-volume book, Amrita Sher-Gil: a self-portrait in letters & writings (2010). He is a founder member of SaHmaT as well as the Journal of Arts & Ideas. aSHiSH raJadHYaKSHa (born 1957) is the author of Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency (2009) and co-editor with Paul Willemen of the Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (1994, 1999). He co-curated (with Geeta Kapur) Bombay/Mumbai (1992–2001) for Century City: Art & Culture in the Global Metropolis (Tate modern, 2002); Memories of Cinema (iV Guangzhou Triennial, 2011); You Don’t Belong (Film/ Documentary/Video, a travelling film festival in China, 2011); and ฀฀-฀฀฀ : A Very Deep Surface: Mani Kaul & Ranbir Singh Kaleka: Between Film and Video (Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur, 2017). daVid CHaPman (born 1959) has worked as a musician, and produced and directed documentary films. He currently creates video and digital sound pieces for both gallery and site-specific exhibitions, such as Hark (2005), with photographer david Cottridge, Octo: Sotto Voce (2009) at York minster, Re-sounding Falkland (2010) on the Falkland Estate in Fife, Scotland, with Louise K. Wilson, and Watermark (2012) at York Guildhall. recent live performances include playable sound sculptures and music theatre work. Chapman’s doctoral thesis was on sound art and perception. He teaches film theory and production at the University of East London. RIN Mutiny Catalogue -- Inside Back Cover.indd 1 3/8/2017 6:19:20 PM