Battling for their honour on 55th anniversary of the Mutiny

Battling for their honour on 55th anniversary of the Mutiny
RAJEEV P.I.

KOZHIKODE, FEB 17: Hurry, you sons of coolies and bitches.....''

Commander F.W. King of His Majesty's Indian Ship (HMIS) Talwar may not have imagined that his outburst on that February morning could spark the Royal Indian Navy mutiny that jolted Britain.

That was exactly 55 years ago, on February 18, 1946. But Commander King's racist taunt was perhaps kinder to these men, than the slights their own country heaped on them later.

King's insults were the last straw for thousands of subjugated Indian ratings, who had enlisted to fight someone else's World War II. The revolt, which erupted in HMIS Talwar as a hunger strike, turned violent and engulfed 74 British warships, four flotillas and 20 Naval establishments, from Kochi to Kolkata to Karachi.

Sailors pulled down the British flags from warships and facilities, chanting nationalist slogans; in a spontaneous uprising that cost at least 200 their lives, and thousands their jobs. About 2,000 were arrested and several incarcerated.

Hundreds were Malayalees, and 87 of them are still alive in Kerala, by last count. Old, dejected and helpless, it has been a futile struggle for them to get their fight officially acknowledged. And hope is ebbing fast.

Some, like Thuluvan Veettil Govindan Nambiar, then a 20-year-old who had run away from home to become Leading Stoker on HMIS Hamla, managed to piece life together.

Nambiar resumed studies and became a doctor, to retire as a District Medical Officer. He still remembers the Congress tricolour and the Muslim League green replacing the Union Jacks on battle ships; and Indian sailors roaming Mumbai streets with bludgeons, crowbars and hammers to take on British troops and armed police. (``Some even took to machine guns and rifles in Mumbai's Castle Barracks'').

He can also feel the cold of the barbed wire which enclosed them in Madh Island, where Royal Marines shoved surrendered mutineers and tortured them.

But Dr Nambiar was fortunate. Many others could not regain their feet afterwards. Many turned unwanted delinquents, some eked out a living by odd jobs, and many others just gave up on life.

``We don't have many years left. All we ask is that the Government acknowledge our struggle for freedom,'' says P. Madhavan Nair of Karuvissery here. After getting sacked, he worked as a bookbinder.

Interestingly, his best friend in the Navy, sacked along with him, was absorbed with honours in the Pakistan Navy. He retired as a Lieutenant Commander.

E.N. Kidav, former seaman on HMIS Punjab which was in the eye of the mutiny, echoes the same sentiment. ``It is not merely the freedom fighter's pension that we are after. It is the principle.''

Decades ago, some of them formed the RIN Mutineers' Association to try redeeming their pension. Successive Governments, however, refused to oblige. They were told that the British left no records of their specific roles. ``That did not explain why the Indian National Army members, numbering 22,079, were granted pension, then.''

Finally, in 1972, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sanctioned pension to 507 of them, just a fraction of their original number. But records later showed that many beneficiaries were not even in the Navy during the mutiny.

The unkindest cut was Home Minister L.K. Advani's reply to Union Minister O. Rajagopal, who took up the mutineers' cause with Advani three months ago.``Accepting their demand for pension will open the floodgates to similar claims from personnel of other forces like Army and Air Force,'' Advani wrote.

Politicians, anyway, had not warmed up to their brand of struggle even during the mutiny. It was an unnerved Sardar Vallabhai Patel who got the mutineers to surrender midway, and the only real backing came from the communists.

While the shadows lengthen and their comrades fade away one by one, a handful of these old men are still sending representations on the Association's old typewriter.

``One day, the authorities will realise their mistake, and we would stand vindicated,'' affirmed Kidav, showing an old file bulging with years of ignored petitions and memoranda.

But there is no sign of such optimism being warranted, yet.