Eighty years ago this week Indian sailors mutiny against the Raj
A major mutiny broke out in the Royal Indian Navy involving 10,000 men (perhaps over half of the total) on 56 vessels and shore establishments. The RIN had expanded hugely during the war but did not have the same close relationship with the British Royal Navy that its (much larger) army counterpart had. The mutineers were motivated by a mixture of classic grievances at serving conditions, terms of demobilisation, racist language by British officers and active political goals. Neither Congress nor the Moslem League gave their support and the mutiny folded in the face of the threat of overwhelming force. Whilst the mutiny was not part of the campaign for independence, it was a clear sympton of widespread discontent at the Raj. A US diplomat in Moscow, George Kennan, responded to an enquiry from Washington as to the implications of a speech by Stalin with an 5,000 word analysis dubbed the "long telegram." He derided Soviet fears of an attack by the US and UK as absurb, b...
