Archives: Press Reviews

“What was it about the Royal Indian Navy mutiny that drew your attention and held your interest for so many years? While researching my earlier book, an illustrated biography of Mahatma Gandhi, I speed read 100 volumes of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. In volume 89/90 there were letters that Gandhi ji wrote to Sardar Patel and few others in the Congress party. I

In 1946, as Independence was approaching, a group of sailors in a Navy establishment on Mumbai’s southern tip rose in revolt. The unrest soon spread to several other parts of the country. The uprising, argues Pramod Kapoor in his new book 1946: Last War of Independence, Royal Indian Navy Mutiny, wasn’t just a protest against service conditions and racism. It was a crucial event in

“You stumbled upon references to the RIN mutiny while researching an earlier book titled Gandhi: An Illustrated Biography. What inspired you to dig deeper? I was reading Volumes 89 and 90 of The Complete Works of Mahatma Gandhi when I saw some statements and letters by him, which were related to the mutiny. He had a major public disagreement with Aruna Asaf Ali. I wanted

In February 1946, after WW-II had ended, nearly 20,000 ratings of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) posted in 78 ships in different Indian ports rebelled against their masters. Their rebellion was only partly against their officers; it was just as much against the occupation of India by the alien British rulers. It was part of a saga of India nationalism. The book admirably tells this

The book is full of vignettes which reveal the mutiny in stark relief. Most important is the cast of characters that reads like a who’s who of the Left. Ironically, the Communist Party of India had supported the British throughout the Second World War because Britain and the USSR were allies. That alliance ended with the war.

Pramod Kapoor’s book begins by revisiting Calcutta in March 1965 — when Utpal Dutt staged his play, Kallol, at the Minerva Theatre, dramatising with flourish and alarum the Naval Mutiny of 1946. Dutt’s play historically coincided with the release of The Sound of Music in New York, Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming in London, and the commencement of Operation Rolling Thunder in Vietnam. Kallol (literally the

As rightly remarked by Shyam Benegal, a footnote in the history of the freedom movement has been turned into an exciting and important account in Pramod Kapoor’s 1946 Last War of Independence: Royal Indian Navy Mutiny. Pramod himself stumbled onto this forgotten story while researching for his book on Gandhi: “After the draft of the Gandhi book was done, I re-read the Royal Indian Navy

The 1946 uprising was serious. India was on fire because the British rulers were conducting trials of soldiers of the Indian National Army (INA) inside the expansive Red Fort in the Indian Capital. And then, the Naval mutiny was too hot to handle. The two incidents triggered the sending of the Cabinet Mission and the subsequent decision to grant freedom. Interestingly, two decades after India

IN STUDIO PORTRAIT with Flag, Trishul and Om Flag (2009), Pushpamala N stands in a simple tableau. Dressed as the goddess Bharat Mata, she holds her implements in front of a small-scale, brightly painted, sharped-tooth lion, which is placed in front of the Indian flag, which in turn is pinned open on the floral textiles hung on lines as a backdrop. Layered and repetitious, every

Misrakesi is Acharya Chanakya’s scribe in the Mauryan Palace and part of the royal administration; Misrakesi, with child, is carrying the future Senapati of the Mauryans; and Misrakesi, the new wife, is trying to fit into one of the most powerful families in the kingdom while battling both assassins and more intimate threats to her own happiness with Pushyamitra. Read an extract here.