Abstract
The exhibition, Meanings of Failed Action: Insurrection 1946, opened in Mumbai on 17 March 2017, and then in New Delhi on 8 February 2018. The second part of Vivan Sundaram's ‘The History Project’, this new installation was intended to mark seventy years of Indian Independence and Partition by exploring an often forgotten moment of Indian history: the uprising of the Royal Indian Navy's ratings in February 1946, when 10,000 naval ratings took charge of 66 ships across the Indian subcontinent in the name of the ‘Quit India’ movement. The event has since been erased from Indian national history, perhaps because, had the insurrection succeeded, India's struggle for freedom might have taken a different turn. In what follows, I focus on the documents we unearthed while researching for the exhibition—pamphlets, slogans, the ratings’ statements to the police and to the Commission of Enquiry, their memories and prison letters—and examine the motivations and hopes that defined the strikers’ action. What kind of freedom did the ratings stand for?
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