Royal Indian Navy Mutiny: A Study of its Impact in South India

This is a meticulously monograph on the February 1946 Royal Indian Navy Mutiny, emphasizing its profound repercussions across South India, par­ticularly in the Malabar region, thereby broadening the existing scholarship that centers on Bombay and Karachi. By closely examining lesser-explored archival sources and regional accounts, the study reveals how this six-day uprising united urban workers, students, and peasants across communal and political lines, forging unprecedented anti-imperialist solidarity. It situ­ates the mutiny within the revolutionary ferment of post-war India, dem­onstrating how economic hardship, wartime displacement, and nationalist consciousness came together to create a moment of collective resistance against the colonial authority. Challenging nationalist historiographies that privilege the Quit India Movement and constitutional negotiations, the work recovers and foregrounds neglected micro-histories of popular militancy. Through a rigorous examination of government reports, naval records, contemporary periodicals, and oral testimonies from participants, the study establishes that the mutineers possessed an informed and evolving political consciousness, framed through everyday experiences and nationalist ideals and challenges portrayals of the event as impulsive or unplanned.