ON 21 October, 1943, when the Second World War had nearly entered its last phase, Subhas Chandra Bose issued his famous Delhi Chalo call from Japanese-controlled Singapore. He announced the formation of the Azad Hind Government and the Indian National Army, the latter had rallied about 20,000 of the 60,000 Indian prisoners of war in Japan. Between March and June 1944 the INA made its brief entry into India, laying siege to Imphal along with Japaneestroops. But this campaign ended in an utter military failure even though it had a great psychological impact on the popular Indian mind.

In November 1945 British rulers began public trial of INA soldiers in Delhi's Red Fort. This provoked a very powerful and determined wave of protests in Calcutta. On 20 November, students took out nightlong procession demanding release of INA prisoners and when two students were killed in police firing, thousands of taxi drivers, tram workers and corporation employees joined the students. Pitched battles were fought on Calcutta streets on 22-23 November leaving 33 people killed in police firing. Between 11 and 13 February, Calcutta was shaken by a second wave of protests when Abdul Rashid of INA was sentenced to seven years' rigorous imprisonment 84 people were killed and 300 injured during these three days of street battle.

While Calcutta exploded in protest over the INA trials, Bombay was rocked by the heroic naval mutiny. The sequence of events had a close resemblance to the Black Sea Fleet mutiny in the Russian revolution of 1905 which has been immortalised by the great Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein in his all-time classic Battleship Potemkin. In India there has been no film on the Bombay mutiny, but playwright director Utpal Dutt did pay tribute to the great naval fighters in his inspiring play Kallol in the 60s.

On 18 February, 1946, ratings in the Bombay signalling school Talwar went on hunger-strike against bad food and racist insults. The strike soon spread to Castle and Fort Barracks on shore and 22 ships in Bombay harbour raised the Congress, League and Communist flags on the mastheads of the rebel fleet. The Naval Central Strike Committee combined issues like better food and equal pay for white and Indian sailors with the demands of release of INA and other political prisoners and withdrawal of Indian troops from Indonesia. On 21 February, fighting broke out at Castle Barracks when ratings tried to break through the armed encirclement. By 22 February the strike had spread to naval bases all over the country involving no less than 78 ships, 20 shore establishments and 20,000 ratings.

The Bombay unit of CPI, supported by Congress Socialist leaders like Aruna Asaf Ali and Achyut Patwardhan organised a general strike on 22 February and despite Congress and League opposition 30,000 workers struck work, almost all mills were closed and according to official figures 228 people were killed and 1046 injured in street fighting. Senior Congress leaders only intervened to end the mutiny. On 23 February, Patel succeeded in persuading the ratings to surrender on the assurance that their demands would be conceded and nobody would be victimised. But the assurance was soon forgotten with Patel pointing out that “discipline in the Army cannot be tampered with”, Nehru emphasising the need to curb “the wild outburst of violence” and Gandhi condemning the ratings for setting bad “a unbecoming example for India”.