The Times of India archives have no shortage of images of chaos and destruction. One of the earliest is a small photograph showing the utter devastation of the Bombay docks after the explosion on April 14, 1944, of the SS Fort Stikine, a ship carrying ammunition.Since then there have been images of the 1993 riots, multiple bomb blasts, violent agitations of all kinds and the 2008 terrorist attacks (though by then the images had gone digital). This is a turbulent city and its newspaper of record bears witness to this.Yet even among these the images of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) Mutiny that broke out on February 18, 1946, stand out. This was a strike that started among naval ratings (sailors) in Bombay, sparked by immediate grievances of poor quality food, but built on longer standing problems over how the regular sailors were being treated by the officers, both British and Indian.With a rapidity that surprised all involved, the protests exploded beyond just the naval barracks in Bombay into the streets outside, and also into naval establishments in Madras, Calcutta, Karachi and Vizag. But it was rapidly suppressed by the British armed forces, especially after leaders of the nationalist movement refused to extend their support. Seven sailors and one officer died in the firing, but there were more casualties in the city outside. When it was all over, 476 sailors were permanently discharged from the navy.In pic: Rioting on the streets of BombayThe images of the RIN Mutiny in the Times Archives stand out for their unfamiliarity. It has been mentioned only in passing, if at all, in history books. There is a memorial in Mumbai, but such a generically nautical one, a statue of a sailor at a ship’s wheel, that few people would connect it with a violent uprising.The images are also confusing because their cause isn’t clear. Most pictures of protests have banners, placards and clearly distinguishable sides. Some pictures of the RIN protests show the marches that the rebelling navy ratings took out, so there is some semblance of organised protest, not random chaos. But what were the flags they were following? Who were the leaders of the marches?One picture does appear to show an Indian nationalist flag hoisted on a flagpole that must have held the British or some other Imperial Navy flag. Yet the images of British soldiers seem oddly on the sidelines, not in the face of the protests. They were brought in to end the mutiny with crushing force, yet there is a sense of their being detached, as if this was something they were no longer invested in.In pic: Casualties of protestsThe images show furious rioting and burning in still identifiable streets. The Art Deco curves of the city’s early 20th century buildings are visible and occasionally there is a signboard for an enterprise that is still running — J Ross & Company, for example, is still bracing the city with its back supports and orthopaedic aids from its shop in the Prarthana Samaj area.But it is obviously a different era — tram tracks and an image of a burning tram show that, as do the uniforms of the policemen and the number of men wearing dhotis as work wear. A few pictures are not from Bombay, but Karachi, where riots also broke out in sympathy. It is a pre-Independence reminder of how close the two cities once were, part of Bombay Presidency till 1935, and closely bound by trade and institutions later.In pic: Casualties of protestsAs we approach the 70th anniversary of India’s Independence this August, some of the other events around it, like the RIN Mutiny, are being reconsidered and remembered. Partition, whose cataclysmic impact has always shadowed the impulse to celebrate Independence, has now got its own museum in Amritsar. It is possibly a sign of the high regard that Sardar Patel is now held that his achievement, the integration of princely states, is getting some deserved visibility — an exhibition on this opened recently in Mumbai.The RIN Mutiny has also been the subject of an exhibition put together by the artist Vivan Sundaram and the art theorist Ashish Rajadhyaksha. Sundaram has been interested in this history ever since the 1970s when he had met BC Dutt, the young rating at the HMIS Talwar, the training school in Colaba, whose personal protest over bad food helped trigger the uprising.Dutt, like all those arrested for the mutiny, was never allowed back into the navy — contrary to assurances given by Congress leaders like Patel — but unlike the others, who disappeared from sight, he continued to live in Bombay, where sympathisers helped him get jobs at the Free Press Journal and then the Lintas advertising agency. He wrote a memoir titled Mutiny of the Innocents, which was out of print for years, but was reprinted by Bhasha Prakashan last year.In pic: British troops getting ready to act on the streets of BombayOver the years, Sundaram and Rajadhyaksha assembled multiple sources of information about the event. They found recordings of interviews with Dutt and others. Newspaper reports conveyed the shock of the event in India and abroad. Personal collections gave them access to military communications about how to respond and then, after the mutiny was crushed, the complicated question on how to handle those arrested. All this has become a multimedia exhibit, including a steel container in the shape of a ship in which audiences can have an audio-visual experience of the material.The main impression that comes through all this is the confusion of the event. It was largely unplanned and, while it rapidly attracted support, this never translated into a really structured protest. The ratings tried to attach their protest to the nationalist movement, and a few leaders, like Aruna Asaf Ali, did respond favourably, but they were quickly overruled by more senior nationalist leaders, from both the Congress and the Muslim League.The only politicians who supported them fully were the communists, which was hardly a recommendation at the time when other parties were becoming increasingly wary of the true agenda and allegiances of the Indian communist parties. Most nationalist leaders were preoccupied with the more formal movements towards Independence and clearly saw the naval mutiny as an unwanted, even dangerous, distraction.In pic: A sailor being arrestedThis lack of support has become a controversial point, with some commentators alleging that the mutineers were betrayed. Particular criticism is reserved for the Indian naval officers who, sources like Dutt allege, were partly responsible for the problems and then, once the mutiny was crushed, were intent on salvaging their reputation and status. This explains the refusal to rehabilitate the mutineers and also why, when Dutt tried to get freedom fighter status, he had to fight for decades before gaining the privilege.This sounds all the worse when one argues, as some have, that the RIN Mutiny may have been the real motivation for the British to leave India. Ten years ago, ET’s Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar wrote a column where he recalled a seminar in 1967, for the 20th anniversary of Independence, where the then British high commissioner, John Freeman, declared “the British were petrified of a repeat of the 1857 Mutiny, since this time they feared they would be slaughtered to the last man”.As proof of this, Freeman noted that in 1857 the Indian troops were limited in number but in 1946 they had increased hugely, due to World War II, to over 2.5 million soldiers — and there was also the nebulous influence of Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army. This argument can be debated, not least by the fact that 1945 had seen the election of Clement Attlee’s UK government which was pro-Independence. But just the fact that someone like Freeman could state this suggests that the belief may have helped sway diehard British opponents of Indian independence.In pic: British troops getting ready to act on the streets of BombayIf politicians don’t come out of this looking good, the images of the mutiny also suggest why they had little choice in the decisions they took. These were proof that chaos could boil over across India at any time, and soon would with Partition, but at least in geographically limited areas. If a city as ordered as Bombay could descend into this chaos, the prospects for the country as a whole were fearsome and all the more so when it involved those responsible for keeping the order.This is why perhaps the only parallel with the RIN Mutiny for a vision of really fearsome disorder was the Bombay police riots of 1982, another quickly suppressed and determinedly forgotten event (which is also vividly documented in the ToI archives). Both events have hints of the kind of anarchy and institutional collapse that, despite all the failures of the Indian state, has been relatively rare in India. Perhaps it is not just an accident of time that their memories have been suppressed and why, despite this recent excellent exhibition, the RIN Mutiny is unlikely ever to feature much in our history books.