History, as we know it, is often written about important past events that occurred. War and attacks are quintessential examples of that. However, we seldom hear about events that never happened. That sentence, in itself, may seem like a paradox, but the history of events that never occurred can also provide incredible insight into the workings of a time of the past. Professor Mukund Padmanabhan’s book delves into something similar. The book, titled ‘The Great Flap of 1942: How the Raj Panicked Over a Japanese Non-Invasion’, explores the period between December 1941 to mid-1942, when the British administration in India panicked over the belief that Japan was launching a full-fledged attack on India. The book launch, held on 15 February 2024, was attended by various students, faculty, and members of the administration, including the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nirmala Rao.
Professor Mukund Padmanabhan introduces the book by talking about how people back then saw the fate of Madras (now Chennai) as parallel to that of Singapore. Madras and Singapore were also known to have excellent relations with each other. So, when Singapore fell to the Japanese, massive panic enveloped the British administration in Madras. Subsequently, information (which later turned out to be false) regarding a Japanese fleet heading towards Madras spread across the administration. This information was then backed up by the panic that set in after Japan invaded Malay in April 1942. What followed was a massive exodus in Madras, Calcutta, and Vishakhapatnam. Seventy-five to ninety per cent of Madras had evacuated, and the only people left were deemed necessary. Seventeen per cent of Calcutta was emptied in seventeen days, and Vishakhapatnam was emptied entirely. Madras was the only city that issued an advisory advising the non-essential people to leave. Calcutta and Bombay contemplated releasing such advisories. These cities were not the only ones to witness an exodus; Jamshedpur, Kodaikanal, and Ooty also had people evacuating the city. The evacuation pattern observed was similar everywhere – Non-native businessmen left first, then women and children, and then everyone else. In the case of Kodaikanal, the missionaries and white people were the first to leave. The evacuation was not restricted to human beings. The police were ordered to go to the Madras Zoo and shoot all the carnivorous and poisonous animals.
He then threw light on the British expectation of being attacked from the Northeast and was not expecting an attack from the Southeast Asian side until the attack on Singapore. The Japanese, it turns out, never planned on invading India; they just wanted to create disruptions to rid Asia of the British. Once they took over Singapore, the Japanese used radio to spread propaganda. The British, in counter, used BBC Radio to spread their word. However, the event of the Japanese invasion, in the end, became a non-event. He goes on to point out how the book is not written in a typical chronological order but rather in three sections. The sections are about the relationship between Singapore and Malaya, the panic and the rumours, and then the exodus in Madras. He then sheds light on the mistakes he felt he made while writing the book – assuming all the files and books that he read would stay fresh in his memory. However, the most important and exciting part of the book launch (this may be a biased opinion) was when he talked about his approach to writing this book and the takeaways. He spoke about how he knew he did not want a chronological book but one that was divided into sections to flesh out the topic he was tackling. The key concerns were reader attention span and immersion into the book, and “keep the reader engaged” was the motto he was working around. That is why he chose to cater to a broader audience, not an academic one. The key takeaway was realising how little was written about this large, primarily unmanned exodus, then and now. The newspapers back then seemed not to cover this extensively, and how most people chose not to document this event, or non-event, was very intriguing to uncover. An engaging Q&A session and the book signing followed the book launch.
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