Book excerpt: Here is an authentic account of a brief, momentous event that preceded India s Independence fifty years ago. This is a personal account by the author, a junior naval officer at the time, caught by chance at the centre of the disturbances in Bombay, and it indicates their far reaching implications the historic trials in New Delhi, when Nehru was one of the defence lawyers of the Indian National Army, Gandhi s philosophy of non-violence and the significance of India becoming the first Republic of Commonwealth.