Brief History of Navy Day

On 21 October 1944, the Royal Indian Navy celebrated Navy Day for the first time. The idea behind celebrating Navy Day was to foster greater outreach and increase awareness about the Navy among the public. This involved conducting parades at various port cities, as well as holding public meetings at inland centres. This was met with considerable success and aroused great enthusiasm among the public.

Seeing its success, it was decided to organise similar functions every year on a larger scale and later in the season when the weather was cooler. Accordingly, Navy Day 1945 was celebrated at Bombay and Karachi on 01 December.

In due course and until 1972, Navy Day came to be celebrated on 15 December and the week in which 15 December fell was observed as the Navy Week.

At the Senior Naval Officers Conference in May 1972, it was decided that Navy Day would be celebrated on 04 December to commemorate the very successful naval actions in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal during the Indo Pakistan War and Navy Week would be observed from 01 to 07 December.