Heart-rending letters of Indian soldiers who fought in World War I
A scholar has spent close to a decade trying to recover the lost experiences of Indian soldiers who fought in the Great War.
Photo Credit: Courtesy: Professor Prabhjot Parmar
“On the 19th of November I began writing a letter and found that the ink was frozen in the inkstand. I broke the ink-pot, took out the ink, melted it over the fire, and wrote the letter to you with the melted ink.” – December 8, 1915
Over a century ago, the first battalions of the Indian Expeditionary Force left Indian shores for Europe. Fourteen months later, in a letter written by Signaller Natha Singh to Dafadar Wazir Singh from somewhere in France, two things resonate sharply: the isolation of being in a foreign land, and the overwhelming need many of these soldiers felt to communicate with fellow countrymen. The First World War was in full swing. One-and-a-half million Indian troops travelled to countries like France and Belgium, Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), Turkey and parts of British East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Zanzibar), China, Hong Kong and off the coast of South and North America.
The contribution of Indian soldiers to the Allied effort in WWI has stayed largely in the shadows, though the country provided more manpower to the conflict than any other nation. Dr Prabhjot Parmar, professor at the University of the Fraser Valley in Canada, has embarked on a project to recover the lost experiences of Indian soldiers who fought in this war, through letters, literature, photography, documentary, and architecture.
Indian cavalry in France (photo published in a paper in 1915).[Courtesy Prabhjot Parmar]
Parmar was in Delhi some months ago to track down descendants of WWI soldiers’ families, travelling to villages in Punjab that sent a great number of men to the war. During a lecture she gave in the Capital recently, Parmar, who has spent a good deal of time reading the archive of the extracts of censored and translated letters, said, “These letters are akin to forgotten voices. They have become testimonials of lived experience, of impressions related to the military life of the Indian soldiers and the social milieu in which they were placed.”
She says that exploring these letters of soldiers is of real importance because they provide understanding of the human side of the war. “They also give us a glimpse of who these soldiers were, where they came from, why they went to war, what sociological conditions persisted at that time in India. They tell us what the journey to the war front was like, and of what happened to these men in the war.”
An injured Indian soldier narrating a letter to a scribe.[Courtesy Prabhjot Parmar]
Letters from soldiers
Many young recruits had never left their villages or towns, so travelling by ship to cross the Black Sea was both exciting and disturbing. A number of letters betray the cluelessness of many of these recruits. They were not told – or did not understand – where they were going or where the front was. “The only way they could express their anxieties about the horrors of war, exposure to the West, the experiences of living in a foreign country, and so on was through letters,” Parmar said.
Parmar has tracked the role of the Indian soldier in WW1 from before the first shipload of soldiers left. In her research she came across the mass drives for recruitment that took place across India, when volunteers from small towns and remote rural villages lined up enthusiastically. The province of Punjab, which then stretched from Delhi to Rawalpindi, became the main centre for recruitment.
Indian Expeditionary Forces
“Most of the soldiers were from highly impoverished families,” Parmar said. “Conditions in rural India were deplorable at the time. Many families sent men for war so they could earn some money. There was no rain that year, which meant no farming.”
Remuneration for fighting was fixed at Rs 11 per month – and Rs 7 for the lower ranks. Some families considered this lucrative and did not hesitate in sending all the adult male members in the house to the war. 800,000 troops, including infantry, cavalrymen, laundrymen, cooks, horsemen and lettermen were gathered under the banner of the Indian Expeditionary Forces.
Sikh soldiers singing hymns in a camp.[from Sikhnet.com]
Most of these Indian soldiers were illiterate, coming from agricultural communities. They would narrate their feelings, observations and experiences in Gurumukhi, Hindi or Urdu to the scribes. But not all these emotions were transferred to the written letter. Cautious of any sensitive information being leaked, the British army heavily censored their letters, checking especially for references to combat, blackening objectionable words, deleting lines and sometimes even holding back the letters in entirety. Parmar says, apart from battlefield information, “details on white women or sexuality were promptly deleted, along with any accounts of suffering or death, which could perhaps have given rise to political instability back home.’’
In France
When the first battalion of Indian troops marched through the streets of Marseille on September 26, 1914, French men and women lined up to celebrate, ecstatic such a large contingent from distant shores had travelled to fight in their country.
“This was a new experience for Indian men, who were used to being the subjects of whites,” said Parmar. There is evidence in some letters of the love and affection received by Indian soldiers when they stayed in the villages and houses of the French,’’ she said. In one letter, a soldier writes that as he was leaving the old woman of the house began to cry, crying more than when she lost her own sons in the war.
Sikh Red Cross orderly carrying a wounded soldier at Fauquissart France[from Sikhnet.com]
As the war went on, soldiers were exposed to an utterly new mode of life. The cold weather, verdant landscape, white women, and lack of poverty are recurring themes in many letters. Exhilarated by the beauty of France and the life of its people, some even began to wish that the war would not end.
“The country is exceedingly pleasant. In it India is forgotten. I do not wish the war to end soon. I should like to die in this country and I have no intention of returning to India. If you want anything, write to me. May the Holy Guru save me from India?’’ Sowar Natha Singh wrote to Sapuran Singh (Lyallpur District, Punjab), in Urdu, from FPO 19, France, on January 4, 1916.
Dominant narratives
Coming home was a common theme of these letters. War was the second-dominant narrative, with talk of loyalty, fighting for the honour of their kaum (community), family and regiment. Soldiers wrote poignantly about their friends being killed, death, martyrdom and the deplorable conditions. Some drew an analogy with Indian religion.
“Do not think that this is war. This is not war. It is the ending of the world. This is just such a war as was related in the Mahabharata about our forefathers,” wrote a wounded Indian soldier from a hospital in England on January 29, 1915.
Around 74,000 Indian soldiers died in WWI, with Mesopotamia alone recording more than 24,000 Indian deaths. Soldiers were made prisoners-of-war and suffered terribly in war camps.
Parmar has been studying the letters written by Indian soldiers since 2006. She says they have made a deep emotional impact, but also leave her physically jolted. “Many of these letters now exist only in small extracts,” she said. “But even then the poignancy and the raw emotions of some of the letters bring tears to my eyes.’’
Indian soldiers being greeted with flowers in London on St. George’s Day during WW1.[from Sikhnet.com]
Parmar is a descendant of a family that has served in the Indian armed forces for seven consecutive generations. She first encountered the military history of WWI as childhood fables narrated by her grandfather. “Babajee was a very old man when I was a child,” she said. “He had a long, floating beard which gave us an impression of him being a very wise and learned man, who would tell us these fascinating stories from France. We didn’t know what Paris and Marseille was!’’
Though no record of her grandfather’s involvement in WWI has been found yet, Parmar reckons that her great-grandfather might have fought in the war. “When we tried to find the records and ask other people from family, hardly anyone knew of their involvement in the war," she said. "There is a lot of ignorance amongst people about the contribution of their ancestors in this war.”
Parmar is currently finishing the manuscript of Dark-Skinned Warriors: Cultural Representations of Indian Soldiers in the Great War. She says of the participant countries India has the least information or records about its men. The state and the national archive department have over the years lost invaluable records due to ill maintenance and apathy.
“The descendants of many of these soldiers remain unaware of the contributions made by their ancestors, as there are no records available for most of the soldiers," she said. "With no surviving soldiers to narrate their experiences, a treasure trove of information has been lost.’’
As nations around the world remember their fallen, it seems the only way to remember the Indian soldiers who fought is through their own words, found in long-lost letters.
A sticker of an Indian soldier issued in 1919.[from Sikhnet.com]
All quotations and information on WWI soldiers in this copy has been shared by Professor Prabhjot Parmar based on her research, lectures and conversations withScroll.
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