"King and Another Country" : Shrabani Basu
“So what did Indians do during the First World War, daddy?” is not a question many ask. Yet India contributed nearly £250 Million and 1.2 million fighting men to the Allied powers’ cause – 72,000 of whom never returned home. Sharbani Basu in her book "King and Another Country" tried to unfold some pages from the Colonial history. And results are very revealing and some facts are shocking also. She lay her hand on British archive, interviewed family members of soldiers fought for Britishers in World War, she also collected rare pictures to substantiate her findings.It is also very pathetic that despite Indian soldiers fought with best of their ability under the most hostile climatic conditions without sufficient protective uniform. Many died facing extreme of climate rather than fighting the Germans.But no body honored these bravehearts thus they have gone in anal of history unsung.
The problem is that while the war is seen as a fight for freedom, India, unlike Britain’s white dominions, was not free, and in August 1917 the war cabinet estimated it would take Indians 500 years to learn to rule themselves. And the soldiers could not claim to represent all of India. Under Britain’s very special apartheid recruitment system, Indians were divided into martial and non-martial races. Lord Roberts, the commander-in-chief, argued that the warlike races of northern India could not be compared to the effeminate peoples of the south. Even then, Roberts felt: “Native officers can never take the place of British officers. Eastern races, however brave and accustomed to war, do not possess the qualities that go to make good leaders of men.” So there were no Indian officers and many British soldiers who encountered Indians for the first time took an instinctive dislike. For John Charteris, a staff officer of the British services, Indians were the dregs of the Western Front. He described them as “not as good or nearly as good as British troops. How could they be?” And Frank Richards, a private of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers, said “the bloody niggers were no good at fighting”.
Sharabani Basu quotes neither view as she sets out to tell the story of how 138,000 Indians who fought in France overcame both racism and a world they had never encountered before to win six Victoria Crosses on this front. With the Indians largely illiterate – Illustrated Magazine sent by London clubs to the front was very popular – Sharbani had no soldiers’ memoirs to work with. But using letters written by those who were literate, she paints a vivid picture of an Indian view of trench warfare that was very different to that of the British. So while the wounded were well looked after in British hospitals, English nurses were not allowed to care for them, the British horrified that there may be racial mixing. In one Brighton hospital, the restrictions were so severe that it was called the “Kitchener Hospital Jail” and led to a shoot-out. In contrast, the French were racially more tolerant. Their women were allowed to offer floral bouquet and even “mothered” some of the wounded Indian soldiers.
The book is also a grim reminder of ugly caste system prevailing in India during that time.. Separate food, separate water for soldiers of different castes and different religions. It vividly describes the special arrangements made by the British to accommodate caste and religion. "It almost created a logistical nightmare to establish separate kitchens for Hindus and Muslims. In many cases, cooking was done very close to the front lines, so that Indian soldiers get hot curries. But in the process, several orderlies were killed in cross-fires as they ferried the food to the trenches. It must have been so strange for Western soldiers then," shares she. Sharbani's most fascinating character in the book Sukha, an 'untouchable'. "When he died of pneumonia in 1915, neither his Hindu nor Muslim comrades accepted his body for burial. Thankfully, St Nicholas Church in Brockenhurst offered a space in the graveyard for him as he fought for them.
Across the 38 to 40 miles of British trenches in France and Belgium, one third was accounted for by Indian soldiers. They showed incredible persistence and loyalty despite the harsh living conditions.
One such soldier who faced the reality of trench warfare was Khudadad Khan, the first Indian soldier to have received a Victoria Cross. His grandson, Abdul Samad mentions how the remembrance of his courage is passed down family generations:“My grandfather was a machine gunner and all the rest of his group were killed by the German shelling. A shell hit him, but despite this, right to the end he kept trying to stop the Germans so they wouldn’t think everyone had died on the other side.”
Such acts of bravery from Indian soldiers fighting a war that was not theirs is just one small insight into the sense of loyalty they felt to their colonial masters, the British.
The concept of ‘izzat’ reigned heavily among the soldiers. With 400,000 Muslim soldiers and 130,000 Sikh soldiers from the Punjab, these ‘warrior’ tribes were hand selected by the British Raj for their fighting agility and strength, and dubbed as the ‘martial races’.
Historian Jahan Mahmood explains: “The British martial theory was really very much a concept that certain races were much more warlike and had more stamina on the battlefield than others.”
But despite their courage and bravery, the loss of life of these Indian soldiers on the Western Front was considerable. Also conditions in the trenches were ill-suited to the Indians who were not used to the climate and were forced to fight with machinery that they had not come across before.
In many cases, they were forced to improvise, and use their own tactical stamina to hold the line. Examples include jam tins as makeshift grenades, and a tube filled with TNT that was later dubbed the ‘Bangalore torpedo’.
The soldiers even raced racism from both sides. One German soldier reportedly wrote in 1915: “At first we spoke of them with contempt. Today we look on them in a different light ….
“In no time they were in our trenches and truly these brown enemies are not to be despised. With butt ends, bayonets, swords and daggers we fought each other and we had bitter hard work.”
Eventually, after a year, the British realised their struggles on foreign soil, and sent them instead to the Mediterranean to Mesopotamia and Gallipoli.
Historian Shrabani Basu, who’s latest book, For King and Another Country: Indian Soldiers on the Western Front 1914-18, has widely spoken about the lack of awareness of soldiers from the Indian subcontinent:
“Few people are aware that 1.5 million Indians fought alongside the British – that there were men in turbans in the same trenches as the Tommies …
For the Indian reader, however, one of the most fascinating reads would be to find Rabindranath Tagore's connection with English war poet Wilfred Owen, who was killed in November 1918, just before the war ended. He had inscribed in his notebook the words of Tagore: "When I go from hence, let this be my parting-word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable." And then, of course, how Madras was actually bombed by the German ship, SMS Emden, in September 1914. "Such was the impact of the strike that the term 'Emden' actually entered the Tamil lexicon, meaning a 'person who dares and works with precision'," says the author.
.jpg "A Gumnam Actress Strips Nude to Protest Auto/taxi Fare Hike")
