The First World War marked an important watershed. For the first time, Indian soldiers saw active service on European soil. They fought in all the major theatres of war, including on the Western Front, in East Africa and the Middle East, and on land, air and sea, alongside white British troops and soldiers from across the Empire and Commonwealth. Their many awards for bravery, as well as their war graves and memorials on the battlefields, are testimony to their sacrifice in the service of Britain. Unrecognised for decades, their contributions are only now being acknowledged.

In August 1914, soon after the outbreak of war when the British Expeditionary Force had been almost wiped out, Britain called on the British Indian Army to fill the vital manpower gap left in its defences. The first 28,500 Indian Army troops arrived on the Western Front on 26 September. They played a crucial role in holding the line and are said to have arrived just 'in the nick of time'. Indian soldiers were deployed widely and infantry divisions fought in the battles of Ypres, Neuve Chapelle and Loos. They also served in East Africa, Palestine, Mesopotamia, now modern-day Iraq, and Gallipoli.

Indian soldiers did not fight as a separate army, but alongside British units, which led to a certain amount of social interaction. These contacts were fostered by the common experience of the horrors of trench warfare. An insight into Indian soldiers’ experiences can be gleaned from the Censored Indian Mails, which highlight the British authorities’ anxieties about sedition and loyalty of Indian soldiers. Soldiers’ letters reveal their anguish and the shock of relentless ariel bombardment, machine-gunning and exploding shells. They were also horrified by the use of poison gas, bombs and mechanised warfare. This impacted on morale. The heavy losses Indian soldiers experienced led to the perception that they were merely cannon fodder, fed into the line first in front of white soldiers. This perception was further fuelled by the way in which Indian troops, recovered from injuries, were time-and-time again returned to the trenches, leading to allegations of discrimination.

Cavalry divisions still played a crucial role in warfare at the outbreak of the First World War, and the British Army saw cavalry charges and mounted infantry as tactically crucial throughout the war. It drew on the Indian Army for further support, supplying the 1st and 2nd cavalry divisions, which saw action on the Western Front. Unlike infantry divisions, which were withdrawn in October 1915 and redeployed to Mesopotamia, these cavalry divisions remained in France until March 1918, fighting in the battles of the Somme in 1916 and Cambrai in 1917.

Indra Lal Roy came to Britain for his schooling in 1908. Keen to join Britain’s war effort, he enlisted with the Royal Flying Corps, the precursor of the Royal Air Force. He was one of four students to receive a temporary commission. Another was Lieutenant H S Malik, who was the only Indian RFC pilot to survive the war. A former student at Balliol College, Oxford, he initially worked for the French Red Cross and then joined the French Air Service. RFC General Henderson lobbied strongly on his behalf for him to join the Corps. He fought in the battle of Caporetto in Italy.

Like Malik, Roy had to overcome many obstacles to receive his commission in summer 1917, initially flying with Squadron 56, though after a series of crashes he was deemed unfit to fly. He successfully fought this assessment and managed to join George McElroy’s Squadron 40 and became a successful fighter pilot. Between 6 and 19 July 1918, in only 170 hours and 15 minutes of flying time, he shot down 10 enemy aircraft. He died in action, aged 19 on 22 July 1918. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Hasty arrangements for wounded Indian soldiers had to be made in Britain after plans to create hospitals in France and Egypt fell through. Temporary hospitals were set up along Britain’s southern coast not far from ports where ships carrying wounded from France were docking. In Brighton, three buildings were converted into medical facilities: a workhouse became the Kitchener Hospital, which could accommodate some 1,500 patients, and a school became the York Place Hospital. The most spectacular of these converted military hospitals was the Royal Pavilion, built in the early 1800s for King George IV. Combining architectural and design influences from India and China, it represented an exoticised 'Eastern' or 'Oriental' style, which emerged as the British Empire expanded. The Brighton Pavilion housed over 600 Indian wounded from the Western Front.

White Indian Medical Service staff and doctors cared for the wounded with the assistance of Indian medical students training in Britain, who were given temporary commissions; dressers assisting medical doctors with instrument preparation and wound dressing, and interpreters came from the Indian Field Ambulance Training Corps, initially recruited by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948). A wide range of roles from assistant surgeons to ward orderlies, cooks, washermen and barbers were all staffed by Indians.

The India Office and War Office wanted Indian soldiers to receive the same level of care as their British counterparts. These efforts were made in part to ensure the loyalty of the soldiers, but also to quash dissent in Indian political circles connected to the anti-colonial struggle and to counter German propaganda and seditious literature that sought to foster desertions.

Burial grounds and memorials

In the military hospitals along Britain’s southern coast, some Indian soldiers did not survive their injuries. This meant that the British authorities had to make arrangements for the correct observance of burial rites according to the respective religious customs of the dead.

Gurkha, Hindu and Sikh soldiers were cremated on the South Downs near Patcham where three concrete platforms mark the place of the cremations. In all, 53 soldiers were cremated there. The setting up of the cremation site, along with others in Netley and Brockenhurst, were unusual in their exception as they did not conform with the rules laid out in the 1902 Cremation Act which stipulated cremations could only take place in a crematorium.

The Chattri, unveiled at the site near Patcham in 1921, is a lasting memorial to the fallen Indian soldiers of the First World War. Every year in June, a remembrance service is held there.

Separate arrangements were made for Muslim soldiers through the Imam of the Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking after he protested regarding inadequate provisions. This led to the institution of a burial ground at Horsell Common, not far from the Mosque, in 1915. The burial ground was designed by the India Office Surveyor, Herbert Winney. 19 Muslim soldiers were initially buried there. During the Second World War, a further five were laid to rest there. After the site was vandalised in the 1960s, the soldiers were reburied in Brookwood Military Cemetery in 1968. During the centenary commemorations of the First World War, in 2015, the Burial Ground was restored as a Peace Memorial Garden dedicated to the Muslim soldiers of the British Indian Army who fought in both world wars.

Overall, some 135,000 South Asian men served on the Western Front, and some 9,000 lives were lost. Many soldiers were highly decorated, including Khudadad Khan, who was the first Indian recipient of the Victoria Cross. According to the War Office, across Europe, Africa and the Middle East, some 53,000 men were killed, 64,000 wounded and close to 3,000 were missing. The war and its aftermath fundamentally changed the relationship between South Asians and Britain. South Asian soldiers’ experiences on the battlefield shattered some of the illusion of European superiority which was so central to the rhetoric of Empire. In the wake of the war, calls for greater autonomy and for independence grew stronger. These calls would initially be disappointed.

Credit: Remaking Britain team (Rehana Ahmed, Aleena Din, Sumita Mukherjee, Susheila Nasta, Maya Parmar, Florian Stadtler, Rozina Visram).