Nearly 10,000 forgotten Indian Army soldiers added to WW1 records

By Asia Samachar  | Britain |

Nearly 10,000 Indian Army servicemen who died during the First World War are being formally added to official casualty records, in what the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) says is its largest single update since the Second World War.

According to a BBC report, the names of 9,909 servicemen have been identified after years of research into handwritten registers held at the Lahore Museum in Pakistan. The records document around 320,000 soldiers from pre-partition Punjab who served during the war.

Amandeep Madra, who helped initiate the effort through the UK Punjab Heritage Association (UKPHA), said he first came across 34 handwritten First World War registers at the Lahore Museum in 2014.

“I had no idea how much work that would turn into,” Madra, now a senior programme officer at the Gates Foundation and formerly strategy director at GSK Global Health, wrote on LinkedIn.

FOR MORE STORIES ON SIKH SOLDIERS, CLICK HERE

A decade later, he said, work involving UKPHA colleagues, the University of Greenwich — particularly Prof Gavin Rand — and the CWGC had resulted in the identification of 9,909 Indian Army soldiers whose deaths had never been officially recorded.

“As of today, all 9,909 are being added to the CWGC’s official record,” Madra wrote, describing it as the largest single addition since the Second World War.

The BBC reported that around 1.4 million people from the Indian subcontinent — today India, Pakistan and Bangladesh — served in the British Indian Army during the First World War.

In the years after the conflict, officials travelled through Punjab’s towns and villages to record the names and fates of servicemen from the region. The surviving leather-bound registers, many embossed with village names, eventually ended up in the Lahore Museum.

Volunteers and researchers spent years digitising and analysing the fragile handwritten material.

The CWGC said most of the newly recognised men had died from injuries away from the battlefield and were excluded from official commemoration because of rulings made by the British Indian government at the time. That decision has now been overturned.

The BBC said about 40% of the newly recognised dead were Muslim, while Sikhs and Hindus each accounted for around 25%.

Madra said the project had brought Sikh, Hindu, Muslim and Christian soldiers into official commemoration together for the first time.

“Records like these don’t just correct a database — they give families back a piece of who they are and their role in the world,” he wrote.

The CWGC said the inclusion also formed part of a wider effort to move beyond Euro-centric accounts of the First World War and reflect the conflict’s global reality.

The report can also be sharpened into a more Sikh-focused version, given that about one-quarter of the newly recognised soldiers were Sikhs.

CHECK OUT MORE FEEDBACKS FOR THIS REPORT AT FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM