This book is a conscious mapping of the war landscape from the perspective of Indian peasant-soldier communities, writes ANANYA BORGOHAIN
This is the centenary year of the beginning of the First World War, which started on July 28, 1914. David Omissi, military historian, a senior lecturer at the University of Hull and an acclaimed author comes up with an edited collection of letters written to and from Indian soldiers fighting the war for the British in Europe, and their families in the subcontinent. Titled Indian Voices of the Great War (Penguin), this volume is an enlightening insight into pre-Independence India, subservient to both colonial and the native feudal power. It is a pertinent archival work on the voices of India’s own soldiers who speak about the war front, right from the war front. These innumerable letters are at once affecting, funny and vivid. They demonstrate the clash of identity as well as the culture shocks their subaltern selves (mostly from rural and peasant communities) elicit in the West.
These letters were meticulously scrutinised by censors, much to the knowledge of the soldiers, and have been preserved all this while. While most of them were passed, some were withheld and many words were deleted. Almost every letter has an informative footnote attached to it.
The collection begins with a glossary of military terms, moving on to the chronology of the war from 1914 till 1918, and has a foreword by Sir Mark Tully, the former Bureau Chief of the BBC.
In August 1914, as the Germans advanced to attack France and Belgium, more allied troops were required for battle at the Western Front. The strength of Indian Army then was 161,000, and the lahore and Meerut infantry divisions were selected to fight in Europe. An Indian battalion had 764 men on an average but by early November, the 47th Sikhs had only 385 men capable of the same. Facing one of the most atrocious events in history, a soldier writes, “This is not war; it is the ending of the world. When none is left, there will be peace.” Or as another writes, “How much can I write about the warIJ It would be like writing another Mahabharata.”
It is filled with high praises for King George V and yet higher praises for England and its people (probably because they were aware that their letters would be checked before being passedIJ). While some letters describe the privileges that benevolent England bestows upon them: “We get meals four times a day, we get milk too”; others reveal the distressing times: “I am taking nothing but a picture back to India. There is nothing left of me. I have lost a hand and a leg.” There are the hilarious ones as well: “Shall I get married here or will you be displeasedIJ...If you will send the medicine (for malingering), I can manage it, otherwise not. A Bengali babu told me about it, its name is Timuru.” Or, “Is my parrot still dead or aliveIJ” There are some intriguing ones which the censor deemed curious, implying that either the soldier was drawing from his imagination, or had fallen into bad company, like this one: “This France is a very fine country. The father and mother invite a visitor to kiss them. If he declines, they get offended. In the presence of the father, one will say to two others ‘go and sleep together’, and they will all laugh... nothing is prohibited, whatever may be done.”
What is fascinating is that there is also a mention of women soldiers fighting under the guise of men. While one letter praises the “honourable French women joining the war”, another describes an Indian girl dressed as a man being detected by the infantry: “Bhuri Singh, for whom she was acting as the groom, knew all about the matter and had her sent home. Then he himself went home for ten days and married her.” Antithetically, there are also references to women being ‘given over’ to other men since their own have left them for “a war from which nobody returns”.
Soldiers also were concerned about the availability of religious artefacts — kirpans, Granths and Qurans. As Omissi points out, “Religion clearly permeated almost every aspect of the sepoys’ lives... The British were sensitive to this; one man virtually ordered the censors not to tamper with his letter, because it discussed a ‘matter of religion’. Several letters mentioned the erosion of caste or religious distinctions... Hindus ate and drank ‘polluted’ things, took food and tea from the hands of Europeans, shared food with Muslims, or went openly to cafés in Suez.
The YMCA encouraged caste Hindus to treat sweepers as equals. The vast majority of Muslims were prepared to eat with the French... while some even believed that the war would lead to the spread of Islam.” Again, prominent people including Mahatma Gandhi were never mentioned in the letters, possibly because soldiers refrained from attaching a political tone and tenor to their communication.
This book is a conscious mapping of the war landscape from the perspective of the Indian peasant-soldier communities and is a substantial distancing from the usual narratives of World War I.
Indian Voices of the Great War, David Omissi, Penguin, Rs599