Their war, our heroes

Sarika Sharma

Did you know, a hundred years ago there was a man named Manta Singh, whose valour during World War I inspires British schoolchildren even today?

Heard of Mal Singh, who was taken Prisoner of War (PoW) by Germany and whose pain and anguish was among the first to be recorded on the then recently invented phonographic funnel? Today he stands immortalised in films like The Halfmoon Files and The Prisoner’s Song, but, never mind if you don’t know him. 

Do the names Badlu Ram, Lala ring a bell? The answer is most likely to be a no again. This ‘no’ is also a sorry answer to how India remembers its heroes.

Two years ago, when Sachin Tendulkar asked Indians to remember their soldiers who fought in World War I, Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) noticed a 60 per cent increase in the traffic from India to their website. The cricketer seemed to have created awareness about the valiant fellow countrymen, who braved a hostile and cold land a century ago and also sacrificed their lives — all in a war that wasn’t theirs. As the world commemorates the centenary of the War (1914-1919), efforts are being made to help India remember these men.

Delhi-based national security and defence services think tank United Service Institution of India and CWGC have launched a campaign to change the culture of remembrance in India. ‘India Remembers’ is now engaging communities within the country, while also highlighting India’s contribution to a global audience.

Almost 15 lakh Indian soldiers took part in World War I, fighting in battles in faraway lands, and in conditions entirely alien to them. Even more fought in the World War II. Colin Kerr, director external relations with CWGC, says the ‘India Remembers’ resource pack aims at engaging the communities that these men came from. 

So, while Uttarakhand will revel in the bravery of Darwan Singh Negi, who was one of the earliest recipients of Victoria Cross, Punjab will finally come to know of Manta Singh from Jalandhar.

Manta Singh of the 15th Ludhiana  Sikhs, an infantry regiment of the British Indian Army, was one of many Indian soldiers sent to France in 1914. In March 1915, during the Battle of Neuve-Chapelle, he rescued a seriously wounded comrade — Captain Henderson — by pushing him to safety in a wheelbarrow, but was himself severely injured. Manta Singh was sent to a hospital near Brighton in England, where he died of his wounds. His story is used as an educational tool online, in cemeteries in the UK and at the Neuve Chapelle Memorial in France. 

Bhanu Gahlot, project manager with the ‘India Remembers’ Project, says that the pilot project that was kicked off last month will focus on Delhi, Bangalore, West Bengal, Pune, Punjab and the Northeast. A special focus here is on the Northeast. “Usually left out of the national discourse, it is an important region because it has a vast World War I and World War II  military heritage. The Indian Labour Corps that went to France during the Great War largely consisted of men from the then primitive Northeast region. This contribution, however, remains largely untold and forgotten due to lack of awareness. We would like to highlight this heritage through the involvement of communities there,” she says.

Community engagement is at the heart of the project. Gahlot says ‘India Remembers’ will invite groups from schools, universities and various other organisations to take part in the project. Besides, people are being encouraged to investigate their personal, regional and national military heritage from the two World Wars by using the resources available with the CWGC. 

“We would like the project to develop into a grassroots culture of remembrance in India. This will not only serve to educate people about the history and ethos of the Indian Armed Forces but will also help to bring people of our country together in a consolidated spirit of commemoration and remembrance,” she says. 

The project was launched on July 14 and will culminate on December 7, the proposed Day of Remembrance.

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153 The number of Victoria Cross medals awarded to Indians 

Where they fought

Europe, the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, North Africa and East Africa

A fair for their hero

This is probably the one-of -its-kind mela that commemorates a WW1 Victoria Cross winner and it is held in Uttarakhand. Gabbar Singh Negi was a Rifleman in the 2/39th Garhwal Rifles during WW1. During an attack on the German position, Rifleman  Negi was part of a bayonet party. He entered their main trench and was the first man to go around each traverse, driving back the enemy until they were eventually forced to surrender. He was killed during this engagement and was posthumously awarded the VC on March 10, 1915, at Neuve Chapelle, France. 

A fair in his memory is held in Chamba town of Tehri Garhwal every April.

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Punjab & the Great War

Punjab has been a significant region for the recruitment of men in the army since 1914. During the course of the Great War, undivided Punjab, which included the present state of Haryana, Himachal and the Punjab province in Pakistan, made the highest contribution in terms of soldiers. More than 4,46,000 combatant and non-combatant soldiers were recruited from this province alone.

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Putting Sikh soldiers on map

Unknown tales of Sikhs who fought in WW I are being captured for the first time using the latest in mapping technology and a crowd-sourcing initiative to preserve family stories that were at risk of being lost forever.

A new website titled ‘Empire, Faith & War: The Sikhs and World War One’, funded by a grant of £4,48,500 (about Rs 3.9 cr) from the Heritage Lottery Fund, will put the remarkable contribution of Sikhs on the world map. It aims to bring focus on the wider narrative of how the first global conflict in history pulled in men, money and materials from around the world for the British Empire, from India, and in particular, the northern state of Punjab. Despite accounting for less than one per cent of the population of India at the time, Sikhs made up nearly 20 per cent of its armed forces at the outbreak of hostilities. “Indian troops overall comprised one in every six of Britain’s wartime forces. It’s not surprising, therefore, that many Sikh families in Britain have a war-time connection. However, their stories have mostly remained hidden and undocumented until now,” says Harbaksh Grewal, head of PR and communications at UK Punjab Heritage Association, which is behind this effort.

At the heart of the website is a new database that will be used to collect and share the accounts of Sikh soldiers. The database will also include details of the families they left behind. The results will be displayed on an innovative interactive ‘Soldier Map’, created using Google Maps technology. Records are pinpointed to a soldier’s place of birth rather than to where he may have fought or died.

So far, nearly 8,000 records of Sikhs killed in action taken from Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s casualty database have been pinned on the map.