India to unveil memorial to WW-I soldiers in France

New Delhi, October 22

A memorial commemorating the contribution of Indian armed forces in World War I is being built in France and will be inaugurated by an Indian dignitary next month, an ex-serviceman overseeing the project said Monday.

Squadron Leader Rana Chhina, secretary of the United Services Institution of India’s Centre for Armed Forces Research, said the memorial was being built in Villers-Guislain, a village in northern France.

It will be inaugurated on November 10, which also marks the centenary of the armistice announced during the World War I.

“This will be first battlefield memorial to be built by the Indian armed forces, which will be dedicated to the Indian soldiers who lost their lives in France during World War I,” Chhina said.

There is another war memorial in Nueve Chappelle, but it was built by Commonwealth War Graves Commission in honour of the Indian soldiers who died in France and Belgium.

The memorial is likely to be inaugurated either by President Ram Nath Kovind, Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu or Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said.

The location is also the place where the Battle of Cambrai took place between the German and the British forces. Land measuring 

500 square metres was given for 1 Euro by Villers-Guislain to build the memorial, Chhina added. 

“The memorial is being built by noted sculptor Ram Sutar and has an Ashoka Chakra over it,” he said.

From November 9-11, there is also an elaborate programme scheduled to commemorate the centenary of the war. — PTI 

Commemorative events planned

• India’s involvement in WWI will be highlighted by commemorative events to mark the centenary of Armistice Day in November.
• As part of the ‘India and the Great War’ project, the British High Commission will present war diaries to Colonels of the Regiments of the now Indian Army.
• A digital copy of war diaries archives will be given to Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. 
• A joint Indo-UK seminar — ‘India and the Great War in research, memory and commemoration’ — will be held. 
• Almost 1.5m men were part of Indian Expeditionary Force that fought on the Western Front, in East Africa, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Gallipoli. Around 50,000 died. tns