The Forgotten Heroes: Indian Soldiers of World War One
- dthholland
- 8 hours ago
- 5 min read
"The shells are pouring like rain in the monsoon." That single line, taken from a letter written by an Indian soldier stationed on the Western Front during World War One, tells you more about the scale and surreal horror of the Great War than any general’s memoirs or official communique. Yet, despite the poignancy of such words, the voices of these men—1.3 million strong—have largely faded from the historical narrative. They were the Indian soldiers of WW1: brave, bewildered, often anonymous participants in a European conflict that was never theirs to begin with.
An Army from a Colony
Let’s start with that number again: 1.3 million. Of these, more than 74,000 lost their lives. It’s a staggering contribution, and yet, as author and politician Shashi Tharoor laments, their story is one “rewarded with broken promises of Indian independence from the British government.”
At the time, India was the jewel in the British Crown, a colony ruled with a mix of paternalism and iron. When the guns of August 1914 rang out, India was swept into a war that would claim the lives of millions and redraft the very concept of empire and power. Despite being subjects, not citizens, Indian soldiers were expected to serve with loyalty—and many did so with astounding courage.
They fought across a wide geography: from the mud and cold of Belgium to the deserts of Mesopotamia, from the cliffs of Gallipoli to the plains of East Africa. Indian soldiers were there at Ypres, where they held the line against the Germans in the autumn of 1914, even before the British Expeditionary Force had been fully assembled. They were also among those killed in large numbers at Neuve Chapelle and Gallipoli—the latter a campaign now remembered largely through the lens of Australian and New Zealander sacrifice.
A War Far From Home
The irony, of course, is that most of these men had no real understanding of what they were fighting for. The European theatre was alien in every sense—culturally, climatically, and ideologically. Yet they went. Letters from Indian jawans (junior soldiers) and sepoys (privates) home speak to the shock of trench warfare. One soldier wrote: “The corpses cover the country, like sheaves of harvested corn.”
They endured this hell without being conscripts. Soldiering was, for many, a profession passed down through generations. They fought not for India, but for Britain—against enemies they’d never known, on land they’d never heard of. For Muslim sepoys, this even meant taking up arms against fellow Muslims of the Ottoman Empire, in defence of an imperial power that claimed moral superiority while continuing to subjugate their homeland.
Letters, Loss, and Longing
Some of the most haunting accounts of these men’s experience come from their letters. Written in Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, and other regional languages, these messages are windows into their bewilderment and bravery.
One soldier compared the bombs to monsoon rain—an image easy to picture for someone used to India’s seasonal storms but surreal in the grim wastelands of France and Flanders. These letters speak of longing for home, of cultural estrangement, and sometimes, surprisingly, of brief moments of warmth—like the interest some Frenchwomen showed towards their unusual guests from the East. Yet other letters pleaded with loved ones not to follow in their footsteps, warning that this was not a war worth dying for.
Promises Made, Promises Broken
You might ask—why did they go? Well, the British government made certain promises. In return for India’s immense contribution—men, resources, food, and money—there was talk of progressive self-rule after the war. These promises were echoed by British officials and believed, at least tentatively, by Indian leaders. Even Mahatma Gandhi, who had recently returned to India from South Africa in 1915, supported the British war effort.
But the reality was starkly different. Instead of Dominion Status, which was granted to the so-called "White Commonwealth" (like Canada and Australia), India received the Rowlatt Act—a draconian law that allowed indefinite detention without trial and stifled press freedom. The result was nationwide unrest.
The defining moment came in April 1919, with the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar. Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordered troops to fire without warning on a peaceful gathering of thousands, killing perhaps 1,499 and injuring up to 1,137. Dyer was later lauded by some in Britain, even receiving a monetary reward. In protest, Rabindranath Tagore returned his knighthood, condemning what he called “the helplessness of our position as British subjects in India.”
A War Without a Legacy—Until Recently
So, what happened to the memory of these soldiers?
After Indian independence in 1947, the general consensus was that there was nothing to commemorate. These men had not fought for India’s freedom but for their colonial masters. Their sacrifices were seen as irrelevant, even embarrassing, to a nation trying to forge its own identity.
When the world marked the 50th anniversary of World War One in 1964, India barely participated. There were no major memorials, no state functions, no inclusion in school textbooks. Even the India Gate in New Delhi—built in 1931—was visited more as a pleasant public park than a solemn war memorial. Few realised it was originally built to honour Indian soldiers who died in the Great War.
Rediscovery and Recognition
That neglect, however, is slowly being corrected. Today, institutions like the Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research in Delhi are actively collecting and preserving artefacts, documents, and testimonies from this forgotten chapter of history.
The cultural silence is also breaking. Novelist Mulk Raj Anand’s Across the Black Waters was a rare attempt to humanise the Indian soldier’s experience—following Lalu, a dispossessed peasant, who returns from the war to find his world in ruins. Another example, though British-authored, is John Masters’ The Ravi Lancers, where Indian soldiers choose to keep fighting, upholding their oath of service.
Yet such efforts remain few and far between. Indian soldiers of WW1 still remain largely absent in popular culture, historical fiction, or even film. Unlike the Australians, whose Gallipoli narrative has been immortalised in cinema, or the Canadians, whose national identity partly emerged from the crucible of Vimy Ridge, India has no collective memory of the Great War.
Towards a Fuller History
Now, as the years go past since the First World War, there is a growing curiosity about these men—not just as soldiers, but as individuals. There’s a recognition that while they fought under a colonial flag, their bravery, suffering, and humanity transcend the politics of empire. They were young men, many in their teens or twenties, who went into an unimaginable war because that was the duty asked of them. And many never returned.
Understanding their place in history doesn’t mean endorsing the colonial project. Rather, it means seeing them for what they were: humans caught in the churn of geopolitics, giving everything in a war that ultimately gave them—and their country—nothing in return.
And perhaps, at long last, that understanding will help bring them out of the shadows.
When the great British poet Wilfred Owen (author of the greatest anti-war poem in the English language, Dulce et Decorum Est) was to return to the front to give his life in the futile First World War, he recited Tagore's Parting Words to his mother as his last goodbye. When he was so tragically and pointlessly killed, Owen's mother found Tagore's poem copied out in her son's hand in his diary:
When I go from hence
let this be my parting word,
that what I have seen is unsurpassable.
I have tasted of the hidden honey of this lotus
that expands on the ocean of light,
and thus am I blessed
---let this be my parting word.
In this playhouse of infinite forms
I have had my play
and here have I caught sight of him that is formless.
My whole body and my limbs
have thrilled with his touch who is beyond touch;
and if the end comes here, let it come
- let this be my parting word.
