Gaggan Sabherwal
BBC South Asia Diaspora Reporter
The service records of 320,000 troops from undivided Punjab who fought in World War One, have been made available to the public for the first time. The registers labelled as the ‘Punjab Records’ are from 20 districts and have been lying in a museum in Lahore in Pakistan for about a century. These registers were compiled by the Punjab government after the First World War ended in 1918.
(Photo Credit : Getty Images)
How did these registers land in Pakistan?
Bashir Bhatti, the Head of Lahore Museum Research & Reference Library, told the BBC that they aren’t very sure as to how did these registers land at the Lahore Museum and that it was only in 1977 that these registers were officially catalogued, fumigated, and digitised by the museum. The reason they decided to digitise these registers was so that they could easily and remotely be accessible by anyone as well as to digitally preserve these rare and vital documents for the future generation.
(Photo Credit : Amandeep Singh Madra)
Speaking to the BBC team in Lahore, Mr. Bhatti said, ‘’These records have great importance as every person wants to find out more about their ancestors who have fought in World War One and find out which unit did, he serve in, where did he fight and whether he was martyred or wounded. When they come and see all this information in these record books, they feel very happy, and these are also valuable historical data’’.
There are 34 registers at the Lahore Museum which contain service records of soldiers who fought in World War One from 20 Punjabi districts- 10 of these districts are in the Indian Punjab region and the other 10 are in the Pakistani Punjab region and these 26,000-page handwritten registers provide village-by-village data on the war service and pensions of recruits from undivided Punjab, as well as information on each soldier such as his name, his rank, his regiment, his service number, his address, his family details and if he was injured or had died during the war. Besides this, these registers also offer a detailed breakdown of the recruiting practices of the British Indian Army a century ago.
(Photo Credit : Victory Parade, London 1919 -Toor Collection)
‘’It was too good to be true and I just couldn’t believe it!’’
22-year-old Jasmin Athwal from Birmingham was volunteering with the UK Punjab Heritage Association during UK’s corona virus lockdown last year, when she accidentally discovered records showing that her maternal great great grandfather Kripa Singh and his brother Gurdiyal Singh from the village of Mangowal in Jaldandar in Punjab fought in World War One.
Through these records, Jasmin and her family learnt that her great great grandfather Kripa Singh was an artillery man and was a part of a mountain battery based in Mesopotamia and his role in World War One would have been of someone who would be holding guns, operating them, and transporting them around.
(Photo credit : Jasmin Athwal)
Jasmin and her family also learnt that her great great uncle, Gurdiyal Singh was a part of the 36 Sikh Regiment, and his regiment was the only Indian regiment in China fighting against the German Naval Force during World War One. Neither Jasmin or her family were aware that both Kripa and Gurdiyal Singh fought in World War One.
‘’I got a bit teary eyed initially. I said this is too good to be true and that I can’t believe that I have come across these records. And then I felt proud as this was my direct connection to World War One, which I had been learning about since I was in primary school. And yeah, so it was quite emotional’’, Jasmin Athwal told the BBC.
Raj Pal, a heritage consultant in Birmingham too has been able to confirm with the help of these records that his grandfather and his great uncles who lived in the Gujrat District in Pakistan all fought in World War One. Liverpool based businessman Rick Sandhu, too has learnt that both his great grandfather and great uncle from Jalandar district were in the Great War and that is great uncle was killed in action in Basra whereas British MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi has discovered that four men from his village fought in World War One and that his great grandfather Mihan Singh from Hoshiarpur district in Northeast Punjab, was a sepoy in Mesopotamia. The Registers have helped confirm his family story that Mihan Singh was wounded in the war. Punjabi and Bollywood actor and singer Diljit Dosanjh has also used the online records and has learnt that 51 soldiers joined up from his village in Jalandar and one was killed in action on the Western front.
How did UK charity gain access to these records?
These records would have continued to remain hidden and unresearched if it wasn’t for the UK Punjab Heritage Association (UKPHA), a leading heritage charity in the UK, who worked tirelessly for years to secure access to these records. It took Amandeep Singh Madra, the Co-founder & Chair of UKPHA seven years of correspondence and relationship-building with the Lahore Museum, before he could gain access to these registers.
(Photo Credit : Amandeep Singh Madra)
Mr. Madra had first approached the Lahore Museum about these files in 2014, having been told about them by Indian military historians who knew of their existence but had never gained access. And so, it is due to Mr. Madra and his team’s efforts and hard work, that families can now try and piece their family history together and learn more about the contributions of their ancestors to World War One. The University of Greenwich, who funded this project, helped to transcribe these records, which were then digitised and uploaded onto UKPHA’s website titled Punjab and World War One: (www.punjabww1.com)
Speaking to the BBC, Amandeep Singh Madra said, “Punjab was the main recruiting ground for the Indian army during World War one. Punjabis of all faiths – including Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs – made up about a third of the Indian army, and about one sixth of all the British Empire’s overseas forces. And yet the contribution of the individuals has largely been unrecognised. In most cases we didn’t even know their names. In digitising these records we're allowing the global Punjabi diaspora, as well as researchers and academics worldwide, access to a rich seam of data which helps tell the stories of men of all backgrounds who fought alongside one another and other British and allied troops in the trenches of the Western Front, at Gallipoli and in the deserts and heat of Africa and the Middle East’’.
(Photo Credit : Indian Military Hospital, Brighton Pavilion (1915) -Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove)
Mr. Madra also told the BBC that in 2014 his father told him that his uncle had fought in the First World War. It was a story that Amandeep hadn’t heard before, and this came as a surprise to him.
Mr. Madra said, ‘’ My dad had vague recollections of taking his taking his uncle to Rohpadh, his local town to collect his pension. My dad also remembered his uncle had poor eyesight because of the sandstorms he had encountered when he served in the war in Basra. But beyond that all we knew that his name was Bishan Singh, and he came from this village of Madhpad in the Rohpadh district. And so, when I heard that there were these registers which suddenly unlocked Bishan Singh’s story, I knew immediately that these were important, because these would allow people like myself decode that man’s military history’’.
So far, out of the 20 districts, about 44,000 service records from 3 districts - Jalandhar and Ludhiana in India and Sialkot in Pakistan have been uploaded online and Mr. Madra is hoping that through this project, descendants of those who served in the Great War can fill in some of the gaps and help his team build up a richer picture of Punjab’s contribution and their recollections and family archives are of vital importance in telling the full story of the war and of individual men. Besides this, he also hopes that his project can help do justice to the collective service of the fighting men of Punjab and helps to create a proper archive of Punjab and World War One.
'A Unique record of Punjab's role in World War One’
Up until now, no such data existed for families of Indian soldiers who fought in World War One, whereas historians and the descendants of British and Irish soldiers could search public databases of service records and learn more about their relatives who fought in the Great War and so this project has received great feedback and reaction with many hailing this as an important work in studying the contributions of colonial soldiers to the Great War.
(Photo Credit : Dr. Gavin Rand)
Dr. Gavin Rand, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Greenwich spoke to the BBC and said, ‘’These records provide a unique and granular record of Punjab’s role as the Raj’s principal recruiting ground, offering unparalleled insight into the rank-and-file colonial soldiers who fought on behalf of the British Empire in the First World War’’.
‘’There are an estimated one million Sikh, Muslim and Hindu Britons of Punjabi origin in the UK and 102 million globally – many hailing from areas which were heavily recruited during the First World War’’.
‘’By making some of the unique data recorded in the registers widely available for the first time, the project will provide the basis for extensive engagement with the Punjabi community in and beyond the UK by allowing them to access records of their ancestors’ wartime service, as well as providing unique insights into the villages of pre-partition Punjab.".
Dr. Arun Kumar, an Assistant Professor of British Imperial, Colonial, & Post-Colonial History at Nottingham University too has welcomed this project and said, ‘’This database is an amazing source material. Hundreds of families have been looking for the details of their kin who served in the First World War and died unnamed. There was no way for people to pinpoint where their sons/husbands/father/lovers served in the Western Front/Middle East/Africa especially as those who came to serve for the imperial war were poor people and lacked resources to track their family members. Unnamed graveyards from World War One dot the European landscape, and among them are buried many unnamed Indians and Pakistanis’’.
‘’Besides this, for a long time, World War One was portrayed as European/Western war. This portrayal which continues in the Western media and films is so misleading and unethical that it fails to even recognise the contributions of Indian soldiers and other colonised soldiers from Africa. World War One was a global and an imperial war at the same time, fought for the redistribution of colonial territories and colonised people and this database shows the concreteness of this contribution’’.
(Photo Credit : Dr. Arun Kumar)
Dr. Kumar also added that through this database he got to know that Punjab was the main recruiting ground for the British Indian Army and the best soldiers came from the Jat peasantry, but what he found very intriguing and exciting was that, artisanal castes (such as weavers, goldsmiths, carpenters) and Dalits (‘ex-untouchable’ communities such as the sweeping caste) also contributed to World War One and this he says is something very new and needs to be explored further and highlighted.
Ms. Shrabani Basu, a London based Indian journalist and author of several books including Spy Princess: The life of Noor Inayat Khan and Victoria & Abdul: The true story of the Queen's closest confidant, which was later made into a film, spoke to the BBC and said, ‘’This is a fantastic database and the fact that it is online and accessible to all makes it an important learning resource for those researching their family history. It is also an important educational resource for schools and universities and academics. It brings out immediately the extent to which soldiers from the Punjab volunteered to fight in World War One’’.
But why have the contributions of Indian soldiers who fought in World War One been forgotten?
‘’ I think in both India and in Pakistan, there has been a tendency to overlook how significant the South Asian rule was in the British war effort. In the UK we have misunderstood or misremembered the war as being something which was basically European about France and Belgium and mud and trenches, and we have for too long forgotten or overlook the role that not just South Asians, but Commonwealth and our colonial soldiers played across the conflict’’ Dr. Gavin Rand said.
When we asked Dr. Arun Kumar why have the contributions of Indian soldiers been forgotten and overlooked? He said, ‘’Colonialism was a process of forgetting certain aspects and continues to shape what we remember and what we forget. It was inherent in colonialism which was based on the denial of the colonised body as legitimate, rational, right-possessing body. It was believed that the colonised bodies are disposable bodies and so the colonial state did very little for those who were disbanded after the war and had suffered permanent injuries’’.
‘’In fact, in 1919, the colonial state passed the notorious Rowlatt Act which gave the power to the police to arrest and incarcerate Indians without judicial review or trial. And when these arrests were protested peacefully by Indians in Punjab, which was the main region of soldier recruitment, British Brigadier, General Dyer responded by enclosing the protestors and then firing on the crowd. Later, in the 1920s, the colonial state in India erected a war memorial (the famous India Gate in Delhi) with names of soldiers and officers who fell in the Great War as part of the making of Delhi as the new colonial capital. The India Gate stood as the insignia of imperial loyalty in front of the newly built viceroy’s house’’.
(Photo Credit : Shrabani Basu)
Ms. Shrabani Basu told the BBC, ‘’While Memorials to the dead in World War One exist in every village in Britain, the same is not true for India and while memorials were put up in Indian villages by the British, the dead were never remembered by their names. They were just recorded as a number. The standard inscription in Indian villages simply mentions the number of people who left from the village for the war and the number who did not return. It was a case of the Indian soldiers not being important enough to be remembered by their names. It must also be remembered that in Britain every village put up their memorials with the funds being raised locally. Villagers in India had no resources to put up memorials to the dead, and it was left to the British to do this and the memorials in India did not carry all the details and eventually the Indian soldiers were forgotten by both the British and the Indians’’.
(Photo Credit - Bastille Day, Paris 1916 -Toor Collection)
She further added that after India’s Independence, the new heroes of India were those who had died fighting for freedom and that the soldiers who had died fighting for a colonial ruler were no longer important and as for Britain, they were now part of India’s history, and not their concern anymore. And so, consequently, these soldiers and their contributions were sadly lost from the pages of history of both the countries.
What next for the project?
Following on from the success of the first stage of this project, plans are underway to upload the service records from a few more districts, so that more families can learn about their family history and the role their ancestors played in World War One.
BBC Punjabi : https://www.bbc.com/punjabi/international-59629569
BBC Hindi : https://www.bbc.com/hindi/india-59628275
BBC Urdu : https://www.bbc.com/urdu/regional-59631768
BBC Gujarati : https://www.bbc.com/gujarati/india-59682890
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