Armistice Day: Centenary

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I remember discussing Brexit at Harvard Business School with one of the great professors there, an authority on negotiation in the world today. He said that he had been reading a book about the build-up to the First World War, and that it was like watching a train crash in slow motion.

The poppy that we wear is a bond between the living and the dead. As the noble Lord, Lord Gadhia, said in his excellent speech, he worked with the Royal British Legion to specially commission the khadi poppy that I am wearing with pride. It is made of handwoven cotton made famous by Mahatma Gandhi. The poppy emphasises our gratitude for the 1.5 million volunteers—the British Legion says that it is to say thank you to them—who served from every corner of the then undivided India; they were not conscripts. It was the largest British Empire armed force besides the British Army itself. There were 13,000 medals for gallantry, including 11 awards of the Victoria Cross. The British Legion says that together we can ensure that:

“Remembrance is understood and available to all, and handed to the next generation”.


Yet although the noble Lord said that a poem is going to be read out on 10 November, I do not know if, at this huge event at the Royal Albert Hall which will be watched by millions around the world, the British legion will specifically acknowledge the contribution of the 1.5 million Indians. If it does not, it will be a missed opportunity. The Minister said that a great deal of the commemoration of World War I has been about youth. Well, there is no better time for us to reach out across the country, and especially to our youth and our schoolchildren, to tell them about the amazing service and sacrifice, not just from the Commonwealth, but in particular from India.

Today British Asians make up the largest ethnic-minority community in the UK. This is an opportunity for the whole nation to recognise, appreciate and thank these individuals. That would strengthen the wonderful multicultural, pluralist, tolerant nation which Britain has become—a Britain that celebrates its diversity. This ethnic-minority contribution is the greatest strength of this tiny country, no longer with the empire it had during the First World War but still the fifth-largest economy in the world.

One of my earliest childhood memories was walking into our Zoroastrian Parsi fire temple in Hyderabad and seeing a portrait of an army officer. I have since realised that officer was Captain Firoz Bapuji Chinoy, who served in the British Army Medical Corps during World War I and died in Iran in 1918. I was sent the details of another Parsi medical officer, Captain Hiraji Cursetji, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his bravery during the final stages of the campaign in Mesopotamia, now Iraq. This was a theatre of war in which the Indian Army played a vital role. His citation states:

“For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty at Mushaq, 26th-27th October and at Sharquat, 29th October. Throughout the operations he displayed the greatest zeal and disregard for danger while tending the wounded under heavy fire, working unceasingly for forty-eight hours. He has previously rendered excellent service, and once was severely wounded”.


This captain retired as Major-General Sir Hiraji Cursetji of the Indian Medical Service. Yet do we realise that, except for the medical officers, the 1.5 million Indians who served in the First World War were not allowed to become officers; and that it was only after the First World War that the British allowed, from 1922 to 1932, eight Indians per course at Sandhurst to become officers? They were called King’s commissioned officers and my grandfather, Brigadier Noshire Bilimoria, was one of them. My father, the late Lieutenant-General Bilimoria, was commissioned into the Indian Military Academy and into the 2/5 Gorkha Rifles (Frontier Force). He ended up becoming colonel of his regiment, president of the Gorkha Brigade and commander-in-chief of the central army in India.

The regiments of the Gurkhas in India today have six battalions each, yet sadly we have only 3,000 Gurkhas today. Today, the British Army cannot even fill Wembley Stadium. The Indian Army numbers 1.2 million people and another 1 million reserves. Today it was announced that we need to recruit, from the Commonwealth, citizens who have not even lived in the UK because of a shortage of 3,000 per year into the British Army. Look at just one battalion, the 1/5 Royal Gorkha Rifles, which served in the Suez Canal zone and at Gallipoli. In that campaign, of 410,000 British Empire troops, 213,980 were casualties. That was the scale of this war. The 1/5 also fought in Mesopotamia, where my father’s battalion, the 2/5, also fought. The casualties from this one battalion, the 1/5, in the First World War numbered: killed or died of wounds, 221; wounded, 748; missing, four; died of disease, 40. More Indians fought for the British between 1914 and 1918 than the combined total for Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. Some 74,000 Indian soldiers were killed on the battlefields of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, but the part they played in the war has largely been whitewashed from history. On top of this, there were 16,000 West Indians and 18,000 troops from Africa.

The noble Lord, Lord Gadhia, mentioned the Memorial Gates, which Her Majesty the Queen officially inaugurated on 6 November 2002. The driving force behind them, my noble friend Lady Flather, is to this day the life president. It is a living memorial to honour the,

“five million men and women from the Indian sub-continent, Africa and the Caribbean who volunteered to serve with the Armed Forces of the Crown during the First and Second World Wars”.

They also celebrate:

“The contribution that these men and women and their descendants, members of the Commonwealth family, continue to make to the rich diversity of British society”.


That message needs to go out. This is the opportunity. As the noble Lord, Lord Gadhia, said, even Mahatma Gandhi, who was totally for non-violence, took part in the First World War by founding an ambulance unit, the Indian Ambulance Corps.

We are celebrating the centenary of the RAF: it started during the First World War.

We must not forget that we now have the Armed Forces covenant, introduced in 2011. A moral obligation exists between the nation, the Government and the Armed Forces in return for the sacrifices they make. This is now enshrined in law. In particular, our veterans should suffer no disadvantage and should be given special consideration. For six years I was proud to be a commissioner of the Chelsea Pensioners at the Royal Hospital Chelsea. Two decades after World War I we had World War II—two decades later we had nuclear war. Peace in Europe has existed thanks to the European Union, not just NATO. It has existed because we are still a strong defence power, not just a soft power. It has existed because of NATO and because we need to maintain the strength of our defence—not spending just 2% of GDP but 3%, I believe. Our youth needs to learn about the 1.5 million troops from India, and to remember.

In a statement to the House of Commons on 11 November 1918 the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, set out the terms of Armistice and said:

“Thus at 11 o’clock this morning came to the end the cruellest and most terrible war that has ever scourged mankind. I hope we may say that thus, this fateful morning, came to an end all wars”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/11/1918; col. 2463.]


Sadly not, but as Ben Okri, the Booker prize-winning author says on the Memorial Gates:

“Our future is greater than our past”.