First World War: Personnel from the Indian Subcontinent

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, this short debate made possible by my noble friend Lord Sheikh, to whom we are all greatly indebted, provides us with an opportunity to recall and to reflect upon the immense contribution made by the peoples of the Indian subcontinent during the First World War. There is so much to remember, and so much to hold firmly in our minds with gratitude and veneration as the centenary of the outbreak of this terrible conflict approaches. The part played by the Indian Armed Forces and by all those who assisted them in their many tasks in three continents, on which my noble friend Lord Shipley has elaborated, should feature prominently in the period of commemoration that lies ahead.

Speaking as a historian, although I lack the eminence of the noble Lord, Professor Lord Morgan, who is to follow me and who can correct all my mistakes, I am particularly glad that the Imperial War Museum—the world’s leading authority on conflict and its impact, which as many noble Lords know is so conspicuously involved in the work of commemoration—has incorporated within its plans full recognition of India’s role as the biggest imperial contributor to the war. The museum’s famous First World War galleries will re-emerge next year, utterly transformed. One of the central objectives is to ensure that a proper understanding of India’s contribution and of the sacrifice made by its peoples is conveyed vividly and powerfully to visitors. Film, photography and representative items of warfare, which can stir the imagination so strongly, will all be deployed effectively for that purpose. Nor will the disappointment that was so widely felt in 1918 and thereafter be neglected. The final section of the renovated galleries will make clear the widespread discontent aroused by Britain’s decision to withhold from India the large measure of self-government that was conferred elsewhere as dominion status emerged.

I very much hope that the Imperial War Museum’s plans will be widely noted, as I am sure the Minister will agree. The plans need to be reflected at all levels throughout the country to make commemorative activity full and complete. That is particularly important where India is concerned, since among British historians there was for too long a tendency to underrate the contribution its peoples made. It was suggested, for example, that the Indian Army Corps, dispatched to France on the outbreak of war, failed to come up to expectations. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the current generation of my fellow historians has now properly acknowledged. Indian troops—and they alone—made good Britain’s acute shortfall in trained manpower in the first year of war on the western front. As one senior British officer emphasised,

“they filled a gap in the line when we had no other troops to put in”.

It should be added that that was at a great cost to themselves. By 1915 the Indian Army Corps had lost 50% of its original strength. Indian troops taught the rest of the British Expeditionary Force the art of patrolling in a form that would be suited to trench warfare on the western front. Skills that had been learnt while skirmishing in the Himalayas were adapted to a new purpose in the first night raids on the western front.

We can hear the voices of brave men from India, caught movingly in the letters they sent home. Here is one written on 1 May 1915 from the hospital established for them at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton:

“Do not be anxious about me. We are very well looked after. White soldiers are always besides our beds—day and night. The King has given a strict order that no trouble be given to any black man … in hospital. Men in hospital are tended like flowers, and the King and Queen sometimes come to visit them”.

I hope that that might provide a measure of reassurance to the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, who wondered about the treatment that had been accorded to Indian soldiers in hospital in Brighton. The Indian troops, to whom so much is owed, speak to us across the century through such letters published in a fascinating volume entitled Indian Voices of the Great War.

At the moment we know rather less about what courageous Indian troops had to say about the grave hardships which they faced in Mesopotamia, where most of them served—some 650,000 altogether, as my noble friend Lord Shipley mentioned. It was very much an Indian campaign from first to last. In Britain today it is not remembered with the gratitude that it deserves, or with sufficient consciousness of the sacrifices that were made. My noble friend Lord Shipley referred to the siege of Kut in early 1916, where Indian soldiers endured terrible privations. After the inevitable surrender they were held captive by the Turks in conditions so appalling that more than half of them died. Next year’s commemorations must give full and proper recognition to those sacrifices.

There is one thing above all on which our country should reflect. As we look back across the century to the First World War, it is surely always important to remember that the magnificent contribution of the peoples of the Indian subcontinent to the great common endeavour in war also contributed to strengthening ties with the people of Britain—ties that would survive all the political difficulties, violence and crises that were to follow.