In 1914, the Indian Army was a colonial force of some 155,000 officers and men. The Indian Army, the 75,000-strong British garrison of India, the Imperial Service Troops supplied by the Indian Princes, and the Indian high command were collectively known as the ‘Army in India’, which numbered around 236,000 in all.
The Indian Army was, in peacetime, an all-volunteer force, taking in 15–20,000 recruits a year. Its ranks were filled mainly with illiterate peasants. Some of these men had been driven from the land, but most were willing labour migrants looking to make the most of the economic opportunities created by the colonial encounter. Pay for a sepoy was a modest Rs. 11 a month (although increased during the war), but a hard-pressed peasant family, with few other sources of income, would value the remittances sent home by a relative serving in the ranks. Some men, primarily high-caste Rajputs, were attracted to the Army by the martial self-image of their community; others, such as Mazbhi Sikhs, were landless Untouchables. But soldiering in later colonial India was not generally the occupation of the very poorest; the majority of the sepoys were from the middle peasantry. Soldiers in peacetime would normally serve only with one regiment, to which they could develop a very strong emotional attachment. Most men served for five to seven years, before returning to their village.
The Indian Army, however, was ‘Indian’ only in a nominal sense. By 1914, the vast majority of Indian troops were drawn from the north and north-west of the subcontinent – the provinces of Punjab, the North-West Frontier and UP, and the independent kingdom of Nepal. This regional bias was the result of the ‘martial races’ theory which had influenced British recruiting strategy since the 1880s. A mixture of indigenous notions of caste and imported Social Darwinism, the martial- races idea had at its core the belief that some Indians were inherently more warlike than others. Very few troops were recruited from southern and eastern India, because of a growing British conviction that southern and eastern Indians had become effete through ‘racial degeneracy’. Urban India was not tapped for recruits, for the same reasons. The Western-educated were also excluded from the ranks, for fear of their politically subversive potential. Many of the Indian troops who served in France were Punjabi Muslims and Sikhs, reflecting the ethnic biases of the wider Indian Army; in 1912 just over half of all combatants were from the Punjab.
The Indian Army had three main functions: the defence of the North-West Frontier of India; the maintenance of internal security against threats to the colonial order; and the provision of a Field Force to fight an Afghan or Russian invasion, or to be sent overseas for imperial purposes. Approximately one-third of the Army was assigned to each of these three tasks. The immediately disposable elements of the Field Force normally consisted of two divisions and one cavalry brigade, with their attached British units.
When war threatened in the summer of 1914, Field Force units were put on standby to serve in Europe. When the Germans invaded France in August, the Lahore and Meerut infantry divisions were dispatched quickly from Karachi and Bombay. They arrived at Marseilles in late September and early October 1914, detraining at Orleans before marching to the front. (Other, smaller, Expeditionary Forces were sent to Basra, Egypt and East Africa.)
The Indian troops arrived in France trained and equipped only for a colonial war. Little money had been spent on Field Army support units: there was no mechanical transport, and the artillery – all British – could be made up only by denuding other divisions. The sepoys had to exchange their rifles for the newer (but unfamiliar) pattern carried by the British Army. There were shortages of medical supplies and signalling apparatus. The Germans had trench mortars, searchlights and hand grenades; the Indians had none of these (although they improvised grenades from jam tins). It was even some months before all Indian units had their full complement of warm clothes.
As they arrived, these underequipped troops were fed piecemeal into the front line in an attempt to stem the German rush between Ypres and La Bassée. The 129th Baluchis were the first Indian unit to see action, near Wytschaete in Belgium, in late October. Decorations were liberally bestowed in these fierce little actions, including the first Victoria Cross to be received by an Indian. But honours alone could not sustain the sepoys’ morale, which went into steep decline with the onset of colder weather. The Indian troops were withdrawn for rest after heavy losses.
During the winter of 1914–15, the Indian Corps was built up to two infantry and two cavalry divisions, with an establishment of some 16,000 British and 28,500 Indian troops (see Appendix I for a full order of battle.) In the spring, the Corps was moved to the Neuve Chapelle-Givenchy sector of the front, where it remained for almost a year, apart from the detachment of the Lahore Division for a few days in April 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypres.
For most of 1915, the Indian Corps held a front of approximately seven miles. The ground was boggy, cut with ditches, drains and canals, and crossed here and there with bridges. Movement off-road was very difficult and visibility was poor, with morning mists lingering on to midday for months on end. The landscape was almost completely flat, dotted with farmhouses and clumps of trees. The only high ground was the Aubers Ridge, held by the Germans a few hundred yards beyond the Indian front line, an elevation which the Indian soldiers could see but were destined never to reach. Most of the sepoys to die in Europe – some 7,700 – fell in these few square miles.
For the Indians, the war was one of ambuscades – raids and counter-raids, patrols and surprise attacks – punctuated with larger-scale attacks on the German lines. The first of these offensives was at Neuve Chapelle in March 1915. The sepoys’ morale was boosted by an apparent success, tempered by very heavy losses – much higher than the Indian Army was used to in the bloody but brisk fighting on the North-West Frontier. A second major attack was made at the Battle of Festubert in early May; and a third at the Battle of Loos in late September.
The morale of the troops began to fail again as their second winter in France approached. Despite a year of fighting, and heavy losses, no end to the war was in sight. Casualties had been especially severe among British officers. Some units had lost nearly all their original officers within a couple of days’ fighting, and it proved difficult to find men who could speak Indian languages to replace them. All the Indian Army officers who had been on leave in Britain at the outbreak of war had been commandeered to train the British battalions of the ‘New Armies’, and those currently in post were unknown to their men, inexperienced, and often commanded little confidence.
At the end of 1915, the two infantry divisions were withdrawn in the belief that their morale would not survive another winter of trench warfare in France. They were sent to join Expeditionary Force ‘D’ in Mesopotamia, where the Imperial war effort was deteriorating badly. In early 1916, the Indian troops were thrown into the failed attempts to relieve General Townshend’s mixed British and Indian force besieged by the Turks at Kut-al-Amara, on the Tigris, downstream from Baghdad. From then on, Mesopotamia became the focus of the main Indian war effort in 1917–18; Indian troops were prominent in the capture of Baghdad in 1917, and in the destruction of the Ottoman Empire in the region.
The two Indian cavalry divisions stayed on in France until the spring of 1918. They numbered 13–14,000 men in total, including the British units attached to each brigade. There was little need or opportunity for mounted troops on the Western Front, and they were mainly kept in reserve. The cavalry saw some action on the Somme in 1916 and, the following year, during German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, and at Cambrai. Their impact on the fighting was, however, minimal.
In early 1918, the cavalry were also transferred to the Middle East, where they took part in General Allenby’s offensive against the Turks in Palestine, helping to win a great success at the Battle of Megiddo in September.
By the time of the Armistice, India had provided over 1.27 million men, including 827,000 combatants, contributing roughly one man in ten to the war effort of the British Empire. The wartime Indian Army reached a highest strength of 573,000 combatants, with a maximum of 273,000 serving outside the subcontinent at any one time (mostly in Mesopotamia). Of the 947,000 Imperial war dead, some 49,000 were sepoys.
[Urdu]
December 1914
France
What better occasion can I find than this to prove the loyalty of my family to the British Government? Turkey, it is true, is a Muslim power, but what has it to do with us? Turkey is nothing at all to us. The men of France are beyond measure good and honourable and kind. By God, my brother, they are gentlemen to the backbone! Their manners and morals are in absolute accord with our ideas. In war they are as one with us and with the English. Our noble King knows the quality and the worth of his subjects and his Rajas alike. I give you the truth of the matter. The flag of victory will be in the hands of our British Government. Be not at all distressed. Without death there is no victory, but I am alive and very well, and I tell you truly that I will return alive to India.
[Gurmukhi]
3rd December 1914
China
The English have suffered severely. Nothing is put into the news, but we know a good deal from day to day. The German ship Emden has sunk forty English ships near this land, and is sinking all the seventy English ships of war. She has not been much damaged although she gets little help.1 The English have eight kings helping them, the Germans three. We hear that our king has been taken prisoner. Germany said that if she were paid a lakh of rupees by five o’clock on the first of the month, she would release the king. The money was paid, but Germany refuses to let him go. I have written only a little, but there is much more for you to think of.
[Urdu]
[early January 1915?]
Gobind Garh
Punjab
I was distressed to hear that you had been wounded. But God will have pity. Keep your thoughts fixed on the Almighty and show your loyalty to the Government and to King George V. It is every man’s duty to fulfil his obligations towards God, by rendering the dues of loyalty to his King. If in rendering the dues of loyalty he must yield his life, let him be ready to make even that sacrifice. It is acceptable in the sight of God, that a man pay the due of loyalty to his King. God grant you life and happiness. Those heroes who have added lustre to the service of their country and King, let them offer this prayer before God, that victory may be the portion of their King, and let them show the whole world how brave the people of India can be. The final prayer of this humble one before God Almighty is this – that God may make bright the heroes of Hindustan in the eyes of the world and with his healing hand may soften the sufferings of the wounded and restore them to health, so that they may go back to the field of battle and render the dues of loyalty to their King of peace, the King of kings, George V, and secure the victory for him.
[Hindi]
[early January 1915?]
Brighton Hospital
We are in England. It is a very fine country. The inhabitants are very amiable and are very kind to us, so much so that our own people could not be as much so. The food, the clothes and the buildings are very fine. Everything is such as one would not see even in a dream. One should regard it as fairyland. The heart cannot be satiated with seeing the sights, for there is no other place like this in the world. It is as if one were in the next world. It cannot be described. A motor car comes to take us out. The King and Queen talked with us for a long time. I have never been so happy in my life as I am here.
[Urdu]
13th January 1915
40th Rifles
Hong Kong
Return this letter signed and with your thumb impression on it, on the very letter itself. Of the dead say ‘so and so sends you greeting’ and of the wounded say ‘greetings from so and so’.
[Garhwali]
14th January 1915
[39th Garhwal Rifles?]
France
It is very hard to endure the bombs, father. It will be difficult for anyone to survive and come back safe and sound from the war. The son who is very lucky will see his father and mother, otherwise who can do this? There is no confidence of survival. The bullets and cannon-balls come down like snow. The mud is up to a man’s middle. The distance between us and the enemy is fifty paces. Since I have been here the enemy has remained in his trenches and we in ours. Neither side has advanced at all. The Germans are very cunning. The numbers that have fallen cannot be counted.
[Gurmukhi]
15th January 1915
England
Brother, I fell ill with pneumonia and have come away from the war. In this country it rains a great deal: always day and night it rains. So pneumonia is very rife. Now I am quite well and there is no occasion for any kind of anxiety ... If any of us is wounded, or is otherwise ill, Government or someone else always treats him very kindly. Our Government takes great care of us, and we too will be loyal and fight. You must give the Government all the help it requires. Now look, you my brother, our father the King-Emperor of India needs us and any of us who refuses to help him in his need should be counted among the most polluted sinners. It is our first duty to show our loyal gratitude to Government.
[Gujerati]
16th January 1915
A hospital ship
I am not in a position to write adequately about the people and the country here. What beautiful cities, pleasant gardens, rivers, streams, houses, shops, roads, carriages, cows, horses, fowls and ducks! Whatever one sees is different from our country. What manners, what conduct, what discipline, etiquette and energy! The war has absorbed everyone’s attention and filled all minds. They are greatly impressed by the Indian troops and by the men from India. They show extraordinary affection and even the women and children express unbounded delight. When we first reached England, the people came to the steamer and joyfully mingled with us. When we used to go out for walks at Avonmouth the people used to rush out of their houses to ‘salaam’ us. We played with the children and kissed them. Many women, young and old, tried to shake our hands. Whatever has been written in the Indian press about our welcome is quite accurate. There is no difference made in our treatment here. Once having come here our people will never want to return. These people have a beautiful colour, and it is impossible to describe the beauty of the children (whom personally I love the best). I wish only that I had such a child. After looking at the two pictures of their children which I enclose, can you not see that it becomes difficult for us to return?
Excerpted with permission from Penguin Books India from 'Indian Voices of The Great War: Soldiers’ Letters, 1914-1918, edited by David Omissi (Viking|Penguin), Price: Rs. 599
To read details about the book, click here.
We welcome your comments at
letters@scroll.in.
The Indian Army was, in peacetime, an all-volunteer force, taking in 15–20,000 recruits a year. Its ranks were filled mainly with illiterate peasants. Some of these men had been driven from the land, but most were willing labour migrants looking to make the most of the economic opportunities created by the colonial encounter. Pay for a sepoy was a modest Rs. 11 a month (although increased during the war), but a hard-pressed peasant family, with few other sources of income, would value the remittances sent home by a relative serving in the ranks. Some men, primarily high-caste Rajputs, were attracted to the Army by the martial self-image of their community; others, such as Mazbhi Sikhs, were landless Untouchables. But soldiering in later colonial India was not generally the occupation of the very poorest; the majority of the sepoys were from the middle peasantry. Soldiers in peacetime would normally serve only with one regiment, to which they could develop a very strong emotional attachment. Most men served for five to seven years, before returning to their village.
The Indian Army, however, was ‘Indian’ only in a nominal sense. By 1914, the vast majority of Indian troops were drawn from the north and north-west of the subcontinent – the provinces of Punjab, the North-West Frontier and UP, and the independent kingdom of Nepal. This regional bias was the result of the ‘martial races’ theory which had influenced British recruiting strategy since the 1880s. A mixture of indigenous notions of caste and imported Social Darwinism, the martial- races idea had at its core the belief that some Indians were inherently more warlike than others. Very few troops were recruited from southern and eastern India, because of a growing British conviction that southern and eastern Indians had become effete through ‘racial degeneracy’. Urban India was not tapped for recruits, for the same reasons. The Western-educated were also excluded from the ranks, for fear of their politically subversive potential. Many of the Indian troops who served in France were Punjabi Muslims and Sikhs, reflecting the ethnic biases of the wider Indian Army; in 1912 just over half of all combatants were from the Punjab.
The Indian Army had three main functions: the defence of the North-West Frontier of India; the maintenance of internal security against threats to the colonial order; and the provision of a Field Force to fight an Afghan or Russian invasion, or to be sent overseas for imperial purposes. Approximately one-third of the Army was assigned to each of these three tasks. The immediately disposable elements of the Field Force normally consisted of two divisions and one cavalry brigade, with their attached British units.
When war threatened in the summer of 1914, Field Force units were put on standby to serve in Europe. When the Germans invaded France in August, the Lahore and Meerut infantry divisions were dispatched quickly from Karachi and Bombay. They arrived at Marseilles in late September and early October 1914, detraining at Orleans before marching to the front. (Other, smaller, Expeditionary Forces were sent to Basra, Egypt and East Africa.)
The Indian troops arrived in France trained and equipped only for a colonial war. Little money had been spent on Field Army support units: there was no mechanical transport, and the artillery – all British – could be made up only by denuding other divisions. The sepoys had to exchange their rifles for the newer (but unfamiliar) pattern carried by the British Army. There were shortages of medical supplies and signalling apparatus. The Germans had trench mortars, searchlights and hand grenades; the Indians had none of these (although they improvised grenades from jam tins). It was even some months before all Indian units had their full complement of warm clothes.
As they arrived, these underequipped troops were fed piecemeal into the front line in an attempt to stem the German rush between Ypres and La Bassée. The 129th Baluchis were the first Indian unit to see action, near Wytschaete in Belgium, in late October. Decorations were liberally bestowed in these fierce little actions, including the first Victoria Cross to be received by an Indian. But honours alone could not sustain the sepoys’ morale, which went into steep decline with the onset of colder weather. The Indian troops were withdrawn for rest after heavy losses.
During the winter of 1914–15, the Indian Corps was built up to two infantry and two cavalry divisions, with an establishment of some 16,000 British and 28,500 Indian troops (see Appendix I for a full order of battle.) In the spring, the Corps was moved to the Neuve Chapelle-Givenchy sector of the front, where it remained for almost a year, apart from the detachment of the Lahore Division for a few days in April 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypres.
For most of 1915, the Indian Corps held a front of approximately seven miles. The ground was boggy, cut with ditches, drains and canals, and crossed here and there with bridges. Movement off-road was very difficult and visibility was poor, with morning mists lingering on to midday for months on end. The landscape was almost completely flat, dotted with farmhouses and clumps of trees. The only high ground was the Aubers Ridge, held by the Germans a few hundred yards beyond the Indian front line, an elevation which the Indian soldiers could see but were destined never to reach. Most of the sepoys to die in Europe – some 7,700 – fell in these few square miles.
For the Indians, the war was one of ambuscades – raids and counter-raids, patrols and surprise attacks – punctuated with larger-scale attacks on the German lines. The first of these offensives was at Neuve Chapelle in March 1915. The sepoys’ morale was boosted by an apparent success, tempered by very heavy losses – much higher than the Indian Army was used to in the bloody but brisk fighting on the North-West Frontier. A second major attack was made at the Battle of Festubert in early May; and a third at the Battle of Loos in late September.
The morale of the troops began to fail again as their second winter in France approached. Despite a year of fighting, and heavy losses, no end to the war was in sight. Casualties had been especially severe among British officers. Some units had lost nearly all their original officers within a couple of days’ fighting, and it proved difficult to find men who could speak Indian languages to replace them. All the Indian Army officers who had been on leave in Britain at the outbreak of war had been commandeered to train the British battalions of the ‘New Armies’, and those currently in post were unknown to their men, inexperienced, and often commanded little confidence.
At the end of 1915, the two infantry divisions were withdrawn in the belief that their morale would not survive another winter of trench warfare in France. They were sent to join Expeditionary Force ‘D’ in Mesopotamia, where the Imperial war effort was deteriorating badly. In early 1916, the Indian troops were thrown into the failed attempts to relieve General Townshend’s mixed British and Indian force besieged by the Turks at Kut-al-Amara, on the Tigris, downstream from Baghdad. From then on, Mesopotamia became the focus of the main Indian war effort in 1917–18; Indian troops were prominent in the capture of Baghdad in 1917, and in the destruction of the Ottoman Empire in the region.
The two Indian cavalry divisions stayed on in France until the spring of 1918. They numbered 13–14,000 men in total, including the British units attached to each brigade. There was little need or opportunity for mounted troops on the Western Front, and they were mainly kept in reserve. The cavalry saw some action on the Somme in 1916 and, the following year, during German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, and at Cambrai. Their impact on the fighting was, however, minimal.
In early 1918, the cavalry were also transferred to the Middle East, where they took part in General Allenby’s offensive against the Turks in Palestine, helping to win a great success at the Battle of Megiddo in September.
By the time of the Armistice, India had provided over 1.27 million men, including 827,000 combatants, contributing roughly one man in ten to the war effort of the British Empire. The wartime Indian Army reached a highest strength of 573,000 combatants, with a maximum of 273,000 serving outside the subcontinent at any one time (mostly in Mesopotamia). Of the 947,000 Imperial war dead, some 49,000 were sepoys.
1
A Muslim officer to his brother (Central India)
[Urdu]
December 1914
France
What better occasion can I find than this to prove the loyalty of my family to the British Government? Turkey, it is true, is a Muslim power, but what has it to do with us? Turkey is nothing at all to us. The men of France are beyond measure good and honourable and kind. By God, my brother, they are gentlemen to the backbone! Their manners and morals are in absolute accord with our ideas. In war they are as one with us and with the English. Our noble King knows the quality and the worth of his subjects and his Rajas alike. I give you the truth of the matter. The flag of victory will be in the hands of our British Government. Be not at all distressed. Without death there is no victory, but I am alive and very well, and I tell you truly that I will return alive to India.
2
A Garrison Gunner (Sikh) to a relative (France)
[Gurmukhi]
3rd December 1914
China
The English have suffered severely. Nothing is put into the news, but we know a good deal from day to day. The German ship Emden has sunk forty English ships near this land, and is sinking all the seventy English ships of war. She has not been much damaged although she gets little help.1 The English have eight kings helping them, the Germans three. We hear that our king has been taken prisoner. Germany said that if she were paid a lakh of rupees by five o’clock on the first of the month, she would release the king. The money was paid, but Germany refuses to let him go. I have written only a little, but there is much more for you to think of.
3
An unknown writer to a Jemadar (34th Sikh Pioneers, France)
[Urdu]
[early January 1915?]
Gobind Garh
Punjab
I was distressed to hear that you had been wounded. But God will have pity. Keep your thoughts fixed on the Almighty and show your loyalty to the Government and to King George V. It is every man’s duty to fulfil his obligations towards God, by rendering the dues of loyalty to his King. If in rendering the dues of loyalty he must yield his life, let him be ready to make even that sacrifice. It is acceptable in the sight of God, that a man pay the due of loyalty to his King. God grant you life and happiness. Those heroes who have added lustre to the service of their country and King, let them offer this prayer before God, that victory may be the portion of their King, and let them show the whole world how brave the people of India can be. The final prayer of this humble one before God Almighty is this – that God may make bright the heroes of Hindustan in the eyes of the world and with his healing hand may soften the sufferings of the wounded and restore them to health, so that they may go back to the field of battle and render the dues of loyalty to their King of peace, the King of kings, George V, and secure the victory for him.
4
Subedar-Major [Sardar Bahadur Gugan] (6th Jats, 50) to a friend (India)
[Hindi]
[early January 1915?]
Brighton Hospital
We are in England. It is a very fine country. The inhabitants are very amiable and are very kind to us, so much so that our own people could not be as much so. The food, the clothes and the buildings are very fine. Everything is such as one would not see even in a dream. One should regard it as fairyland. The heart cannot be satiated with seeing the sights, for there is no other place like this in the world. It is as if one were in the next world. It cannot be described. A motor car comes to take us out. The King and Queen talked with us for a long time. I have never been so happy in my life as I am here.
5
A Pathan to a friend in the 57th Rifles (France)
[Urdu]
13th January 1915
40th Rifles
Hong Kong
Return this letter signed and with your thumb impression on it, on the very letter itself. Of the dead say ‘so and so sends you greeting’ and of the wounded say ‘greetings from so and so’.
6
A Garhwali to his father
[Garhwali]
14th January 1915
[39th Garhwal Rifles?]
France
It is very hard to endure the bombs, father. It will be difficult for anyone to survive and come back safe and sound from the war. The son who is very lucky will see his father and mother, otherwise who can do this? There is no confidence of survival. The bullets and cannon-balls come down like snow. The mud is up to a man’s middle. The distance between us and the enemy is fifty paces. Since I have been here the enemy has remained in his trenches and we in ours. Neither side has advanced at all. The Germans are very cunning. The numbers that have fallen cannot be counted.
7
A wounded Sikh to his brother (Amritsar District, Punjab)
[Gurmukhi]
15th January 1915
England
Brother, I fell ill with pneumonia and have come away from the war. In this country it rains a great deal: always day and night it rains. So pneumonia is very rife. Now I am quite well and there is no occasion for any kind of anxiety ... If any of us is wounded, or is otherwise ill, Government or someone else always treats him very kindly. Our Government takes great care of us, and we too will be loyal and fight. You must give the Government all the help it requires. Now look, you my brother, our father the King-Emperor of India needs us and any of us who refuses to help him in his need should be counted among the most polluted sinners. It is our first duty to show our loyal gratitude to Government.
8
A Parsi to a lady friend (India)
[Gujerati]
16th January 1915
A hospital ship
I am not in a position to write adequately about the people and the country here. What beautiful cities, pleasant gardens, rivers, streams, houses, shops, roads, carriages, cows, horses, fowls and ducks! Whatever one sees is different from our country. What manners, what conduct, what discipline, etiquette and energy! The war has absorbed everyone’s attention and filled all minds. They are greatly impressed by the Indian troops and by the men from India. They show extraordinary affection and even the women and children express unbounded delight. When we first reached England, the people came to the steamer and joyfully mingled with us. When we used to go out for walks at Avonmouth the people used to rush out of their houses to ‘salaam’ us. We played with the children and kissed them. Many women, young and old, tried to shake our hands. Whatever has been written in the Indian press about our welcome is quite accurate. There is no difference made in our treatment here. Once having come here our people will never want to return. These people have a beautiful colour, and it is impossible to describe the beauty of the children (whom personally I love the best). I wish only that I had such a child. After looking at the two pictures of their children which I enclose, can you not see that it becomes difficult for us to return?
Excerpted with permission from Penguin Books India from 'Indian Voices of The Great War: Soldiers’ Letters, 1914-1918, edited by David Omissi (Viking|Penguin), Price: Rs. 599
To read details about the book, click here.
