The World War I campaign to take Gallipoli in Turkey is deeply embedded in the Australian psyche. It was the first battle of the Great War that involved major casualties for their forces. Anzac Day, a de-facto national day for Australia on April 25 each year, commemorates the day Australian and New Zealander forces landed in Gallipoli to fight the Ottomans in 1914. But they weren’t the only ones fighting for the Allied Forces.
About 16,000 Indians served alongside the 50,000 Australians at Gallipoli, helping maintain supply lines over an eight-month offensive. Roughly 10% of the Indians there were killed in the fighting – more than 1,600 men. Now Indians in South Australia want to commemorate the Gallipoli campaign, as the Australians do every year. But local authorities won’t let them.
Adelaide-based newspaper The Advertiser reported last week that a government body that oversees Anzac Day arrangements has rejected a bid from the South Australia Indian Defence Officers Club to march in honour of the Indians who died at Gallipoli. With next year’s Anzac Day also coinciding with the centenary of the Gallipoli campaigns, Indians in South Australia are keen that the authorities change their mind so that the 100-year anniversary can be properly commemorated.
“It is startling and worrying that those supposedly responsible for this day of commemoration in South Australia are so ignorant of the history of the Great War, and so disdainful of Indian-Australians desire to participate in a national day of remembrance,” Peter Stanley, a professor at the University of New South Wales-Canberra, told Scroll via email. Stanley’s book on Indians at Gallipoli will be published next year.
Allied and Axis
The official report says that the Anzac Day Committee in South Australia rejected the Indians’ request to march because “the only ex-military personnel that could participate in the Anzac Day march were those who served in a conflict as an ally of Australia”.
This probably emerges from public debates in Australia over the involvement in the commemorations of descendants of Turkish soldiers, whom the Australians were fighting during WWI. Turkish-Australians have been allowed to march in some parades since 2006, but it is a fraught issue.
But this ignores the vital difference with the Indian request – Indian and Australian soldiers were on the same side. Australia and India were important parts of the British Empire at the time, and the Indians played a key role in the Anzac offensive.
“It's absolutely understood by anyone who knows anything about the Great War that Australia and India, as parts of the British empire, were at war alongside with Britain, and both supplied volunteer military forces to serve the empire together,” Stanley said, adding that soldiers from the two countries also served together in Egypt, Sinai-Palestine and Mesopotamia during WWI and in North Africa, Malaya, Singapore and Burma during World War II.
“The Anzacs and Indians, mainly Sikhs, Punjabis and Gurkhas, got on remarkably well, given that Australia was a profoundly racist society at the time,” he added. “This positive relationship is explained by the fact that the Anzacs saw the Indians primarily as regular soldiers and were impressed with their discipline, endurance and courage.”
Conservative outlook
Indians have been allowed to march during Anzac Day in other states of Australia, including Victoria and Western Australia, according to the SA Indian Defence Officers’ Club. But it seems the Retired and Service League war veterans who control Anzac Day arrangements are conservative in outlook, and want to keep the focus on Australian soldiers.
“We have to be very careful to maintain the integrity of the march so that the full focus is on the Australian and New Zealand veterans,” said RSL South Australia President Brigadier Tim Hanna. “And also to make sure the march does not become too long because that puts a burden on the older veterans.”
Stanley, however, said he believes that this conservative approach – especially considering the involvement of Turkish-Australians in other Anzac Day events – is outdated.
“Authorities are concerned to ‘protect’ Anzac day observances – in this case the ‘march’ of veterans and other representatives – from what they see as ‘inappropriate’ participants,” he wrote. “If Turkish groups can march in Melbourne or Canberra, as they do, why cannot representatives of a former ally march in Adelaide? The exclusion of Indians is based on ignorance and prejudice – a fatal combination in a pluralist democracy.”
We welcome your comments at
letters@scroll.in.
About 16,000 Indians served alongside the 50,000 Australians at Gallipoli, helping maintain supply lines over an eight-month offensive. Roughly 10% of the Indians there were killed in the fighting – more than 1,600 men. Now Indians in South Australia want to commemorate the Gallipoli campaign, as the Australians do every year. But local authorities won’t let them.
Adelaide-based newspaper The Advertiser reported last week that a government body that oversees Anzac Day arrangements has rejected a bid from the South Australia Indian Defence Officers Club to march in honour of the Indians who died at Gallipoli. With next year’s Anzac Day also coinciding with the centenary of the Gallipoli campaigns, Indians in South Australia are keen that the authorities change their mind so that the 100-year anniversary can be properly commemorated.
“It is startling and worrying that those supposedly responsible for this day of commemoration in South Australia are so ignorant of the history of the Great War, and so disdainful of Indian-Australians desire to participate in a national day of remembrance,” Peter Stanley, a professor at the University of New South Wales-Canberra, told Scroll via email. Stanley’s book on Indians at Gallipoli will be published next year.
Allied and Axis
The official report says that the Anzac Day Committee in South Australia rejected the Indians’ request to march because “the only ex-military personnel that could participate in the Anzac Day march were those who served in a conflict as an ally of Australia”.
This probably emerges from public debates in Australia over the involvement in the commemorations of descendants of Turkish soldiers, whom the Australians were fighting during WWI. Turkish-Australians have been allowed to march in some parades since 2006, but it is a fraught issue.
But this ignores the vital difference with the Indian request – Indian and Australian soldiers were on the same side. Australia and India were important parts of the British Empire at the time, and the Indians played a key role in the Anzac offensive.
“It's absolutely understood by anyone who knows anything about the Great War that Australia and India, as parts of the British empire, were at war alongside with Britain, and both supplied volunteer military forces to serve the empire together,” Stanley said, adding that soldiers from the two countries also served together in Egypt, Sinai-Palestine and Mesopotamia during WWI and in North Africa, Malaya, Singapore and Burma during World War II.
“The Anzacs and Indians, mainly Sikhs, Punjabis and Gurkhas, got on remarkably well, given that Australia was a profoundly racist society at the time,” he added. “This positive relationship is explained by the fact that the Anzacs saw the Indians primarily as regular soldiers and were impressed with their discipline, endurance and courage.”
Conservative outlook
Indians have been allowed to march during Anzac Day in other states of Australia, including Victoria and Western Australia, according to the SA Indian Defence Officers’ Club. But it seems the Retired and Service League war veterans who control Anzac Day arrangements are conservative in outlook, and want to keep the focus on Australian soldiers.
“We have to be very careful to maintain the integrity of the march so that the full focus is on the Australian and New Zealand veterans,” said RSL South Australia President Brigadier Tim Hanna. “And also to make sure the march does not become too long because that puts a burden on the older veterans.”
Stanley, however, said he believes that this conservative approach – especially considering the involvement of Turkish-Australians in other Anzac Day events – is outdated.
“Authorities are concerned to ‘protect’ Anzac day observances – in this case the ‘march’ of veterans and other representatives – from what they see as ‘inappropriate’ participants,” he wrote. “If Turkish groups can march in Melbourne or Canberra, as they do, why cannot representatives of a former ally march in Adelaide? The exclusion of Indians is based on ignorance and prejudice – a fatal combination in a pluralist democracy.”