The Great War

by Rakhshanda Jalil

  It’s futile to wish for the thorn instead of the flower

  We shall not accept even paradise instead of Home Rule

  Similarly, Mohani, in a poem called Montagu Reforms, is scathing about the so-called reforms, which were mere kaagaz ke phool (paper flowers) with no khushboo (fragrance) even for namesake. The poem ended with a fervent plea that the people of Hind should not be taken in by the sorcery of the reforms. Josh Malihabadi, who acquired his moniker shair-e-inquilab or the revolutionary poet during this period, talks with vim and vigour of the revolution that is nigh, a revolution that will shake the foundations of the British Empire. The ever-doubting, ever-satirical voice of Akbar Allahabadi, a long-time critic of colonial rule and a new admirer of Gandhi, shows us the great inescapable link between commerce and Empire that Tagore too has alluded to:

  Though Europe has great capability to do war

  Greater still is her power to do business

  They cannot install a canon everywhere

  But the soap made by Pears is everywhere

  The great visionary poet Iqbal, who is at his most active, most powerful during these years, does not make direct references to actual events in the war arena; nevertheless, he is asking Indians to be careful, to heed the signs:

  Worry for your homeland, O innocents, trouble is brewing

  The portents of disaster awaiting you are written in the skies

  Adopting a fake admiring tone, Ahmaq Phaphoondvi seems to be praising the sharpness of the British brain in Angrezi Zehn ki Tezi, while he’s actually warning his readers of the perils of being divided while the British lord over them. Zafar Ali Khan sounds an early, and as it turns out in the face of the British going back on their promise of self-governance, entirely premature bugle of freedom. While warning his fellow Indians to change with the changing winds that are blowing across the country as the war drags to an end, he’s also pointing our attention to the Toadies, a dreaded word for subservient Indians who will gladly accept any crumbs by way of reforms:

  Some crumbs have fallen from the table of Britannia

  O Toadies, go crawling on your bellies to pick them

  In the end, there’s Hashar Kashmiri who, in a sarcastic ode to Europe called Shukriya Europe, thanks it for turning the world into a matamkhana (mourning chamber) and for having successfully transformed the east into an example of hell.

  Poets and prose writers are known to react differently at different times to different events in the world around them. While there was a great flowering of prose writings — everything ranging from the novel to the short story, memoir, reportage and journalistic writings — on the Partition of 1947 in the four languages most affected by it (namely, Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi and Bengali), there was relatively little poetry. The Urdu poet was, in fact, virtually silent compared to the voluminous outpourings in Urdu fiction.9 In direct contrast, I found vast amounts of poetry ranging from impeccably crafted verses by major contemporary poets to unknown poems (many of which were proscribed and are now only to be found in collections of banned writings in archives) by anonymous poets as well as tranches of folk songs in various dialects on the Great War. In comparison, there is very little prose by Indian writers that deals directly or even indirectly with the First World War in fiction or memoir.

  The Great War saw the service of an estimated 1.3 million Indians, of whom 74,000 never made it back home.10 For their families, the war was something they couldn’t quite understand. It must be remembered that till 1914, there was only a nominal Indian presence in Europe, comprising some 40,000–50,000 Asian sailors in the British merchant navy, a handful of servants such as the cook and man Friday employed by Queen Victoria, a smattering of students who went up to elitist universities in Oxford and Cambridge or to take the Bar-at-Law exams.11 It was only with the outbreak of the war in 1914 that a new sort of Indian began to cross the Suez, as tens of thousands of soldiers arrived to defend France and Belgium and patrol the sandy wastes of West Asia — from August 1914 with the first Indian soldiers arriving in Marseilles towards the end of September 1914. While there were a small number of educated Indians, such as veterinarians and medics and a minuscule number of officers (mostly from cities such as Calcutta, Poona, Bombay and Hyderabad), the vast majority of those serving in the imperial army came from the peasant classes, with the largest numbers being from Punjab. Given the British theory of martial races that held certain races and castes to be more war-like than others, the bulk of the Indian army came from Punjab, Nepal, the North-West Frontier and the United Provinces. They were semi-literate, and in many cases illiterate, poor and marginalised. Their experiences, naturally, were very different from those who had hitherto travelled from India.

  At the beginning of the war, in response to an Indian ‘revolutionary’ distributing ‘subversive’ literature, a Censors Office was set up under Captain E.B. Howell in Boulogne to censor Indian outgoing as well as incoming letters, both from the front and the hospitals in England. Apart from ensuring no information was leaked out to the enemy, the censor also gauged the morale of the Indian soldiers. Translated excerpts of the censored mails in the India Office Records, housed at the British Library, are an important account of South Asian soldiers’ involvement in the war and document their fears, concerns and often harrowing experiences.12 They document how Indian soldiers and civil personnel saw not just the theatre of war but also Britain, France and parts of West Asia; the notes from the censors, on the other hand, also give a glimpse of the colonial view of the natives ranging from admiration and sympathy to suspicion.13

  For example, here’s a somewhat simplistic response from a wounded soldier recuperating at York Place Hospital, written on 10 November 1915: ‘Government has made excellent arrangements for the sick and wounded. There is no trouble of any kind. We pass our days in joyful ease while government showers benefits upon us. We bless God continuously and pray for his bounty.’

  Another soldier, writing on 2 December 1915, offers the other side of the coin, especially in places like Kitchener’s Hospital, where Indian soldiers were not permitted to go out for fear of racial intermingling and especially of sepoys coming in contact with white women: ‘Alas, we are not free to go about at will. In fact, we Indians are treated like prisoners. On all sides there is barbed-wire and a sentry stands at each door. Leave London out of the question, we cannot even get to see New Milton properly. If I had known that such a state of affairs would exist, I would never have come. If you ask me the truth, I can say that I have never experienced such hardship in all my life. True, we are well fed and are given plenty of clothing, but the essential thing — freedom — is denied. Convicts in India are sent to Andaman Islands but we have found our convict station here in England.’

  On 14 January 1915, an Indian soldier serving in France gives this fairly accurate picture of the true state of affairs to his father in his native Garhwali: ‘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 cannonballs 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.’

  Here’s the father of a wounded soldier writing from India, in Urdu, to a British officer: ‘My son has given full proof of his loyalty. He went six or seven times into action. Now he has been wounded. I trust that your honour of your kindness will have him sent back to the depot, so that he may be well rubbed with oil & make his appearance in the mosque. When he is well, he can be sent to train the recruits or sent on recruiting duty, if he is able to walk. I make this request at the instance of his mother who has been ill and helpless since we heard of his wound.’

  How expensive everything was a commo
n topic for letters. G.R. Chowam, at the Kitchener Indian General Hospital in Brighton, notes that ‘[u]nlike India, nothing cheap can be purchased here’. Abdul Said, a Punjabi Muslim, writing on 1 November 1915 to his brother in Jammu, comments on how expensive the newspapers were. He attributes this to the fact that ‘everyone great and small reads the papers. Several newspapers come out during the day’. But he’s also impressed by English shops, noting how clean and tidy the butchers’ shops are and how ‘every shopkeeper tries especially to keep his shop spick and span and everything is in perfect order’.

  Khan Muhammad, 40th Pathans, Brighton Hospital,14 writing to Niyaz Ali 74th Punjabis, Hong Kong (Urdu, 17/05/1915) resorts to allusions: ‘And there is an expenditure, too great for words, in this country, of black and red pepper (i.e. Hindustani and British troops). You are wise and for the rest you will reply without fail to this letter. […] The black pepper, which has come from India has all been used up, and to carry on with I will (i.e., they will) now send for more men, otherwise there would be very little red pepper remaining, because the black is hard and there is plenty of it. And the black pepper (here) is somewhat less than the red, and this water is not right without black pepper. Now you must understand, and what you can see with the eye, is written; you must multiply it all by forty-five.’

  Aware of censorship, a soldier would often use coded or euphemistic language. In letters back home, many convey their shock at the large number of casualties, which led them, quite rightly, to believe that they were being used as cannon fodder. Two infantry divisions of the Indian Corps, under the command of Sir James Willcocks, were virtually ‘fed’ into the fighting at Ypres in October–November 1914: ‘…suffering heavy losses before being pulled out of the line to rest and reorganise. By early 1915, the Indian strength on the Western front had been built up to four divisions — two of infantry and two of cavalry. The Indian infantry formed half the attacking force at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle on 10-12 March 1915; the Lahore Division was badly mauled during the Second Battle of Ypres at the end of April; and the Meerut Division made a diversionary attack at the Battle of Loos in September. Towards the end of 1915, the two Indian infantry divisions were withdrawn according to some (disputed) accounts because of poor morale resulting from heavy losses and an uncongenial winter climate. They were sent to Mesopotamia, where they took part in the unsuccessful attempts to relieve the British-Indian garrison besieged at Kut-al-Amara between January and April 1916, before helping to capture Baghdad the following year. The cavalry divisions stayed in France until March 1918, when they were withdrawn to take part in the forthcoming offensive against the Turks in Palestine.’15

  The following table shows the total number of Indians who served in all areas of the war from 1914 to 1918.

  Countries sent to Combatants Indian officers and warrant officers Combatants Indian other ranks Non-combatants Total

  France 1,911 82,974 47,611 132,496

  East Africa 826 33,633 12,477 46,906

  Mesopotamia 7,812 287,753 293,152 588,717

  Egypt 1,889 94,596 19,674 1,16,159

  Gallipoli 90 3,003 1,335 4,428

  Salonika 31 3,643 1,264 4,938

  Aden 343 15,655 4,245 20,243

  Persian Gulf 615 17,537 11,305 29,457

  Total 13,517 538,794 391,003 943,344

  Source: India Office Records: L/Mil/17/5/2383: Indian Contribution to the Great War, Calcutta, 1923, pp 96-97

  While the total number of Indians here (943,344) seems disputed by other sources,16 there seems no disputing the courage of the Indian soldiers in the war arenas spread across Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.17 South Asian soldiers won many awards for bravery, a total of 12,908, including eleven Victoria Crosses, with Khudadad Khan of the 129th Duke of Connaught’s Own Baluchis being the first Indian to be awarded a Victoria Cross for his exemplary courage in the First Battle of Ypres.18 That this unprecedented show of valour by Indian soldiers remains largely unsung and unrecognised, particularly in India, is perplexing. While Britain has finally acknowledged the extent of the participation by Indian soldiers in a range of public responses — through books, media reports, photo exhibitions — beginning in 2014 when the centenary of the First World War was being observed, the response in India has been tardy.19 It must be noted that the corpus of contemporary writings was, in the first place, slender. Not a great deal was written then; little has been added over the years. Is it because for much of India it was someone else’s war, one they neither understood nor cared for? Or, given the ambiguity about India’s participation at a time of rising nationalist consciousness, amnesia seems better than remembering?

  This volume, then, is an attempt to redress an old wrong. It contains within its pages a wide spectrum of voices and reflects a variety of attitudes among Indians of different hues. While for the informed Indians, the war brought vestiges of loyalty to the Empire into direct conflict with a rising consciousness for the great mass of peasantry, enlistment in the army was due to a combination of reasons: a steady income with either a pension or a grant of land for loyalty and courage, upward mobility within their own social class, a chance to see the world, a chance to get access to better food, money and clothes, and, occasionally, enforced enlistment caused by false notions of izzat or honour. The Indian response to the First World War was complex and variegated. The collection of writings here reflects that ambiguity.

  Beginning with a rejoinder to an editorial in the journal Shabujpatro, written in December 1914, we see the Great War in an unusual binary provided by Rabindranath Tagore who views it as a battle between soldiers and merchants. Using the tropes of the Indian caste system and the Kurukshetra war described in the Indian epic Mahabharata, the bard links European mercantile interests with the expansion of the Empire in Asia and Africa. ‘Business,’ he writes, ‘is now no longer trade and commerce: it is now married to the Empire. Once, the merchant had owned material things, now he owns human beings. The difference between then and now is apparent. Unlike the times when the king and country were one, the Empire builders are now traders who indulge in import and export in far corners of the world.’

  This smorgasbord of writings moves on to an extract from Abdullah Hussein’s seminal novel The Weary Generations. A literary masterpiece in modern Urdu fiction, published in 1963, it recreates the story of Naim and Azra from starkly different backgrounds yoked in a marriage that mirrors the union between the British Empire and the ‘jewel in its crown’, namely India; an uneasy marriage that ends in estrangement. Enlisting with the 129th Baloch, Duke of Connaught’s Own, Ferozepur Brigade, Lahore Division, Naim travels from his small village by train to Karachi Harbour to board the HMS Weighmouth to Aden then Cairo, thence by train to Alexandria and upon once again embarking on the HMS Weighmouth to Marseilles. ‘Les Indiens,’ the French say to one another, pointing to the dark soldiers. The extract chosen here, comprising all of Chapter Ten from the novel, is a luminous account of Naim’s experiences in Belgium and France. Naim fights the firangi’s war in France, loses an arm, comes back with a stump but also a ‘Distinguished Conduct Medal, an award of ten acres of land in his village, a promotion-on retirement to Subedar and an increase in his pension’. All in all, the war has been good to him though it has also opened new ways of seeing, and by extension, engaging with the world.

  Chandradhar Sharma Guleri’s short story Usne Kaha Tha (She Had Said) is in the nature of a mini classic. Written in 1914 and published in 1915 in the journal Saraswati, and often regarded as the first Hindi short story, it presents one of the earliest Indian responses to the Great War through the medium of creative writing. While seemingly a sweet and gentle love story, it nevertheless takes in ever-popular tropes of love, sacrifice and devotion and contains useful references to the War: the camaraderie among the Indian sepoys, subedars, naiks and other non-commissioned officers and their dynamics with their superior English officers, the presence of mind and bravery of the Indian troops, and the bitter wet, cold
conditions in the trenches.20

  Literacy rates being low in India, we have few first-person accounts in the form of memoirs or diaries. The account by Lt-Col Azmatullah Khan, who belonged to an elite educated family from the princely state of Hyderabad, presents a rarity. Apart from accurate and minute descriptions of places and events, along with exact dates (each of which incidentally can be corroborated as is shown in my footnotes), this account highlights the role of the princely states in the war effort. In August 1914, when the King-Emperor sent a message to the ‘Princes and People of My Indian Empire’,21 the responses were enthusiastic bordering on slavish. Ruling almost one-third of India with varying alliances and partnerships with the British Raj, the princes made extravagant offers of money, troops, labourers, hospitals, ships, ambulances, motorcars, flotillas, horses, food and clothes. The Imperial Service troops of all the twenty-seven states in India were placed at the disposal of the Viceroy. Invoking a tradition of a long history of family alliances with the Empire, the Nizam of Hyderabad declared in a speech: ‘In 1887, my revered father offered to Her Imperial Majesty, Queen Victoria, the sum of Rs 60 lakh when danger merely threatened the borders of the Indian empire. I should be untrue alike to the promptings of my own heart and to the traditions of my house if I offered less to His Imperial Majesty, King George V, in this just and momentous war.’22 As Lt-Col Khan notes, ‘Nawab Salar Jung Bahadur of Hyderabad State donated a sum of Rs 60 lakh for the 20th Deccan Horse and Hyderabad Imperial Service Troops towards expenses in the war effort. The 20th Deccan Horse was especially singled out for this honour because this regiment has had a long association with the Hyderabad Contingent and His Highness was an Honorary Colonel in this regiment.’ The rest of the memoir is a faithful record of the action seen by the Imperial Service Troops in the Middle East.

  The war machinery needed all sorts of people, besides officers and soldiers; known as followers, they provided a variety of services as washermen, drivers, animal-keepers, veterinarians, saddlers, cobblers, cooks, clerks and storekeepers both at the base camps and the fronts. Regrettably, we have precious little by way of testimony from these assorted service providers. A most remarkable piece of writing is Bondhon Hara (Unfettered) by the legendary Bengali poet Kazi Nazrul Islam who joined the British Army as an eighteen-year old lad in 191723 and was posted at the Karachi Harbour. Coming from the distant Bardhman district in Bengal, crossing the breadth of the Indian subcontinent, he is struck by the sights and sounds of Karachi where everything seems new and different, even the colour of the skies and the rain when it falls on the earth, as well as his experiences in the harbour city during wartime. He narrates these experiences in the form of letters back home to his friend and sister-in-law. A lesser-known work among Nazrul Islam’s vast corpus of songs, this epistolary novel, originally written in Bengali, is an excellent example of the subaltern response to the war and how the war experience was subsumed into a larger coming-of-age experience for the very young enlisted men. Nurul, the young protagonist, talks of crossing the Arabian Sea and jumping into the fires of Mesopotamia. He expresses the angst and bewilderment of an entire generation of young recruits who are perplexed by their raging emotions at the thought of the horrors and violence awaiting them: ‘I feel like beheading all human beings and drinking their blood. Maybe that will slake my insatiable blood lust. Why, oh why, do I have such a rage against all humanity? What have human beings done to me? I just can’t say. If they are not my enemies, why do I have this burning desire to drink their blood? How strange, when the slightest grief of these very people causes my heart to cry out in pain like a parched desert. Why does such rage reside in my heart? Alas, no one knows. This madness has no right to exist. You will not understand this pain, Bhabi Saheba, you will not understand the hustle and bustle, the restlessness.’