Omissi Europe Through Indian Eyes PDF

English Historical Review Vol. CXXII No. 496 doi:10.
1093/ehr/cem004
The Author [2007]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
Europe Through Indian Eyes: Indian Soldiers

Encounter England and France, 19141918*
The cross-cultural encounters resulting from intra-imperial population
movements have long been of interest to historians. There is an extensive
historiography on trade, exploration and settlement; on the forced
migrations of African slavery; on the diaspora of Indian indentured
labourers and on the activities of Christian missionaries overseas.1 Much
of this literature is concerned with European travel within the Empire
or with indigenous people moving between the Empires constituent
parts. Colonial visitors and migrants to Britain during the imperial
heyday have, until recently, attracted rather less attention. Although
there are some signicant studies of the ways in which West Indians
and Africans viewed and experienced Victorian and Edwardian Britain,2
it is the history of Indian people in Britain which has lately been taken
more seriously.3
* I am grateful to the University of Hull and the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB)
for funding the study leave in 20034 which enabled me to complete this project. Michael Turner
commented on a research proposal, and Clare Omissi, Douglas Reid and Andrew Thompson
made many valuable suggestions after reading early drafts. I beneted from presenting papers
based on work in progress to the History Seminar at the University of Hull in October 2003 and
to the Imperial History Seminar at the University of London in January 2004. A shorter version
was read at the Annual Conference of the Society for Military History at the University of
Maryland in May 2004. Owen Jell of Brighton Archives provided newspaper and other material
about Indian soldiers in Brighton. All documentary references are to material held in the India
Ofce Library in London, where the staff has, as ever, given me much assistance. Square brackets
in the footnotes indicate authorial interpolations, and question marks indicate conjecture.
1. On trade, see P. D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge, 1984); on
indigenous-settler relations, see L. Russell (ed.), Colonial Frontiers: Indigenous-European Encounters
in Settler Societies (Manchester, 2001) and J. Evans, P. Grimshaw, D. Philips and S. Swain, Equal
Subjects, Unequal Rights: Indigenous Peoples in British Settler Colonies (Manchester, 2003); on
indentured labour, see H. Tinker, A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas,
18301920 (London, 1974), K. Saunders (ed.), Indentured Labour in the British Empire, 18341920
(London, 1984) and D. Northrup, Indentured Labour in the Age of Imperialism, 18341922
(Cambridge, 1995); on David Livingstone, see A. Ross, David Livingstone: Mission and Empire
(Hambledon and London, 2002); on missionaries in India, see J. M. Brown and R. E. Frykenberg
(ed.), Christians, Cultural Interactions, and Indias Religious Traditions (Grand Rapids, Cambridge
and London, 2002); and on missionaries more generally, see A. N. Porter, Cultural Imperialism
and Protestant Missionary Enterprise, 17801914, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History,
xxv (1997).
2. See for example, D. Killingray, Africans in Britain (London, 1994); J. Green, Black
Edwardians: Black People in Britain, 19011914 (London, 1998); N. Parsons, King Khama, Emperor
Joe and the Great White Queen: Victorian Britain Through African Eyes (Chicago, 1998).
3. R. Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: Indians in Britain, 17001947 (London, 1986). For an
updated edition, see R. Visram, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London, 2002). See also
works cited in n 5 and n 6.
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
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372 EUROPE THROUGH INDIAN EYES
Who made up this Indian presence? In the early 1900s, some 40
50,000 Asian sailors served in Britains merchant navy: the majority of
these were from India, and many of them would have worked ashore in
British ports.4 There were also Indians in smaller numbers elsewhere.
Queen Victoria, keen to live up to her role as Empress of India, emp-
loyed several Indian servants, including a cook.5 In addition, there
was an Indian elite, concentrated in Oxford, Cambridge and London.
Besides Indian Princes and would-be Indian Civil Servants, it included
students (such as the future social activist Cornelia Sorabji and the
future satyagrahi M. K. Gandhi), and politicians, like the veteran
Congressman and Radical critic of Indias subordinate position within
the Empire, Dadabhai Naoroji, and the Conservative MP and pro-
imperialist Sir M. M. Bhownaggree.6
A very different South Asian presence in Europe followed the out-
break of war in 1914. Indian soldiers arrived in their tens of thousands
to defend France and Belgium. Although these military contingents
included representatives of educated Indiavets and medics for
examplethe majority of the soldiers were drawn from the minor rural
gentry and the middle peasantry. There was also a regional divide
between the soldiers and the educated elite. Whereas the elite came
mainly from the big cities, especially Calcutta, Poona and Bombay, the
soldierslargely as a result of the strategy of recruiting from the so-
called martial raceswere drawn mainly from the warrior peasantry of
Northern India, especially Punjab, Nepal, the United Provinces and the
North-West Frontier.7 Furthermore, the troops had arrived in wartime,
for military rather than academic, legal or political purposes. Indian
soldiers therefore brought to bear on Europe, and on European mores,
an Asian perspective signicantly different from that of their less
numerous, if perhaps more vocal, elite compatriots.
4. Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes, 3454 and Appendix III.

5. S. Mathur, An Indian Encounter: Portraits for Queen Victoria (London, 2002).
6. On Indian Princes, see M. Rodrigues, Batting for the Empire: A Political Biography of
Ranjitsinhji (New Delhi, 2003), chs 12 and S. Lahiri, British Policy Towards Indian Princes
in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Britain, Immigrants and Minorities, xv
(1996); on students, see S. Lahiri, Indians in Britain: Anglo-Indian Encounters, Race and
Identity, 18801930 (London, 2000); on Cornelia Sorabji, see A. Burton, At the Heart of the
Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain (Berkeley, 1998); on
Gandhi, see J. M. Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (New Haven and London, 1989) ch. 1 and
D. Arnold, Gandhi (Harlow and London, 2001), 3441; for Naoroji and Bhownaggree, see J.
Schneer, London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis (New Haven, 1999) chs 8 and 10, and Visram,
Ayahs, Lascars and Princes, 7697.
7. According to the martial races strategy, which flourished from the 1880s to the 1930s,
British administrators classified South Asias various communities as either martial races or
unwarlike. The Indian Army recruited only from the martial races, most of whom were
poorly educated agriculturalists with few or no connections to the nationalist movement. See
G. F. MacMunn, The Martial Races of India (London, 1933); D. E. Omissi, The Sepoy and the
Raj: The Indian Army, 18601940 (Basingstoke, 1994), ch. 1; L. Caplan, Warrior Gentlemen:
Gurkhas in the Western Imagination (Providence and Oxford, 1995); and H. Streets, Martial
Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 18571914 (Manchester,
2004).

EUROPE THROUGH INDIAN EYES 373
While the battleeld experience of Indian soldiers has attracted some
scholarly attention,8 much less is known about their life behind the lines
in France, where, like most of the troops on the Western Front, they
spent much of their time.9 This article will investigate the ways in which
these Indian soldiers viewed, and interacted with, British and French
society in wartime. It draws extensively on their surviving correspondence
with their families to consider how they reected upon their encounter
with various aspects of the European worldits wealth and education,
its religion and secularism and its gender roles and family life. It also
considers how the soldiers stay in Europe encouraged them to reect
upon, and sometimes to reconsider, Indian mores. In so doing, the article
will add breadth and depth to our understanding of South Asian
experience overseas before 1918, and will suggest some fresh ways of
thinking about the impact of cross-cultural encounters.
The wisdom of using Indian troops in Europe, or against European

opponents outside India, had been debated in imperial circles for some
time. To maintain white prestige, and to avoid antagonising the Cape
Dutch, Indian soldiers were not employed against the Boers in the South
African War of 18991902.10 In 1911, however, the Committee of Imperial
Defence had considered the possibility of sending three Indian divisions
to Europe, in the event of war.11 On 5 August 1914, the day after Britain
declared war on Germany, the War Council recommended instead that
India send the Lahore and Meerut infantry divisions and a cavalry
brigade to Egypt.12 The Viceroy of India, Lord Hardinge of Penshurst,
was keen to appease advanced Indian opinion.13 With this aim in
8. J. W. B. Merewether and F. E. Smith, The Indian Corps in France (2nd edn, London, 1919);
J. Willcocks, With the Indians in France (London, 1920); J. Greenhut, The Imperial Reserve: The
Indian Corps on the Western Front, 191415, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, xii
(1983), and G. Corrigan, Sepoys in the Trenches: The Indian Corps on the Western Front, 19141915
(Staplehurst, 1999). Soldiers letters about front-line experiences also feature in broader histories of
the Indian Army: see especially P. Mason, A Matter of Honour: An Account of the Indian Army, Its
Ofcers and Men (London, 1974), 4225; and Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj, passim.
9. J. G. Fuller, Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies, 19141918
(Oxford, 1991), 6. S. VanKoski, Letters Home, 191516: Punjabi Soldiers Reect on War and Life
in Europe and their Meanings for Home and Self, International Journal of Punjab Studies, ii (1995)
marks a valuable start, although it draws on a limited sample of the soldiers letters. For soldiers in
Britain, see R. Visram, The First World War and the Indian Soldiers, Indo-British Review, xvi
(1989) and Visram, Asians in Britain, ch. 6.
10. For this debate, see H. Howarth, Our Indian Troops, The Nineteenth Century, clvii (1900);
S. Akita, The Second Anglo-Boer War and India, Journal of Osaka University of Foreign Studies,
viii (1993); and D. E. Omissi, India: Some Perceptions of Race and Empire, in D. E. Omissi and
A. S. Thompson (ed.), The Impact of the South African War (Basingstoke, 2002), 21532.
11. Lord Hankey, The Supreme Command, 19141918 (London, 1961), i, 171.
12. Lord Roberts, a former Commander-in-Chief in India, was initially hostile to the use of
Indian troops in Europe, but later recanted: see M. and E. Brock (ed.), H. H. Asquith: Letters to
Venetia Stanley (Oxford, 1982), letters of 26 Aug. 1914, 1969 and 14 Jan. 1915, 37880.
13. W. Wedderburn, The Viceroyalty of Lord Hardinge, Contemporary Review, cix (1916),
298306; Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, My Indian Years, 19101916 (London, 1948), 989.

mind, he urged an end to the colour bar which prevented Indian troops
being used in a European war; and the king supported him.14 Their
views prevailed, and on 28 August, the Indian formations were redirected
to Marseilles, where they began to arrive from the end of September.15
In October and November, the Indian infantry were fed piecemeal
into the ghting around Ypres, suffering heavy losses before being
pulled out of the line to rest and reorganise.16 By early 1915, the Indian
strength on the Western Front had been built up to four divisionstwo
of infantry and two of cavalry.17 The Indian infantry formed half the
attacking force at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle on 1012 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.18 Towards the end of 1915,
the two Indian infantry divisions were withdrawnaccording to some
(disputed) accounts because of poor morale resulting from heavy losses
and an uncongenial winter climate.19 They were sent to Mesopotamia,
where they took part in the unsuccessful attempts to relieve the
BritishIndian garrison besieged at Kut-al-Amara between January
and April 1916,20 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.21
When not actually ghting, the men were able to send and receive
letters behind the lines in France or in hospitals in England. As one
might expect, the soldiers had a fairly restricted range of correspondents.
Where a relationship between correspondents is stated, or can be
inferred, it was normally between close family members. Even where
no relationship can be deduced, the correspondence was almost always
between people of the same religion, family name and province.
Correspondence across different faiths was rare.22 Soldiers in hospital
would write to men of their unit at the front, and men drafted from
14. G. Martin, The Inuence of Racial Attitudes on British Policy Towards India during the
First World War, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, xiv (1985), 923.
15. Hankey, Supreme Command, i, 205, n 1.
16. Greenhut, Imperial Reserve, 5662; Corrigan, Sepoys in the Trenches, 5176.
17. The two infantry divisions were organised into the Indian Corps, under the command of
Sir James Willcocks. The cavalry divisions served separately. The total strength of the four divisions
(including their British units) was about 45,000 men.
18. Corrigan, Sepoys in the Trenches, and Greenhut, Imperial Reserve, passim. For the strategic
background, see D. French, British Economic and Strategic Planning, 190515 (London, 1982), ch. 9.
19. Barrow to War Ofce, 28 July 1915, L/MIL/7/17517; Brock, Asquith Letters, letter of 5 Jan.
1915, 3601; Greenhut, Imperial Reserve, 634, 6670.
20. F. J. Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 19141918 (London, 1924), ii, chs 1925,
passim.
21. C. E. Carrington, The Empire at War, 19141918, in E. A. Benians, J. Butler and C. E.
Carrington (ed.), The Cambridge History of the British Empire: Vol. III: The Empire-Commonwealth,
18701919 (Cambridge, 1959), 624, 63940, 641, 642; F. W. Perry, The Commonwealth Armies:
Manpower and Organization in Two World Wars (Manchester, 1988), 89.
22. N[ote] B[y] C[ensor], 1 May 1915, L/MIL/5/825/2/2834.

one regiment to another corresponded with their former comrades.
Indian ofcers seem to have written more often than the rank and le,
presumably because they were more literate.23
The soldiers letters themselves have not survived, having been lost
long ago in Punjabi or Nepalese villages. What have survived are the
reports of the British military censors. The censorship operated in two
stages. First of all, British ofcers read the mens letters, with the aim of
deleting any information that could be of military use to the enemy.
The letters were then passed to the second, centralised, stage of the
censorship, based for most of the war at Boulogne. This ofce was
originally created towards the end of 1914, to prevent seditious literature
reaching the troops in hospital.24 It was later extended to outward
mails primarily as a means of obtaining information about the morale
and attitudes of the troops in France.25 The censors also monitored the
letters coming to the troops from India. They prepared a weekly report,
with up to a hundred or so translated selections from the letters.26 The
reports, with a selection of the appended extracts, were printed and
circulated to the high command in France, to Military Intelligence and
to the relevant ministries in London and India.27
Although the material is copiousnearly 4,000 pagesand extra-
ordinarily rich in detail, it poses problems of interpretation, not least
because it derives from censorship. Initially, the men in hospitals in
England did not know that their letters were being read, but later
worked this out.28 The troops at the front knew that their British (or
Indian) ofcers might read their letters; and they later guessed at the
existence of the centralised censorship.29 Clearly their awareness of
the censorship would have affected what they were prepared to say, and
any assessment of the correspondence must take this into account. In
particular, they would have been less likely to express openly anti-
imperial sentiments, or to be critical of their ofcers, especially the
23. According to the 1911 Census of India, 94 per cent of the Indian population was illiterate.
Because the Indian Army recruited in rural India, it is probable that most of the rank-and-le were
unable to write. Soldiers and their families, however, could have dictated letters to literate people
such as a company clerk (in France) or a professional letter-writer or schoolteacher (in India). For
further discussion of the composition of the letters, see D. E. Omissi, Think This Over and You
Will Understand It: Censorship and Communication in the Letters of Indian Soldiers in France,
19141918 (forthcoming).
24. Notes by Howell, Nov. to Dec. 1914, L/MIL/7/17347.
25. Howell to Spencer, 19 June 1915, L/MIL/7/17458.
26. The letters were originally written in a variety of Indian vernaculars, chiey Urdu,
Gurmukhi and Hindi but also including Pashtu, Gurkhali, Tamil and Marathi. A few educated
men wrote in English. The reports were fortnightly from June 1917: NBC, 6 June 1917, L/
MIL/5/827/374.
27. Tweedy to Strachey, 1 Apr. 1916, L/MIL/7/17347. For the printed version, see L/
MIL/5/828.
28. D. E. Omissi (ed.), Indian Voices of the Great War: Soldiers Letters, 19141918 (Basingstoke,
1999), 8.
29. NBC, 24 Apr. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/2/254.

British ones. One Pathan must have spoken for many when he ended a
letter with the words my heart is full, but we are not allowed to
write.30
That said, we should be cautious, as I have argued elsewhere, about
overstating the impact of censorship.31 Busy ofcers on the Western
Front had more important things to do than carefully to censor letters
which had often been composed in poor hands and in obscure rural
dialects. Heavy losses of ofcers in some units meant that commissions
were being given to British men whose knowledge of the relevant
Indian languages must have been limited. Furthermore, the censorship
at Boulogne was not primarily intended to prevent the soldiers from
communicating: its main aim was to gather information about their
morale. As a result, by 1917 only about two or three out of every hundred
thousand letters were being withheld, and the censor had earlier
remarked on how rarely the censors made deletions.32 The soldiers
could also subvert the censorship by using guarded, veiled or coded
language that even the censors admitted they could not decipher. Others
evaded the censorship by using the French civilian post, although this
was ofcially forbidden.33 Even when they knew that their letters might
be read, the men often wrote with surprising frankness about personal
matters, and were not afraid to be critical of over-strict hospital
regulations, for example. Furthermore, the letters of most relevance to
this articlethose about Europe and Europeanswere of virtually no
military signicance, and were unlikely to provoke much reaction from
the censors, except where the men had written about sexual relations
with white women.
Indias involvement in the war in Europe brought Indian soldiers to Britain

in large numbers. A few came on leave, or to be awarded medals, but by far
the majority (14,514 in total) were wounded men taken to hospitals set aside
for them.34
The Indian wounded were at rst treated in Southamptons
hospitals, but, as the war continued, further establishments had to be
created. In Brighton, the Royal Pavilion and Dome were rapidly
converted to a hospital with 722 beds, the rst Indian patients
arriving in early December 1914. The Brighton Workhouse was turned
into Kitcheners Indian Hospital (KIH), where the rst patients arrived
early in February 1915; by July, the unit accommodated 1,948 beds.
30. Havildar Ghufran Khan, 129th Baluchis, Pavilion Hospital, Brighton, to Subedar Zaman
Khan, regimental depot, Karachi (Urdu), 4 Aug. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/4/680.
31. The impact of the censorship is clearly crucial to any judgement about how much weight
we should give to the rich evidence contained in the correspondence. For this reason, I have given
it extended treatment in Think This Over and You Will Understand It.
32. NBC, 28 Aug. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/5/740.
33. NBC, 31 July 1915, L/MIL/5/825/4/611.
34. Arrangements Made for Indian Sick and Wounded in England and France, Lawrence to
Kitchener, 8 Mar. 1916, Mss. Eur. F.143/65.

A third hospital in the town was converted from schools in York Place
and Pelham Street.35 A private charity, the Indian Soldiers Fund of the
Order of St John of Jerusalem, paid for and ran the Lady Hardinge
Hospital (LHH) at Brockenhurst in Hampshire; it had 500 beds.36
Nearby, the Forest Park Hotel was also used for the treatment of the
Indian wounded; and further convalescent homes were created at
Milford-on-Sea and Barton.
It is difcult to say what sort of expectations Indian soldiers had of
Britain. A few Indian soldiers had already participated as military escorts
in England during the jubilee celebrations of 1887 and 1897, and in the
coronations of 1902 and 1911.37 Some of their stories may have begun to
circulate in India. It has also been suggested that Indian students often
arrived in Britain with nationalist sympathies.38 It is unlikely, however,
that soldiers, many of them uneducated, would have shared such views.
Given that they did not have access to political literature or travel
guides, the men probably did not have strong preconceptions about
Britain.
Indian soldiers were, however, no strangers to British people in India;
they would have had contact with white ofcials and the British other
ranks, perhaps some passing acquaintance with traders or missionaries,
and more extensive dealings with their own British ofcers. But for
most sepoys, a stay in a British hospital would have been their rst visit
to England, and their rst encounter with British people in a primarily
domestic, rather than military context. Besides meeting medical staff on
the wards, the soldiers also mixed less formally with the men and women
of the townduring picnics and outings, and in the shops, parks and
cinemas.39 What did they make of Britain, and of the British?
The rst reactions of the wounded soldiers to conditions in the
hospitals appear to have been very positive. In January 1915, the Censor
of the Indian Mails remarked that, in the soldiers letters home, the
excellence of the arrangements made for their comfort were the subject
of frequent and most appreciative comment.40 A wounded Maratha in
the LHH praised the food and the washing facilities, and was particularly
impressed by the beautiful electric lights.41 It is possible that the men
were seeking to reassure their families; but independent evidence
35. J. Collins, Dr Brightons Indian Patients: December 1914January 1916 (Brighton, 1997), 69.
36. See the Reports of the Indian Soldiers Fund, Mss. Eur. F.120/68; and LHH: Report, 1916,
Mss. Eur. F.120/14. In addition to the clearing hospitals attached to the Indian divisions, there
were also hospitals in Boulogne, Marseilles and Rouen.
37. Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes, 113.
38. Lahiri, Indians in Britain, 176.
39. Most of the Indian soldiers probably spoke no more than a few words of English, so these
interactions must have been rather limited unless aided by interpreters.
40. Note by Howell, 9 Jan. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/1/11.
41. Sitaram Wichare, 3rd Sappers and Miners, LHH, to Ramchandra Kadubhai, Karjat, Kolaba
(Marathi), 6 July 1915, L/MIL/5/825/4/561.

appears to corroborate them. After visiting one hospital, a sub-assistant
surgeon wrote home:
There were about 1000 patients, all quite happy; and seeing the arrangements
there, I think every one of them must be thanking God for having a bullet
in their body. There were phonographs and pianos playing everywhere,
fruits supplied in large amounts and every possible comfort. The patients
have become fat and plump.42
One Sikh soldierno doubt relieved to have escaped the Western

Fronteven applied to Brighton the words of the famous Persian
inscription on the walls of the Diwan-i-Khas at the heart of the Red Fort
in Delhi: if there be a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.43
Indeed, Sir Walter Lawrence, the Commissioner for the Welfare
of Indian Troops, somewhat paradoxically suggested that the Indian
wounded were, if anything, being looked after rather too well.44 He
thought that being offered medical care equal to that of their British
counterparts might have encouraged the Indians to start entertaining
subversive ideas about racial equality, which might have undermined
the prestige of British rule in India. For this reason, Lawrence, like the
Commander of the Indian Corps, General Sir James Willcocks, initially
believed that sending the Indian wounded for treatment in Britain had
been an error of political judgement. Lawrence later changed his mind,
and eventually concluded that from a political point of view, the
decision to bring the Indians to English hospitals has done more good
than harm.45
The authorities took particular care over religious provision in the
various hospitals and convalescent homes, not least because they did
not want letters home to cause religious anxiety in India.46 The Pavilion
hospital had separate kitchens for Muslims, meat-eating Hindus and
vegetarians; and both pork and beef were banned from the premises.47
Some men still expressed concern that caste rules were not being strictly
observed.48 But most soldiers seemed satised with the arrangements,
42. A sub-assistant surgeon, England, to a relative in India (English), n.d., c.late Dec. 1914 or
early Jan. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/1/18.
43. Note by Howell, 16 Jan. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/1/16. I have preferred the translation given in
S. David, The Indian Mutiny: 1857 (London, 2002), 98, to that of the censor.
44. Collins, Dr Brightons Indian Patients, 23.
45. Arrangements Made for Indian Sick and Wounded in England and France, Lawrence to
Kitchener, 8 Mar. 1916, Mss. Eur. F.143/65. One account of the Indian troops in the infantry camp
at Marseilles suggested that as a result of [the] kindness shown them in hospitals their discipline
has gone and they suffer from swollen head badly: Report on Indian Troops at Marseilles by
Staff Ofcer, GHQ, c.June 1915, L/MIL/7/17347.
46. Visram, The First World War and the Indian Soldiers, 19.
47. H. D. Roberts, A History of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton (London, 1939), 200.
48. A sepoy in a convalescent home, New Milton, to a friend in India (Gurmukhi), 5 Aug. 1915,
L/MIL/5/825/4/694. See also Bingal Singh, in hospital in Brighton, to Hazura Singh, India
(Gurmukhi), 20 Apr. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/2/300.

particularly because the sick were served food by their caste fellows.49
Muslims were pleased that they were able to keep the fast during
Ramazan, and praised the excellent arrangements which British
authorities had made for them.50 Separate areas of the hospital grounds
were set aside for the prayers of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. Sikh
soldiers evidently appreciated the construction of a gurdwara, and the
provision of Granths, at the KIH.51
Finding medical staff for the hospitals raised the sensitive issue of
social and medical contact between British female nurses and Indian
soldiers. In India, the elite status of white women was jealously guarded,
and any intimate contact with Indian men was normally frowned
upon.52 Accordingly, most staff in the hospitals were malethe doctors
were British men with Indian experience and an Indian language; the
sub-assistant surgeons were Anglo-Indians and the sweepers, dhobis
(or laundrymen) and clerks were Indian.53 The Viceroy and General
Willcocks both considered that the usual practice of not employing
white women to nurse Indian soldiers should have been adhered to.54
After some controversy, however, white women were employed in the
Pavilion and York Place hospitals, but only on supervisory, rather than
nursing duties.55 No women were ever employed in the KIH.56 From
June 1915, the War Ofce advised that all women of Queen Alexandras
Nursing Reserve should be withdrawn from the other two Brighton
hospitals. A similar request regarding the LHH was made to the Indian
Soldiers Fund, but the patrons of the charity resisted. There had been
no scandal, the hospital was privately run, and it would probably have
had to close if the female staff (one matron, two assistant matrons and
seventeen nurses) were removed. In the case of the LHH, the authorities
relented.57
Some Indian troops appeared to value their contact with British
women, whether in hospitals or outside, perhaps because of the
heightened status they thought it might confer on them at home. One
wounded Pathan told a friend in Waziristan not to be anxious about
49. Bir Singh, 55th Ries, in hospital, England, to Gunga Singh, 55th Ries, Kohat (Gurmukhi),
17 July 1915, L/MIL/5/825/4/625.
50. Havildar Ghufran Khan, 129th Baluchis, Pavilion Hospital, Brighton, to Subedar Zaman
Khan, regimental depot, Karachi (Urdu), 4 Aug. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/4/680. In 1915, the fast began
in mid-July, and ended in mid-August.
51. Balwant Singh, KIH, to Jemadar Ishar Singh, 21st Punjabis, Peshawar (Gurmukhi), 11 Aug.
1915, L/MIL/5/825/5/721.
52. K. Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class Under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and their
Critics, 17931905 (London, 1980), 11618.
53. Collins, Dr Brightons Indian Patients, 21.
54. J. Greenhut, Race, Sex and War: The Impact of Race and Sex on Morale and Health
Services for the Indian Corps on the Western Front, 1914, Military Affairs, xlv (1981), 73.
55. P. Levine, Battle Colors: Race, Sex and Colonial Soldiery in World War I, Journal
of Womens History, ix (1998), 107.
56. A Report on the KIH, Brighton (n.d., c.1916), L/MIL/16/temp. No. 316. J. Gooch, A History
of Brighton General Hospital (Chichester, 1980), 200.
57. Martin, Inuence of Racial Attitudes, 957.

me, for when I come back I will bring him a lovely ne girl to marry
such as he could not nd among all the Mahsuds.58 Such comments
were thought to be potentially damaging to white prestige in India,
however, and the censor normally deleted them from the soldiers
correspondence.59 Others wrote in more respectful terms about the
excellent care they received from the nurses in the LHH.60
There were, however, some problems, particularly in the KIH, which
was run more strictly than the other hospitals.61 With a few exceptions,
Indians were not permitted to go into town without an escort, or to
another hospital without permission. Instead, they were conned to
the hospital grounds, which were encircled with barbed wire, under the
guard of military police. Men were threatened with ogging if they
attempted to break out.62 The men were kept on a tight leash because
the authorities did not want them to mix with the women of the
town, for fear of what the commandant of the KIH called the gravest
scandals.63 (According to one Pathan, the local women were quite
without shame.64) The soldiers wrote about their situation, apparently
without fear of the censorship, and several men compared their
condition to being in prison.65 One Indian sub-assistant surgeon took
matters into his own hands and, as a protest, tried (and failed) to shoot
the hospital commandant, Colonel Bruce Seton. For this act, he was
sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment. Eventually, the
rules about mixing with British civilians were relaxed, because of the
resentment that they had caused, and those men well enough to do so
were allowed to stroll about the town in pairs, for two and a half hours
at a time, accompanied by a British soldier.66
More generally, many of the wounded soldiers fell into a mood of
despondency.67 In part, this reected the depression that often attends
58. Dad Gul Khan, 129th Baluchis, in hospital in Brighton, to a friend in Waziristan (Urdu),
18 Mar. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/1/142.
59. It is difcult to judge whether or not the remarks would indeed have had the impact the
censor attributed to them. French censors were certainly alarmed by ows of pornographic
postcards featuring nude white women from colonial workers in France to their homes in North
Africa and Indochina: T. Stovall, The Color Line behind the Lines: Racial Violence in France
during the Great War, American Historical Review, ciii (1998), 762.
60. Abdul Kadir, LHH, to Munshi Mohammad Din, Delhi (Urdu), 10 July 1915,
L/MIL/5/825/4/602.
61. Visram, Asians in Britain, 1889.
62. Assistant Storekeeper Tulsi Ram, KIH, to a friend, Peshawar (Gurmukhi), 12 Aug. 1915,
L/MIL/5/825/5/720.
63. A Report on the KIH, Brighton (n.d., c.1916), L/MIL/16/temp. No. 316, 7.
64. Mian Gul, 40th Pathans, KIH, to Khwah Gul, 40th Pathans, France (Urdu), 8 Aug. 1915,
L/MIL/825/4/681.
65. Ghulam Khan, 40th Pathans, KIH, to Nur Akbar, 40th Pathans, France (Urdu), 1 Aug.
1915, L/MIL/5/825/4/648. Some men at the Pavilion hospital made similar complaints: Havildar
Daidullahkhan, 58th Ries, Brighton, to Ajun Khan, 58th Ries, France (Urdu), 19 July 1915,
L/MIL/5/825/4/587.
66. NBC, 14 Aug. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/4/676.
67. NBC, 1 May 1915, L/MIL/5/825/2/282.

convalescence, but the sense of despair also resulted from the policy
(later modied) of returning lightly wounded men to the trenches
once they had recovered, which the troops almost universally thought
was unfair,68 as did most Indian civilians.69 A sense of injustice also
informed the feeling, occasionally expressed after the Indians suffered
heavy losses at the Second Battle of Ypres, that the sepoys were being
sacriced to spare the lives of British troops.70
In this climate of depression, the soldiers appear to have valued visits
from the KingEmperor George V. After shaking hands and talking
with the king, one wounded man wrote home to a friend that he was
in Paradise and that the visit had given consolation to each.71 The
military authorities were well aware of the importance that soldiers
attached to their relationship to the king.72 Indeed, Brighton Pavilion
was selected as a hospital partly because its royal associations, however
distant, were thought likely to offer comfort, and to reinforce the
soldiers sense of personal devotion to the monarch.73 (Its faux-eastern
architecture74 was also, rather implausibly, thought likely to appeal to
Indians.) Later on in the war, a Sikh dafadar perhaps spoke for many
when he wrote home urging his correspondent to pray for the welfare
of the kingthe protectorso that he might in turn provide for the
welfare of his subjects.75
Attitudes to Lord Roberts, a former Commander-in-Chief of the
Indian Army, appear to have been more ambiguous, although the
evidence is slender. After Roberts death, which occurred in November
1914 while he was visiting Indian troops in France,76 the Indian Soldiers
Fund supplied 867,000 sheets of writing paper decorated with his
image, presumably in the hope that it would boost morale, and inspire
loyalty.77 When one Pathan used the paper to write home, he said that
Roberts was very brave, but described him as a Kar [indel]. He
urged the recipient of the letter not to abuse Roberts, because he was
68. NBC, 24 Apr. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/2/254.

69. NBC, 31 July 1915, L/MIL/5/825/4/612.
70. NBC, 15 May 1915, L/MIL/5/825/2/339.
71. A Hindu of the Peshawar District to a friend at home (Urdu), 22 Jan. 1915,
L/MIL/5/825/1/39.
72. Gen. Sir J. Willcocks, The Indian Army Corps in France, Blackwoods Magazine, ccii (July
1917), 10.
73. Under the Red Cross, The Brighton Herald, 28 Nov. 1914. In fact, the Pavilion had not
been regularly used as a royal residence since 1837. The souvenir booklet outlining the history of
the building, issued to every soldier on leaving the hospital, played this down: A Short History in
English, Gurmukhi and Urdu of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton (Brighton, 1915); Visram, Ayahs,
Lascars and Princes, 1256.
74. For which see T. R. Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britains Raj
(London, 1989), 201.
75. Dafadar Lakha Singh, HQ 5th Cavalry Division, France, to Bhajan Singh, Ludhiana,
Punjab (Gurmukhi), 2 June 1917, L/MIL/5/827/403.
76. D. James, Lord Roberts (London, 1954), 47787.
77. Second Report of the Indian Soldiers Fund, 1 Apr. to 20 Nov. 1915, Mss. Eur. F.120/7, 24.

dead, perhaps implying that, had he been, alive a less respectful tone
might have been appropriate.78
Indians in Britain in this period were as keenly observed as they
observed, receiving much attention from local white people, their
curiosity aroused by the fact that brown faces were then a rarity in
Britain.79 This was no less true of Indians serving in, or attached to, the
military than it was of civilians. On the day we arrived a large crowd
was assembled at the station, wrote a Hindu medical subordinate.
They cheered us as we passed.80 Local newspapers commented on the
crowds that gathered to see them in Brighton, and on the warmth of
their reception.81 Press coverage was as positive as it was curious.82 In
Bournemouth, reported a sub-assistant surgeon, everything Indian
is loved by the people. Crowds, especially of women, surrounded the
sepoys, and asked for souvenirs, such as buttons. Having secured them,
he wrote, they wear them round their necks or on their breasts and go
about the streets showily, after giving the soldiers some (unspecied)
reward. The women left him alone, he surmised, only because they
mistook him for an ofcer.83
Several soldiers visited London to receive medals, or on leave, and
Cooks Tours organised motor excursions to the city, which included
visits to palaces and other attractions.84 After one such tour, a Jat pioneer
wrote to an Indian ofcer, evidently aiming to impress:
Subedar Sahib, you should know that I have been to London. There are four
things worth seeingone is the Tower, another is St Pauls, and a third is
the Houses of Parliament, and a fourth is the market [Selfridges].
He confessed himself not capable of describing the city, presumably

because he was so overwhelmed by it.85 The great places such as the
Houses of Parliament impressed a Gurkha, as did the fact that
unspecied men of royal families shook hands with the Indians, and
treated them as brothers.86
78. Zardad Khan, in hospital in England, to his mother in Peshawar District (Urdu), 21 Apr.
1915, L/MIL/5/825/2/258.
79. A. Burton, Making a Spectacle of Empire: Indian Travellers in Fin-de-Sicle London,
History Workshop Journal, xlii (1996), 1302.
80. A Hindu medical subordinate to a friend in India (Urdu), 31 Jan. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/1/57.
81. Collins, Dr Brighton, 18.
82. The Wounded Indians, Brighton Gazette, 5 Dec. 1914; Our Indian Guests, Brighton
Gazette, 12 Dec. 1914.
83. J. H. Godbole, Indian General Hospital, Bournemouth, to S. N. Godbole, Dapoli,
Rutnagari (Marathi), 23 July 1915, L/MIL/5/825/4/637.
84. Levine, Battle Colors, 107.
85. Ramji Lal, 107th Pioneers, Barton, to Subedar Gunda [?] Jat, 107th Pioneers, France
(Hindi), 15 July 1915, L/MIL/5/825/4/600.
86. Sepoy Khem Singh, 2/4th Gurkhas, Barton, to Harak Singh, Almorah (Gurkhali), 5 July
1915, L/MIL/5/825/4/574.

Despite the depression experienced by some convalescent men, and
the resentment at the restrictions imposed in at least one hospital,
the soldiers overall impression of Britain and the British seems to have
been very favourable. They were impressed by Britains wealth, and
they praised the cleanliness of the people and their houses, the high
level of public security and the apparent lack of caste distinctions
in British society.87 Some allowance must, of course, be made for the
inuence of the censorship; but enough criticism was openly expressed
particularly of the harsh regime in the KIHto suggest that the positive
sentiments were genuine enough. What, however, did the soldiers
make of France?
During the war, most Indian soldiers obviously spent more time in
France than they did in Britain. The Indian military presence in France
lasted from late 1914 to early 1918, and some men must have been there
for several years. Although leave to India was opened in 1916, only a few
men could have made the long journey home. The soldiers cultural
encounter with Europe was therefore most sustained, and deepest, with
France.
The soldiers were of course shocked by the losses at the front, which
were far greater than in colonial campaigning. Several men even wrote
home, urging relatives not to enlist. But their encounters with French
people and mores happened principally when they were out of the
lines resting and in support. Indeed, after the infantry had left France
at the end of 1915, the remaining cavalry spent most of their time
behind the linesalthough they did see some action on the Somme
in the summer of 1916 and at Cambrai in the autumn of 1917.88
Furthermore, the soldiers were sometimes billeted on French families,
so this intimate contact with French domestic life gave them the
opportunity to observe and interact with Europeans at close quarters.
What did they think of France? And what impact did this prolonged
residence in France have upon the soldiers, their families and their
communities in India?
In the rst stage of their encounter with France, cultural dislocation
and unfamiliarity produced a heightened awareness of minor differences
in everyday life. Thus, in March 1915 a Sikh sepoy wrote:
The people here keep horses, cows, pigs and dogs. Their cows give more
milk than ours. Their horses are used where we use cows, and their dogs
where we use horses. The horses are as big as camels, and have hands and
feet the same size as camels. I myself have seen dogs pulling carts. This is
true.89
87. Havildar Surjan Singh, Guides Infantry, in hospital in England, to Jimman Singh, India
(Gurmukhi), 29 July 1915, L/MIL/5/825/4/659.
88. Q[uarterly] R[eport by] C[ensor], 7 Dec. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/705.
89. A Sikh sepoy, 57th Ries, France, to a friend, 55th Ries, Kohat (Urdu), 26 Mar. 1915,
L/MIL/5/825/1/180.

The initial impression of France, if not of the war, appears to have been
generally favourable. This country is very nice, reported a sub-assistant
surgeon. The people are very honest and truthful . It is only 20 days
since the land was sown, but the grain is [already] sprouting.90 A Pathan
was equally impressed with the fertility of the land:
The elds are very large, [and] all [the] gardens full of fruit trees . The
chief products are wheat, potatoes, beans and every kind of grain except the
noble millet . For three months there is snow; for the rest, the climate is
good and delightful. If one were to plant a garden anywhere, it would grow.
Even vegetables need no watering . The fruits are pears, apricots, grapes,
and fruits of many kinds . Several regiments could eat from one tree. The
people are very well mannered, and well-to-do . Each house is a sample of
paradise.91
The men seem to have learnt some French, including the Picard dialect,
which suggests a willingness to engage with aspects of French culture.
In July 1915, there were over one hundred Frenchmen attached as
interpreters to Indian units.92 By the end of November 1915, however,
the Indian Soldiers Fund had supplied some 30,000 very basic
HindustaniFrench phrase books, which implies at least a limited
ability to read, and growing bilingual ability.93 One Dogra wrote home
to say that all the sowars could understand French well and could also
speak it; but his claim that he had learnt the tongue quite well in a
few days suggests that his conversational range might have been rather
limited.94 One Muslim Ressaidar (or cavalry ofcer) exchanged letters
in French with his former host, and asked his family in India to respond
in English to letters in French from the same man. The request implies
that the Ressaidar was literate in both languages, but as an ofcer
he may not have been typical.95 By early 1917, a sowar reported that all
of us can now talk French, a claim that seems plausible after more
than two years residence.96 There is some evidence that men who did
not learn French were less likely to succumb to the charms of the
country.97
90. Ganga Pershad, France, to Ganpat Lal Seth, Bhopal District (Hindi), Apr. 1915,
L/MIL/5/825/2/313.
91. Saif Ali, 40th Pathans or 129th Baluchis, France, to Kasim Din, 19th Punjabis, Seistan,
Persia (Urdu), 17 Aug. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/5/715.
92. NBC, 31 July 1915, L/MIL/5/825/4/611.
93. Second Report of the Indian Soldiers Fund, 1 Apr. to 20 Nov. 1915, Mss. Eur. F.120/7: the
precise gure is given variously as 28,000, 30,000 or 39,000: 25, 34, 36.
94. QRC, 10 May 1917, L/MIL/5/827/351.
95. Ressaidar Nadir Ali, 11th Lancers attached 9th Hodsons Horse, France, to Mahomed
Amin, Peshawar, NWFP (Urdu), 25 Apr. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/291.
96. Wali Mahomed Khan, 18th Lancers, France, to Dafadar Imam Khan, Shahpur, Punjab
(Urdu), 14 Feb. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/161.
97. Nadir Khan, DAs ofce, France, to sowar Mahomed Khan, 38th CIH, France (Urdu),
14 May 1917, L/MIL/5/827/363.

The soldiers were particularly struck by the warmth, kindness and
hospitality of the French families with whom they were billeted. The
people here treat us better than mothers treat their children in India,
remarked one Sikh.98 They were well received partly no doubt because
they were as allied soldiers, ghting to defend France. The Indian
soldiers were also notable for their good behaviour: the censor reported
that the Indians amiability and good manners had won them lots of
friends among their French hosts. He contrasted this with relations
between British soldiers and the French, which despite being on the
whole most cordial, were occasionally punctuated by soreness on the
soldiers part, not always unjustiable.99
The warm reception extended to the Indian troops was mirrored in
the congenial, if perhaps slightly more ambiguous, reception of French
African troopsparticularly by French women, or if the soldiers were
wounded.100 In both cases, attitudes were in marked contrast to the
hostility shown by many Frenchmen to migrant labourers from the
French colonies, of whom some 183,928 worked in metropolitan France
during the war.101 Such labourers were seen as shirkers, who were
avoiding front-line duties. Furthermore, labourers from the empire
were often in direct economic (and sometimes sexual) competition with
working-class French men; they were also perceived, with some justice,
as potential strike breakers. By 1917, as war weariness set in, there were
occasional violent attacks by Frenchmenby civilians and by soldiers
on leaveon migrant labourers, with Moroccans being especially
singled out for ill-treatment.102
Soldiers told their families in India about their warm reception in
France. One sowar, Wali Mahomed Khan, sent home a letter from his
French mother, which said as long as [he] remains in this country
[France] he shall, so far as it rests with me, want for nothing since he is
dear to me as a son. The enclosure, once it had been translated, gave
the greatest satisfaction and pleasure to the whole family and to the
village.103 Wali Mahomeds mother replied, in Urdu, thanking the
Frenchwoman for the kindness and hospitality she had shown her son,
98. QRC, 10 May 1917, L/MIL/5/827/352.

99. QRC, 10 May 1917, L/MIL/5/827/349. According to George Orwell, during the war of
19141918 the English working class were in contact with foreigners to an extent that is rarely
possible. The sole result was that they brought back a hatred of all Europeans, except the Germans,
whose courage they admired. In four years on French soil, they did not even acquire a liking for
wine: The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (Harmondsworth, 1982; original
edn, 1941), 49. See also Visram, Asians in Britain, 1912.
100. J. Lunn, Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War
(Portsmouth, 1999), ch. 6.
101. R. Aldrich, Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion (Basingstoke, 1996),
106.
102. Stoval, The Color Line behind the Lines, 74865.
103. Imam Khan, Sargodha, Punjab, to his son Wali Mahomed Khan, 18th Lancers, France
(Urdu), 7 Mar. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/262.

and inviting her to come with him on his return to India, adding your
presence here will confer distinction and honour on me.104
Although the soldiers appreciated French hospitality, the encounter
was not without cultural anxiety. Muslims grew concerned about losing
their religion as a result of prolonged contact with unbelievers, or with
unclean things. When billeted with French families, they worried about
French habits that they regarded as unclean, such as giving the
household dog its food on a plate from which a family member had
eaten.105 One particularly pious man abstained from eating with or
from the hands of the French.106 Another Muslim soldier wondered if
it were lawful to drink milk taken from the cow by the hands of
Christians.107 One soldier commented favourably on a farmers
preparation of a fowl in a halal manner, suggesting that the soldier was
being treated as an honoured guest whose cultural sensibilities were
worthy of respect. Muslim troops sought advice from religious gures
about how far they should keep up their prayers under service
conditions.108 As in England, most Muslims made efforts to keep the
fast during Ramazan.
Sikhs, too, wrote home asking for spiritual advice.109 Some grew
concerned about their comrades placing themselves outside the pale of
the Sikh religion by cutting their hair.110 One man wrote home (in a
letter withheld by the censor) that the Sikh religion was being destroyed
in France. Not only were soldiers drinking from the same source as
sweepers but also there was a shortage of religious artefacts. When I get
back, he added, I shall have to be initiated afresh.111 Hindus worried
that they might lose caste as a result of contact with polluting objects or
people. The authorities did all they could to assuage these fears, which
might have had an impact on Indian Army discipline or on Indian
domestic security. With this aim in mind, Maharajah Partab Singh gave
a lecture at Orleans, in which he claimed that, during the war, the Allies
were all brothers, including the French, and therefore it did not matter
104. The Mother of Wali Mahomed, Sargodha, Punjab, to the adopted French mother of Wali
Mahomed, France (Urdu), 7 Mar. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/262.
105. Alam Khan, 36th Jacobs Horse, France, to Abbu Saman Khan, Mianwali District, Punjab
(Urdu), 13 Feb. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/159.
106. Malik Sher Khan, 18th Lancers, France, to Alam Sher Khan, Lyallpur (Urdu), 11 Sept.
1916, L/MIL/5/826/7/1137.
107. Abdul Sultan Khan, 36th Jacobs Horse, France, to Abdur-razaq Khan, Deolali (Urdu),
15 Mar. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/277.
108. Dafadar Alim Khan, 18th Lancers, France, to Maulana Janab Syedali, c/o The Watan,
Lahore (Urdu), c.Sept. 1916, L/MIL/5/826/7/1139.
109. Sowar Singh, Shrine of Dehra Baba Jai Mall Singh, Amritsar, to Kushial Singh, 19th
Lancers, France (Urdu), 24 Apr. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/366.
110. Lance Dafadar Mohan Singh, 6th Cavalry, France, to Sub-Assistant Surgeon Pertab Singh,
1st Sappers and Miners, Mesopotamia (Urdu), 23 May 1917, L/MIL/5/827/377.
111. Lance Naik Waryam Singh, attached 1/1st Gurkhas, to Phula Singh, Jullundur District
(Gurmukhi), 29 July 1915, L/MIL/5/825/4/662. His religious concerns may have stemmed from the
fact that he was attached to a Gurkha unit.

with whom we ate. According to one Mahratta witness, this had an
excellent result.112
In general, service in France tended to be more popular than service
in Mesopotamia or Persia against the Muslim Turks. The reason,
however, was not primarily to do with religious politics. With the
exception of men recruited from the Afghan borderlands,113 the Indian
Armys Muslims showed little sympathy with the brand of pan-Islamism
associated with the nationalist Young Turks, particularly as it was not
endorsed by the Sharif of Mecca.114 Despite some unrest, and occasional
mutinies,115 most Indian Muslim troops were prepared to ght the
Turks;116 it was the conditions in which they were expected to do so
that posed the problem. Many Indian troops in Mesopotamia suffered
from scurvy and other deciency diseases as a result of a poor diet,
exacerbated by the disruption of an already inadequate supply system.
The extremes of climate were also unfavourable, the military results were
poor and morale was low by the end of 1916.117 For all these reasons,
Indian soldiers usually preferred France to Mesopotamia.118 That said,
devout Muslims did appreciate the opportunity to visit the important
shrines in the region,119 and leave to India was easier to obtain.120
Although there are some letters to or from Indian women in India,
the letters from France were almost exclusively from men. The war had
led to the feminisation of the French home front, as the draft of large
numbers of men of military age had left mainly women, old men and
children in the villages.121 The Franco-Indian encounter, then, would
typically have been between Indian men and French women. Perhaps
partly because of this, the soldiers letters occasionally commented
about gender roles.
Most Indian soldiers would have been used to seeing women veiled,
in closely circumscribed roles. French women offered a striking contrast.
Particularly in the absence of their menfolk at the front, they worked in
112. Anon., Victoria Hotel, Milford, to Clerk R. T. Pathak, Thos. Cook and Sons, Bombay
(Marathi), 25 Mar. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/2/187.
113. Note by Viceroy, 18 Feb. 1916, L/MIL/7/18846.
114. V. Chirol, Islam and the War, Quarterly Review, cdlv (1918), 494502.
115. L. James, Mutiny in the British and Commonwealth Forces, 17971956 (London, 1987), ch. 7;
Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj, 136, 14650.
116. GOC Force D to C-in-C India, 9 Dec. 1917, L/MIL/7/18848; K. Jeffery, The British Army
and the Crisis of Empire, 191822 (Manchester, 1984), 99.
117. M. Harrison, The Fight Against Disease in the Mesopotamia Campaign in H. Cecil
and P. H. Liddle (ed.), Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced (Barnsley, 2003),
47589.
118. Ressaidar Santa Singh, 23rd Cavalry, Mesopotamia, to Ujagar Singh, 23rd Cavalry attached
36th Jacobs Horse, France (Gurmukhi), 26 Jan. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/208.
119. Lance Dafadar Mahomed Khan, 15th Lancers, Shiraz, to Dafadar Mahomed Khan, 18th
Lancers, France (Urdu), 16 Dec. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/222.
120. Sana Singh, 6th Cavalry, France, to Sahil [?] Singh, Ludhiana (Urdu), 5 Oct. 1916, L/
MIL/5/826/8/1232; Mahomed Abdul Nazir Sharif, South Arcot, Madras, to Havildar Sherif, 5th
Signal Squadron, France (Urdu), 16 Feb. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/268.
121. Stoval, The Color Line behind the Lines, 747.

the elds all day long.122 They showed great physical and psychological
strength in trying circumstances. Unlike rural Indian women, French
women would have had some education, and most were able to write.
Some men seem to have had sexual relations with French women,
perhaps including prostitutes. One Sikh reported that there was much
immorality at Marseilles, which I could not describe if I were to write for
a year.123 The Indian cavalry spent the winter of 191415 in one French
neighbourhood. When the troops moved on, some men received letters
of a violently amatory nature from the French women they had left
behind.124 A few more enduring love affairs also developed, although these
were not without cultural complications. From late 1916, the British and
French authorities agreed that Muslim soldiers, although not Hindus,
might be permitted to marry French women.125 The reason for the
difference was that a Muslim man could lawfully marry a Jewish or
Christian woman if his bride converted to Islam, and hence could marry a
Frenchwoman without losing his religion. A Hindu, on the other hand,
might lose caste by marrying out. By March 1917, one soldier even
claimed that many men had married French women.126 This seems
unlikely, however, for the volume of (mainly adverse) comment that
followed the marriage of sowar Mahomed Khan to a Frenchwoman
suggests that his case was unusual.127 His family was also very hostile to the
union; and the poor man was reduced to claiming that, although he did
not want to marry the woman, the king had personally ordered him to do
so, and that he would have got into grave trouble had he refused.128
European weather, particularly during winter, was the subject of
occasionally hostile comment. The men did adapt, however, and
remarked on their adaptation in their letters home. Here our
constitutions have become strangely changed, wrote one man in May
1917. If the weather becomes in the least hot we feel it very much,
although the greatest heat here is not a fraction of the ordinary heat of
Hindustan!129 There were also plenty of appreciative comments about
122. Lt Bhai Narandar Singh, Mhow Cavalry Field Ambulance, to Lalla Amar Nath, Jullundur
(Urdu), 24 Oct. 1916, L/MIL/5/826/8/1339.
123. Nanak Singh, 4th Cavalry, Marseilles Depot to India (Urdu), 15 Feb. 1915, L/
MIL/5/825/4/656.
124. NBC, 21 Aug. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/4/703.
125. Abdul Alim Khan, 6th Cavalry, France, to Haz Abdul Kani [?] Khan, Farukkabad, UP
(Urdu), 30 May 1917, L/MIL/5/827/417. Contrast this with the legal ban on marriages between
Chinese labourers and French women: Stovall, The Color Line behind the Lines, 762.
126. Mahomed Yusuf Khan, 2nd Lancers, France, to his father, pensioned Dafadar Moladad
Khan, Aligarh, UP (Urdu), 7 Mar. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/217.
127. The girls character is no good and moreover she has no money: Abdul Jabar Khan, 6th
Cavalry, France, to Dafadar Fateh Mahomed Khan, 6th Cavalry, attached Pioneer Battalion 36th
Division (Urdu), 2 Mar. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/195.
128. Mohamed Khan, 6th Cavalry, France, to Chana Mohamed Khan, Rohtak (Urdu), 18 June
1917, L/MIL/5/827/420.
129. Zahur Shah, 6th Cavalry, France, to Mahomed Manawar Zaman Khan, Furrakhabad, UP
(Urdu), 20 May 1917, L/MIL/5/827/388.

the generous rations, warm clothing and comfortable billets with which
they had been supplied.130
Several men visited Paris, which they considered well worth seeing.131
They were impressed by the theatres, the dancing, the cinemas, and the
thousands of other distractions.132 For some men, France was like
paradise or fairyland.133
It seems likely that the soldiers status in India would have increased
as a result of having been to Europe. All travel is an education, perhaps
especially so in wartime, and the knowledge and experience the men
had gained would have been valued in rural communities in which
education and travel were both rare. There is some evidence from the
letters to support this. One man wrote to a relative in France, urging
him to return to India. He suggested that, having now seen all the
sights of England and France there is no desire of yours which
remains unfullled.134
To travel is to see home in a different light, and perhaps to reect

critically on home. By being juxtaposed with a different world, home
seems not only far away but also different. As one Lance Dafadar put it:
we have seen things that our eyes never dreamt of seeing.135
The encounter with France led the soldiers to reconsider India, as
they began to compare India with what they had seen in Europe.
Customs and habits that had previously been embedded almost
unconsciously now became the object of critical reection and
judgement. The soldiers often set up binary oppositions between France
and India, making favourable remarks about France, praising a particular
custom or mode of behaviour, and using this to criticise some aspect of
Indian mores.
The soldiers were especially struck by the wealth and education of the
people of Europe, compared with the widespread poverty and ignorance
in India. One unnamed Muslim was amazed by the contrast:
Great God! What beauty, cleanliness and freedom! All these gifts have been
showered upon the peoples of Europe, and we [Indians] were only brought
into existence to make up the total of the world.136
130. QRC, 10 May 1917, L/MIL/5/827/345; Report by Tweedy, 14 Jan. 1918, L/MIL/5/827/756.
131. Tak Chand, 6th Cavalry, France, to Kot Dafadar Sirdar Singh, Rohtak (Urdu), 11 Oct.
1916, L/MIL/5/826/8/1267.
132. Kirpa Ram Dali, AGs Ofce, Rouen, France, to Jairam Das Bali, Cantonment Magistrates
Ofcer, Jhelum (Urdu), 24 Aug. 1916, L/MIL/5/826/7/1091.
133. Lance Dafadar Sikhander, 20th Deccan Horse, France, to Ressaidar Mahomed Khan, 1st
Lancers, Hyderabad (Urdu), 12 Sept. 1916, L/MIL/5/826/7/1129.
134. Jai Ram Bali, Jhelum, Punjab, to Kirpa Ram Bali, Adjutant-Generals Ofce, Rouen
(Urdu), 29 Mar. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/296.
135. Lance Dafadar Sulaiman Khan, 6th Cavalry, France, to Haz [illegible] Sahib, Hissar
(Urdu), Oct. 1916, L/MIL/5/826/8/1272.
136. A Hindustani Muslim, Base Camp, Marseilles, to Muhammad Raullah Khan, Meerut
(Urdu), 14 Aug. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/5/736.

If you were to see the general conditions of life here, you would be
astounded, wrote a Sikh sowar. The man whom God wishes to punish
is born in India.137
How did the soldiers explain the difference in the fortunes of the two
countries? Although the letters of educated Indians sometimes expressed
broadly nationalist sentiments, apparently without fear of the censorship,
those of the soldiers generally did not. The soldiers did not voice the
idea, then fashionable in Indian nationalist circles, that Britain was
exploiting the colonial relationship to drain off Indias wealth through
home charges, a costly and excessive garrison and unfavourable terms of
trade.138 Instead, they were much more likely to be critical of India; in
this regard, service in France seems to have made the soldiers more
culturally self-reective.
Several men commented on how hardworking the French seemed.
Ali Hasan Khan remarked how even the sons of French gentlemen
were not too proud to be seen working in the elds, unlike in India,
where manual labour, he thought, was looked down upon. My object
in writing this, he explained to his correspondent, is to exhort you
to be as hardworking and kindly as these people are. If you follow
my advice, you will always be well off and happy.139 French women,
too, worked in the elds like bullocks, unlike some Indian women
(presumably those of high status) who regarded such labour as too
undignied for them.140
After learning of a family dispute, a Pathan sowar wrote home,
chiding his correspondents, and comparing Indian interpersonal
relations unfavourably with those in France:
The customs of this country [France] are most excellent, and each man
dwells peacefully in his own house, and seeks nothing from others. They are
all on the same level, and pass their existence in cheerfulness and good
nature.
He went on to attribute the poverty of the North-West Frontier to the

behaviour of its inhabitants:
In Hindustan, by reason of the evil disposition of the people, the rain does
not come for years at a time. Whatever these [French] people sow in the
elds comes to maturity. The harvest is nowhere a failure as it is in India.
137. Jit Singh, 6th Cavalry, France, to Sirdar Harwant Singh, Ludhiana (Urdu), 10 Aug. 1915,
L/MIL/5/825/5/721.
138. The classic statements of the drain theory include D. Naoroji, Poverty and Un-British Rule
in India (London, 1901) and R. C. Dutt, The Economic History of India: In the Victorian Age
(London, 1904). See also B. R. Tomlinson, The Economy of Modern India, 18601970 (Cambridge,
1993), 1117.
139. Ali Hasan Khan, 6th Cavalry, France, to Karam Hasain Khan, Fatehgarh (Urdu), 6 Oct.
1916, L/MIL/5/826/8/1270.
140. Amir Bakhsh, Cavalry Railhead, France, to Noh-ud-din Sahib, Attock (Urdu), 17 Aug.
1916, L/MIL/5/826/7/1060.

In India the soil itself devours the seed that is sown in it. This is all due to
the evil disposition, the ignorance and the stupidity of the people.141
The man was typical, in that his more general social criticisms were
offered in relation to a case of particular personal relevance.
A few men started to offer advice, based on their experiences in
Europe, to their families and colleagues in India. Risaldar Khan
Mahomed, for example, wrote home that he had learnt a lot of useful
lessons about agriculture during his two-year stay in Francethe rst
agricultural country in the world. After instructing a fellow ofcer to
ensure that his tenants manured the elds more effectively, he remarked
that there were heaps of little tips that I could give you which would ll
a book. I will tell you all about them, if I am spared.142
Letters containing advice sometimes commented on the simplicity of
French marriages and funerals, and the authors urged their families to
stop wasting moneyas they had come to see iton expensive religious
ceremonies. On learning of a swagger wedding among his middle
peasant relatives, a Jat cavalryman remarked that this is one of the
many reasons which keep our caste in poverty . In Europe they
think all this fuss and expenditure to be the merest folly.143 Jemadar
Shamsher Ali went a little further, if only in jest. His family had told
him that they intended to wait until his return, before having a young
relative circumcised in a ceremony performed with much eclt. The
Jemadar replied:
Poor people should adopt more reasonable customs . It amuses me

that so much ceremony is observed, and so great expense incurred, in the
cutting off of an inch of skin which is of no value whatever! I regret that I
did not learn anything of Doctoring, otherwise I should promptly have
circumcised him myself when I was last at home.144
He suggested that they went ahead immediately, and with as little

expense as possible. He also criticised the custom of bringing a corpse
home to be buried, a practice which he had come to consider un-Islamic,
as well as needlessly expensive.145
141. Sayed [illegible], 9th Hodsons Horse, France, to Sujah-us-Shah, Swabi, Peshawar District
(Urdu), 9 Apr. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/235.
142. Risaldar Khan Mahomed, 39th CIH, France, to Risaldar Malik Chinagh Khan, Lyallpur
(Urdu), 2 Feb. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/120.
143. Sheo Charan Singh, 6th Cavalry, to Natha Singh, Hoshiarpur, Punjab (Urdu), 7 Mar.
1917, L/MIL/5/827/212.
144. Jemadar Shamsher Ali, 34th Poona Horse, France, to Raja Rustam Ali Khan, Gujranwalla,
Punjab (Urdu), 20 Apr. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/292.
145. The bodies of Muslim soldiers who had died in England were buried in the Muslim
cemetery at Woking: Report on the KIH, 9. Hindus were, of course, cremated.

The men stressed, above all, the value of education, and it was to this
that they chiey attributed Europes superior wealth.146 Several men
noted the fact that all children in France, unlike in India, were obliged
to attend school.147 One Sikh urged his father to send a male relative to
school because on seeing France I am satised that anyone who is
without education is no better than an animal.148 A Muslim offered to
pay for a teacher at the local mosque, to instruct both boys and girls:
You should apply yourself earnestly to this work . The people in other
countries [than India] live in a happy and prosperous fashion. In my young
days I did not learn anything, and to this day I am regretting my
mistake.149
Look at me, wrote one Sikh. Owing to my ignorance and want of

knowledge I am in a pretty plight.150 Men in France who were
themselves illiterate became anxious to [learn how to] read and
write.151
The different psychological make up of the French, and their
economy of emotional expression occasioned some comment. The men
remarked on the stoicism of French people in the face of loss. One man
wrote admiringly about a French peasant he had seen, who had paused
while ploughing for only two or three minutes after receiving a telegram
informing him that his son had been killed.152 They advised their
families to imitate the French, and to bear loss bravely. One ofcer
chided his wife for working herself into a state of anxiety about him. He
urged her to follow the example of bereaved French women:
Just look at the people here. The women have their husbands killed and yet
they go on working just as hard as ever. It does ones heart good to see them.
May God teach our women to behave like them!153
A Muslim came to view the wild lamentation that accompanied

bereavement in the Punjab as a sign of ignorance.154 Other men urged
146. NBC, 18 Dec. 1915, L/MIL/5/825//1421.

147. QRC, 10 May 1917, L/MIL/5/827/350. Visram, Asians in Britain, 1923.
148. Khidmat Singh, 36th Jacobs Horse, France, to Lance Dafadar Gurdit Singh, 36th Jacobs
Horse, Amballa, Punjab (Urdu), 25 Dec. 1916, L/MIL/5/827/4.
149. Lance Dafadar Mahomed Khan, 38th CIH, France, to Arsalla Khan, Rawalpindi, Punjab
(Urdu), 5th May 1917, L/MIL/5/827/522.
150. Buddh Singh, 6th Cavalry, France, to Sant Singh, Rawalpindi (Urdu), 14 Sept. 1916,
L/MIL/5/826/7/1171.
151. Budhu Das, 21st FV Section, [France?], to Pundit Nilkant Dwara Pershad, Bookseller,
Lucknow (Urdu), 13 Sept. 1916, L/MIL/5/826/7/1174.
152. QRC, 10 May 1917, L/MIL/5/827/351.
153. Wordi-Major Jiven Singh, 2nd Lancers, France, to his wife, Gurdaspur, Punjab (Urdu),
7 Feb. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/117.
154. QRC, 10 May 1917, L/MIL/5/827/351.

their families to visit Europe, and see for themselves what it was like,
with the aim of learning how to live their lives to the best advantage.
One should also bear in mind the sheer duration of some soldiers
residence in Europe. After two or three years in France, some men
became absorbed by European culture. One Sikh cavalryman wrote
home that France surpasses all the countries of the world in beauty .
I never think of India even in my dreams.155 Jemadar Nadir Khan
wished he could take his pension and settle down in France where a
man can spend a good life. The people are not thieves or quarrelsome.156
Even for men who were eventually able to go back to India physically
unharmed, the psychological distance interposed by the war, and by
the experience of Europe, might have made it difcult to fully return
home.
Soldiers families seem to have been aware of the lure of Europe, and
wrote urging the men not to forget that they were Indian. Families
worried about their menfolk going native, fearing in particular that
they might convert to Christianity. One Muslim woman noted that her
husband had grown forgetful of her, and suspected he had been
captivated by the fair-faced beautiful ladies of France.157 After
reminding a potentially wayward son-in-law of his duties to his wife,
an anxious woman reminded a Rajput soldier that ones native land
and ones own people are best.158
Despite the soldiers reectionsmany of them very positiveabout
France, some men still experienced intense homesickness. As the war
went on, men confessed themselves much oppressed and very
despondent159 at the prolonged separation from their loved ones in
India.160 One Rajput, who thought he could not praise too highly the
manners and customs of France, still felt that the soldiers were birds
whose nests are in India.161 An Indian doctor with the rank of Lieutenant
had the right to dine in the British ofcers mess, but he confessed to
having no taste for European food, and thought longingly at times of
our Indian food at home.162 Prolonged separation could also lead to
155. Gaula Singh, 38th CIH, France, to Asa [?] Singh, Amritsar (Urdu), 7 May 1917,
L/MIL/5/827/318.
156. Jemadar Nadir Khan, 38th CIH or 2nd Lancers, France, to Nur Mahomed Khan, Jhelum
(Urdu), 22 Aug. 1916, L/MIL/5/826/7/1084.
157. From his wife, Ludhiana, to Mahomed Azim, 17th Cavalry, attached 19th Lancers, France
(Urdu), 6 Oct. 1916, L/MIL/5/826/8/1342.
158. From his mother-in-law, Sialkot, Punjab, to Mehta Mela Ram, 2nd Lancers, France
(Urdu), 22 Feb. 1917, L/MIL/5/827/257.
159. Sher Bahadur, 34th Poona Horse, France, to Fateh Ali Khan, Jhelum District (Urdu),
5 Sept. 1916, L/MIL/5/826/7/1090.
160. Fazal Khan, Lahore Indian General Hospital, Rouen, to Mahomed Abdulla, Government
Cattle Farm, Hissar (Urdu), 30 Aug. 1916, L/MIL/5/826/7/1102.
161. Sawan Singh, Supply Depot, Rouen, to Sri Ram, Lahore (Urdu), 24th Oct. 1916,
L/MIL/5/826/8/1338.
162. Bhai Narandar Singh, Mhow Field Ambulance, to Lalla Amar Nath, Jullundur (Urdu),
24 Oct. 1916, L/MIL/5/826/8/1339.

marital difculties, or other domestic disruption, giving the neighbours
of a soldiers family the opportunity to jeer and scoff.163
The cultural trafc was not all one way, however. Drawing comparisons
with Europe also prompted some positive thinking about Indias virtues.
Soldiers praised the beauty of Indian women, which was clad in modesty
and chastity, unlike the immodest, or even shameless, Europeans.164
The richness of Indias spiritual life could be favourably contrasted with
the apparent spiritual emptiness of French Catholicism.165
The soldiers made few wider political reections about France,
although it may have been the censorship which deterred them from so
doing. There were surprisingly few remarks about the French Army,
although when it was mentioned the comments were very positive: one
successful French attack was described as brilliant.166 Such comments,
however, were much rarer than the frequent, and sometimes extensive,
discussions of French civilian life. Nor did the Indian soldiers remark
upon the role of Frances African colonial armies, although this may
have been because French African troops did not arrive in the trenches
in large numbers until 1916,167 by which time most of the Indians had
left for the Middle East. There were examples of political discussions,
but these were normally by sub-assistant surgeons or storekeepers, rather
than by soldiers. One man in India believed that if we Indians bring
back the ag of victory we shall have proved our tness [for]
self-government,168 but his sentiments (or at least his expression of
them in a letter) were far from typical.
This article has considered how Indian soldiersand other Indians

with military connectionsinterpreted their encounter with a primarily
civilian Europe during the 191418 war. The records of the military
censorship offer a window onto an experience very different from that of
the Indian elites who had obtained an insiders view of Oxbridge or the
Inns of Court. Unusually for Indian visitors to Europe, the soldiers spent
much of their time billeted with French agriculturalists in remote villages,
or recovering from wounds in towns on the South coast of Englandin
each case far from the itinerary of most Indian grand tourists.
Although the soldiers experiences in Europe have not been much
studied, there is a conventional wisdom about the political impact of
163. Rama Nund, 29th Lancers, France, to Balmokhano, Havelian, Hazara District (Urdu),
3 Oct. 1916, L/MIL/5/826/8/1240.
164. Jalal-ud-Din (Hindustani Muslim), to Haji Saadat Mir Khan, Etmadpur, UP (Urdu), 14.
Oct. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/7/1100.
165. From L. R., Rouen, to a friend in India (Hindi), 22 Mar. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/1/148.
166. Havildar Bhura, LHH, Brockenhurst, to Subedar-Major Genna, Ramghar Railway
Station, Sendra (Hindi), [n.d., c.May] 1915, L/MIL/5/825/2/304.
167. C. M. Andrew and A. S. Kanya-Forstner, France, Africa and the First World War, Journal
of African History, xix (1978), 1415.
168. Mahomed Hasan, Rawalpindi, to Sowar Raja Khan Zaman Khan, 38th Central India
Horse, France (Urdu), 25 Aug. 1916, L/MIL/5/826/7/1180.

this encounter. Indian soldiers had seen white men ghting each other;
they had themselves fought to a standstill the best-trained army in the
world;169 they had witnessed, and been brutalised by, the squalor and
savagery of the trenches;170 they had interacted with Europeans as equals
in a domestic setting; and some of them had been intimate with
European women.171 Their resulting stories had a wide circulation in
India, both at the time of writing, and after the soldiers return, when
they were elaborated upon to eager listeners.172 All this, it has been
suggested, undermined the claims of Europe to be a superior civilisation,
weakened imperial authority, and contributed to the disturbances
some of them involving ex-soldiersthat shook British rule in India
during the crisis of empire of 191822.173 This view has been stated
most succinctly by Sir Percival Spear, who suggested that village India
saw Europe in its sordid wartime clothes and was not impressed.174
The evidence of the soldiers letters suggests otherwise. Although
certainly shocked and dismayed by the losses at the front, Indian
soldiers were far from perceiving wartime Europe as sordid. In fact,
they greatly admired certain aspects of European culture, were awed by
the relative wealth of many Europeans, and even aspired to emulate
their industry and education. Thus, the wider political impact of
ghting in Europe against white men is difcult to assess. It is likely
that some Indian troops entertained thoughts of greater political and
racial equality (even if they did not wish to commit those thoughts to
letters which they knew were being censored). Yet, we should beware
of attributing to soldiers the views of educated or political India.175
On the contrary, their warm reception in England, and the attentiveness
of the king, about whom they wrote fulsomely, may have done as much
to reinforce as to undermine imperial ties. Indeed, some soldiers
became more critical of Indian customs as a result of prolonged
residence in France.
169. F. Robinson, Separatism among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces
Muslims, 18601923 (Delhi, 1993), 240.
170. L. James, Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India (London, 1997), 462.
171. J. H. Morrow, The Great War: An Imperial History (New York, 2004), 295.
172. S. Wolpert, A New History of India (3rd edn, New York, 1989), 297.
173. For the view that the period witnessed a systemic crisis of empire see J. Gallagher,
Nationalisms and the Crisis of Empire, 19191922, Modern Asian Studies, xv (1981); and for the
involvement of ex-soldiers in disturbances in India, see S. C. VanKoski, The Indian Ex-Soldier
from the Eve of the First World War to Independence and Partition (Ph.D. thesis, University of
Columbia, 1996).
174. P. Spear, A History of India (London, 1970), ii, 1834.
175. Furthermore, the soldiers and their families were perfectly capable of drawing distinctions
between their hospitable European allies and the Germans, whom they claimed to regard as a
blackfaced, race of savages, who deserved to be ground into the dust: Jemadar Shamsher Ali
Khan, 34th Poona Horse, France, to Raja Gul Nawaz Khan, Jhelum (Urdu), 23 Sept. 1916,
L/MIL/5/826/8/1204; Colour Havildar Bhola Khan, 129th Baluchis, France, to Lance Naik Chulam
Haider, 106th Pioneers, Quetta (Urdu), 1 Sept. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/5/791; and Karter Kor, Gojra,
Lyalpur, Punjab, to her brother Tara Singh, 6th Cavalry, France (Gurmukhi), 28 Aug. 1916,
L/MIL/5/826/8/1212.

The political behaviour of ex-soldiers therefore needs to be re-
evaluated. Although many men involved in post-war protest may have
served in Europe, this does not imply causation: ex-soldiers had their
own grievancesabout land and jobs176which were quite independent
of any cultural encounter overseas. Furthermore, it is difcult to
disentangle those ex-soldiers who had served specically in Europe from
those who had served elsewhere; by far the majority of returning soldiers
had served only in the Middle East; and, crucially, those who had seen
Europe had been, for the most part, impressed. Santa Singh, a Sikh
cavalryman in France, spoke for many when he expressed his reaction
to the country in a letter home:
Other people see paradise after death, and then only if their fate is good; but
we, through the favour of God, have seen paradise with our living eyes .
The Millennium of Truth is already in this country. [The French] always
speak the truth. There is neither treachery, nor theft, nor deceit, nor
backbiting, nor slander amongst them. In short, we have never seen man,
woman or child at strife with each other, nor have we seen anyone weeping.
In fact I have neither got the words nor the pen adequately to praise these
people.177
University of Hull DAVID OMISSI
176. B. Stein, A History of India (Oxford, 1998), 304.

177. Santa Singh, 21st Cavalry attached 20th Deccan Horse, France, to Inder Singh, Ludhiana
District, Punjab (Gurmukhi), 22 Dec. 1916, L/MIL/5/827/3.


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English Historical Review Vol. CXXII No. 496 doi:10.

Europe Through Indian Eyes: Indian Soldiers

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4. Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes, 3454 and Appendix III.

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The wisdom of using Indian troops in Europe, or against European

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Indias involvement in the war in Europe brought Indian soldiers to Britain

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One Sikh soldierno doubt relieved to have escaped the Western

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68. NBC, 24 Apr. 1915, L/MIL/5/825/2/254.

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He confessed himself not capable of describing the city, presumably

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98. QRC, 10 May 1917, L/MIL/5/827/352.

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To travel is to see home in a different light, and perhaps to reect

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He went on to attribute the poverty of the North-West Frontier to the

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Poor people should adopt more reasonable customs . It amuses me

He suggested that they went ahead immediately, and with as little

EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)

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Look at me, wrote one Sikh. Owing to my ignorance and want of

A Muslim came to view the wild lamentation that accompanied

146. NBC, 18 Dec. 1915, L/MIL/5/825//1421.

EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article-abstract/CXXII/496/371/522710/Europe-Through-Indian-Eyes-Indian-Soldi

EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article-abstract/CXXII/496/371/522710/Europe-Through-Indian-Eyes-Indian-Soldi

This article has considered how Indian soldiersand other Indians