 4th of August 1914, 100 years back in time, Europe went to war. When Soviet Nationalists murdered Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austria, on July 28, 1914, it seemed like a regional event. But soon, the assassination started unprecedented global tremors, European nations entered into complex alliances, and in less than a week, Europe was at war with itself and the world tagged along. The Allied forces, England and France, were compelled to draw its war resources from colonies. India, the crown jewel of the British Raj, couldn't have been an exception, hence Indian soldiers quickly found themselves involved in a global war that was never their own. Braving treacherous weather, unfamiliar geography and unknown enemies, many of our men died, yet others returned with a lifetime of memories. Hundred years on, the letters written by our soldiers revealed their untold stories of courage, hope and fear and most importantly, their aspirations are winning freedom back home. 28th of August 1914, the first batch of Indian soldiers boarded ships in Karachi port, cruised through the Suez Canal and arrived at the hotbed of the war in the western front. They reached Marseilles in France, barely six weeks after the war began. Our Indian political leadership at that time, which included Mahatma Gandhi, had supported the war effort and the Indian soldiers taking part in the war. The idea behind all this was that for the sacrifices being made by the soldiers, the country would get a certain amount of political autonomy and political concessions. Over a million Indian soldiers fought for the British King. Our army was the only army to participate in almost all the theatres of the Great War. Expeditionary Force A, western front. Expeditionary Force B and C, east Africa. Expeditionary Force D, Mesopotamian campaign. Expeditionary Force E, Sinai and Palestine. Expeditionary Force F, Suez Canal offensive. Expeditionary Force G, the Gallipoli campaign. Most of them were picked up from farmer households, from communities known for their competence in warfare. The British had a rather spurious anthropological theory of martial races and castes. Eventually, the size of the Indian army reached about 1.2 million, of whom as many as 355,000 were recruited from Punjab. This was perhaps the largest voluntary armed force in the history of human warfare. Thousands responded to the recruitment drive. However, not all the soldier recruits were volunteers. History reveals some of them were made to join against their will, using questionable methods. Photas were fixed for every village. For some offense, a charge is made out against somebody. It's about to be sent to jail. Then an offer is made. You want to stay out of jail and enjoy this soldier's life, or you want to go to jail. You see, nasty methods were used. People were made to stay naked before their women fought. Unless you say yes, you will go to army, you will not be removed from there. The British army needed more and more people and recruited. And some people thought it was rather almost like forceful recruitment. It was said that the unrest in Punjab was very much due to the fact that they were surrounding a young boy, the 15 and 16, and taking them away. Recruiting them with army. A number of princely states also sent their private armies. They were constrained, but had to oblige because they were bound by a treaty to help the British king. It's part of the world-renowned culture that they have to be at the forefront of battle. And that's what our treaties with the British meant. When we had a treaty, we made a treaty that we were firm on it. And that's why we committed ourselves to whatever the cause was at that time. The treaty was that we had autonomy within the state. And that we would supply armaments and men when required. And we're looking to further establish that autonomy and that position within the state. And of course, Dominion of India and that talk was also going on. Meanwhile, struggle for freedom was getting intense in India, with several new dimensions. Freedom fighters were building connects with the known enemies of the British king, like Rashbi Hari Bose, a renowned armed revolutionary leader from Bengal. After inciting a string of sporadic mutinies and army contendments, he escaped to Japan in search of help. Or the Ghadarpati, a revolutionary outfit dedicated to India's freedom, which was attempting to drum up international support in USA. Or the Independence Committee, set up by the Indian diaspora at Berlin, Germany. Back in India, revolutionary groups attempted armed resurrections, aided by German and Turkish firearms. Our soldiers, however, were bound by the call of duty. There was some degree of loyalty based on having taken the namak of the British. You have taken their salt and therefore you have to be loyal. And that is a kind of regimental loyalty. And that can also produce personal bravery. Indian soldiers of the Lahore and Meerut divisions, with their flowing beards and majestic turbans, became the talk of the town in France. This was the first time the Europeans saw so many brown people together. It was only when our soldiers were moved to Ypresaliant, they realized what they were rarely up against. The ruthless European winter was staring right at their face. And all they had was a single set of summer uniform. One officer writes, he said, I can't recognize my regiment, but when they were belated with French civilians and the civilians took pity on them, they took off their curtains, they gave them tablecloths and on and on and on, they were wrapped around with that. The First World War was mainly fought from the trenches. Indian troops didn't have any prior experience on the rigors of trench warfare. But all that they were expected to do was to defend them. By the end of 1914, they were assigned to protect the main line of defence. A line of trenches in France that extended from Givenchy in the south through Navchapel till just the north of fromel. Trained horsemen were turned into foot soldiers. They spent countless long, cold and unforgiving nights deep inside these hellholes. Not sure or when that next attack would come. Hopelessly unprepared and precariously unsure of survival. Glimpses of their life inside trenches get revealed to us in many letters that they wrote. Soldiers stood up right for long hours inside trenches to keep watch over enemy. Standing without break in those damp and soggy trenches. Many soldiers lost sensation in their feet. Their legs had to be cut off. In the last six months, we haven't taken off our shoes. Not even for a moment. Neither have we taken off our uniform. Nor have we got any good words. This war is going on day and night. One letter a soldier has written. The way in the month of Monson season is the condition of a buffalo or a bison in the month of Hado. So is our condition here in the trenches. Indian soldiers did have to experience trench foot as all soldiers during the war pretty much did. For example being told to march for a mile and it takes them something like three or four hours to march because their feet are just so swollen that they are not able to move. The letters our soldiers wrote often contained information that was censored by the British war office. When the soldiers realized this, they started using easy code words to get past the censors. There is some evidence that the troops mildly resented the fact that their mail might be read by someone other than their own officers. Some men made attempts to evade the censorship. Examples of codes included the images of black pepper and white pepper for Indian and British troops respectively. Fruit for white women and wedding for an impending battle. It was the brown soldiers fighting a white man's war, stuck in a foreign land, limited by language and a culture they didn't understand. They felt isolated, afraid and helpless. Over and above the sample evidence that they faced racial discrimination. The Indian soldiers, for example, were paid about 12 or 15 rupees a month whereas Australian soldiers were paid five shillings a day. So there was a huge disparity in their pay. The Germans used the diploma of Indian troops to say, well, these are non-white soldiers. Why are they deployed in Europe? They can't fight against the white man. So it comes into a race that's propaganda war. Our soldiers gave a fitting reply to all this discrimination. They fought with formidable force, proving that they were not any less than their European counterparts. Within three or four days of their deployment, the great German offensive began led by the Kaiser Wilhelm, the Emperor of Germany himself. They were so confident this was going to be a walk over that when they came across the Indian troops who were few in number but very stout of heart and they fought it out and this actually stopped the German offensive. The Germans were astonished to say the least. I mean they'd never come across this kind of ferocious fighting. There was a young Gurkha soldier who in the attack went ahead of everybody else, took off his khukri and got eight Germans to surrender and marched them back to the British lines. When the British unit was passing and they saw a small Gurkha soldier with a khukri and eight huge Germans marching in front of him and they all started cheering and this Gurkha gave them a lovely smile and he got an Indian order of merit for it. In the second battle of Nef Chapelle, in the very vicious and severe fighting lost all its British officers in the first four hours of fighting. So the battalion was left with just the so with our major Prabhat Chand. He led the battalion for the next 72 hours. Today that battalion as I said is not with the Indian Army. In partition it went to the Pakistan. That battalion when they are on parade, at a given moment all the officers walk off the parade ground and the so with our major commands the battalion at the parade. So it goes back a hundred years. Wherever they fought our soldiers earned respect for their bravery. Many Indian soldiers won England's highest military honour, the Victoria Cross. Earlier Indian soldiers used to be denied this honour. The Victoria Cross was the only medal which was not given to the Indians which they wanted to but it took them some time through the various procedures and when King George V and Queen Mary came to India in Calcutta in 1911 for the big Darbar that is the time when it was announced that Indians would be eligible to the Victoria Cross. 33 years old Darban Singh Negi, a naik in 39th Garhwal Rifles was one of the earliest to bring it home. When there was a stalemate in the battle in festival three attacks had failed to capture the position from the Germans. Subsequently my father in the fourth attempt my father charged with this section. He was a section commander that time. At Darban Singh Negi first person to evict the enemy out of the trenches he was wounded twice in the battle and when the struggle was over the captain lump found him covered in blood from head to toe. Another Indian soldier Thakur Singh got a military cross for his performance. He not only scattered the enemy line with his bayonet but was able to reduce their number into half. Other British officers got killed while fighting against the Germans. Now at that time he took over the command of the regiment and killed a large number of Germans along with his own bayonet fighting one to one. He was badly wounded over there and subsequently evacuated to Kitchener's Hospital where for about three to four months he recovered and soon after that joined his regiment again. The war just went on and on. For many Indian soldiers the vast magnitude of the Great War reminded them of the mythical epic war of Mahabharata all over again. 12th of March, 1915 Germans launched a fierce attack to break Allied positions at Nef Chapelle, France at the heat of the battle Subedar Mantha Singh of the 15th Ludhiana 6 witnessed his English comrade Captain Henderson getting down with a serious injury Facing incessant enemy fire, Mantha carried him to safety The brave soldier from India succumbed to his injuries but before that he forged a friendship that would last generations. Since the incident I mean the Henderson family and our family have been in touch with each other and according to the grandson of Captain Henderson who says if Mantha Singh hadn't saved his grandfather Henderson family wouldn't have been here today. My son's daughter and she has been named India partly on account of the long association the family has had with your subcontinent. The friendship between the families is only getting stronger with time. Every year, even after a century has passed Jaymal and Ayan come to pay homage to Mantha Singh at his last resting place in Chhatri Memorial near Brighton in UK Many Indian soldiers who lost their lives in the Great War have their graves here. 22nd of April, 1915 lethal poison gas made its entry into the battlefields. For the first time, the German military used chlorine a killer gas that caused severe damage to eyes, nose, throat and lungs inhaled for long enough and at high concentration people choked to death. Soldiers were gripped by panic and a sense of helplessness. There was a severe shortage of protective gear. Soldiers who didn't receive gas masks were reduced to desperate measures. Gas was used for the first time in the First World War so actually you had chemical weapons being used which were banned by the Geneva Convention which were used first by the Germans in the Second Battle of April 1915. Initially men were told, because there was no liquid they were told to urinate on the edge of their turbans and wrap them around their faces because the mustard gas was basically it attacked moist tissues. The gas turned into acid so it burned away the linings of your eyes, of your lungs and people died a very horrible and painful death. The impact of chemical gas is of soldiers talking about how it is so completely debilitating it impacts their nerves, it impacts their ability to move it has long lasting consequences. In fact, Mir Das who was the Victoria Cross winner while he's recuperating in England writes letters back home talking about how he he feels constant pangs of pain because it's an after effect of the gas and he quite quickly realizes that he's not going to become normal again because that pain is never going to leave him. Hundred thousand tons of chemical weapons were used that took out close to 30,000 soldiers and maimed many others. It was a terrible war. Introduction of chemical weapons at all times and all circumstances would come only at the end of the 20th century. Overall close to 75,000 Indian soldiers died during the war. In all theatres of war, European, Middle East, Mediterranean and the Gulf from the freezing trenches of Europe and after surviving poison gas attacks the Indian soldiers were fatigued. Immediately afterwards many of them were packed off to Mesopotamia another tiring sea journey followed. By then, Mesopotamia a region that falls in current day Iraq had become a center stage of the Great War for Indian soldiers it was an entirely new enemy the Turkish army and a drastically different terrain hot beyond imagination and dry It was here in Mesopotamia that another Indian soldier Lance Naik Lala scripted a tale of exemplary courage pitted against a huge barrage of artillery fire he rescued more than one officer putting his own life at risk Lala won a Victoria Cross for his gallantry Despite these catered glimpses of bravery the Mesopotamian campaign of the Indian army will perhaps be remembered for its impulsive decision making British General Charles Townsend commanded the Indian troops in Mesopotamia After a few initial wins against the Turks he decided to move up to capture Baghdad with devastating results That decision to move up to Qut and Amara on the way to Baghdad proved to be a complete disaster The British and Indian forces were defeated in November and December From December the British and Indian troops were besieged at Qut and eventually they had to surrender in April of 1916 Eventually after a heroic but seriously damaging resistance the Indian soldiers had to surrender held as prisoners of war by the Turks they all phased hell in Mesopotamia About 30,000 soldiers along with General Townsend had to surrender to the Turkish forces and they were made POWs and then they were made to march a forced march of 1200 miles in the Syrian desert and there it was all miserable journey that even two and a half biscuits were given per day per soldier and which was also made from husk and dust Out of 830 people probably survived this route march and my grandfather was one of them One of the most extensive documentations of the Indian prisoner of war experience that we have occurs in the memoir of a Bengali man who served in the Bengal Ambulance Corps Shishir Kumar Shorbadikari and he wrote this extraordinary memoir called Obhile Baghdad where he describes in quite a lot of detail the atrocities that were meted out towards the Indians quite a few British officers in their memoirs described the Indians as nothing but skeletons with just a few clothes wrapped around them At the Geneva Convention 1864 the European countries came to a conclusion that when prisoners are captured they should be treated with honour and with dignity All those norms were flouted in the battlefields of Mesopotamia Many of them over 22,000 died because of lack of proper medical treatment lack of food so that was certainly not in sync with the Geneva Convention General General Townsend was taken to a beautiful resort of Akil and he was kept there and he was in luxury and all and the Indian soldiers were taken to build railways and the mountains and wherever it was over in the POT Avenue they were whipped they were trashed, they were underfed and 4,000 of them died On the other hand the Indian soldiers taken prisoners by the Germans were comparatively better off It's interesting that they treated the Indian prisoners of war quite well Why this? Because by 1915 they started this idea that you must treat the Indian prisoners well because then they might collaborate with us they might change sides, they might fight that well and we use them as propaganda tools The Germans even built a mosque for the Indian soldiers within their prisoners camp the first ever mosque to be built in Germany Most Indian soldiers, however, stood their ground and remained loyal to the British King but constant propaganda did lead to some cases of defection So in the same family we have these two extraordinary brothers one who gets the Victoria Cross that is Mir Dast and then his brother Mir Must who defects onto the German side on the 2nd of March, 1915 and then is sent on a Jihad mission and it is fabled though we don't really know whether it's true that he was given the Iron Cross by the Kaiser The voices of close to 3,000 Indian prisoners of war are still alive in Germany with all their pain, humiliation and hope These lay preserved in Berlin till this day They've never seen these people before and this was a kind of curiosity and then German researchers came up German University professors said this is a good moment for research for us so if we have these prisoners of war we record their voices we record their culture we record their habits we record their culture we record their culture we record their culture we record their culture we record their culture we record their culture During the Great War the Middle Eastern theatre turned out to be one of the glorious chapters in India's war history At the Battle of Haifa in Israel the Indian cavalry had one chance to do what they did best charge with their horses They fought valiantly orchestrated a land-based cavalry attack and reclaimed the strategic town of Haifa from the Turkish forces Haifa was a very major town very well fortified it was a suddenness and this speed at which it happened it took the drugs completely by surprise and it was a very major resort of horsemanship and cavalry in the world Close to 900 war graves of Indian soldiers still remain carefully preserved in Haifa Every year Haifa commemorates their contribution and of many others who returned home alive from the battle People here remember with gratitude that the state of Israel came into being only because Turkey lost the Great War That might not have happened without the stories of courage that the Indian soldiers scripted The interesting fact is that the head of the Baha'i religion was captured and was about to be executed and he was freed and that's another very historic episode that for the Baha'i people I haven't been taken into account for their freedom and time he would have been killed We discovered the story what we call the hero of Haifa the story of Major Thakur Dalpat Singh from the Jodhpur Lancers who took part in the liberation of Haifa in September 23rd, 1918 and got killed during the battle Brighton, a small town 200 km from London housed various hospitals including the Kitchener and the Royal Pavilion These became a hub for sick and injured Indian soldiers during the Great War The Royal Pavilion was transformed into a makeshift hospital as the decor had Asian touch The wounded Indian soldiers were expected to feel at home there They went to extraordinary lengths to meet the religious requirements and the different caste requirements There were nine different kitchens set up at the Royal Pavilion mostly on the lawn There were different storage facilities for the meat There were two water supplies in each ward Every notice throughout the Pavilion was translated into Urdu, Hindu and Gamukhi However, most Indian soldiers were not allowed to leave their hospital premises so their interactions with the locals were limited A large fence was established around the estate largely to stop local people peering in but there's also a counter-argument that it may have stopped some of those Indian patients from seeing too much of the world outside the hospital just a few minutes away from the Pavilion some of the poorest areas of Brighton with awful slum housing that may have actually shocked some of those Indian patients' perceptions of England Despite this embargo many women in Brighton especially the nurses took a fancy to the recuperating Indian soldiers Many such fascinations were reciprocated Great War brought many hearts together Moments of crisis and comfort led to the forging of new relationships It was but natural that some of them would lead to marriages The local commander there was a major who was in charge of the French Foreign Legion My grandfather-in-law used to report to him he was his boss My grandfather-in-law fell in love with his commandant sister She was a Muslim that way she converted herself Her name was Eugene when they got married after that she became Mariam She used to do her namaz as I told you five times a day and in the kitchen she had a picture of Jesus Christ and Mother Mary and after doing her namaz she would go and pray in front of them also It wasn't just love that was exchanged during the war The Europeans never came face to face with so many people from South Asia Their initial cultural shock soon evolved into a huge melting pot of civilizations A point of exchange where both communities started picking up elements from each other's cultures At the battlefields numerous myths that Europeans had about Indians were finally cleared brought together by fate in a life and death situation spending long hours with each other fellow soldiers learnt to respect and appreciate each other's culture One lovely object that we have in the Pavilion Hospital gallery here is a small locket with a copy of the Hindu Bhagavad Gita that the holy work which was presented to the daughter of one of the doctors at the Kitchener Hospital by way of thanks It's a fascinating tiny little printed copy of the book which fits into a locket designed to hang around someone's neck So that's one really nice example of where there was some sort of cultural transmission coming from the Indians to local people here Some historians believe that the dominantly Indian custom of tea drinking with loads of sugar and milk originated from life in the trenches Our soldiers also learnt about sunny-side-up eggs and French bread from their encounters with continental food In exchange, they taught the French how to make Tava rotis and parathas Both Indian and French cultures were replete with songs Music became a major bridge of connect between the two nations And you just read out some of these songs My husband and his two brothers all have gone to Lahm hearing the news of war leaves of trees got burnt Lahm, it's coming from French and this is how words travel during wartime What have emerged in recent years are some songs, songs of lament songs of protest by these women in Punjab The women who were left behind did have a lot to lament It wasn't just about being afraid for the well-being of their men It was also about everyday responsibilities The burning question was who will do the work that men usually do Women had no option but to do it all including dominantly male tasks like lighting of pyres for the dead Much more difficult to fathom are the responses of the people directly affected by the war The women in the village whose fathers, sons and brothers had gone to different parts of the world These women who often didn't even get to know how or exactly when their beloved men had been killed Till date there are many villages in the subcontinent and half of the population went off to fight as soldiers In local parlance they are called military villages Our village Apshinge earned the name military because of its tradition of having maximum people joining the army In fact during the first world war we had at least two to three persons joining the army from each family and at that period we had 80% of the able-bodied men The Apshinge military village at Satara Maharashtra has been providing soldiers for generations The village has a memorial for its brave men who participated in the first world war Padhyana is another village of soldiers from Punjab This village too has inspiring stories of the great war deeply embedded into its oral traditions From Meroli tugged in the suburbs of India's national capital Delhi more than 1200 soldiers went to the great war A number of cities across the length and breadth of India have such war memorials remembering these soldiers Hundred years on people might have forgotten their stories but the fact remains in their own way They did contribute in changing the course of human history The horror of the war rattled young Indians All their senses were numbed All over Europe, Africa and Middle East Countless nameless graves of young Indian farmer boys recruited as soldiers still remain scattered One soldier wrote Only those with broken limbs might return to Punjab Yet another writes as man climbs a plum tree and shakes down the plum They fall like that in heaps And yet after all these losses when the war ended and the wounded soldiers started returning home the stark realities started dawning on them Just imagine Punjab which was meant to be so loyal ever since its conquest and the 1857 rebellion and during the First World War that became a storm-center of anti-colonial agitation After all, the Jallianwalabagh massacre took place in Punjab 13th of April 1919 The same army that hired our men with promises of glory Opened fire on a crowd of non-violent protesters at Jallianwalabagh, Amritsar Close to 1,000 unarmed people died Even while most of them were trying to escape Punjab was devastated Protesting the Jallianwalabagh massacre Mahatma Gandhi returned his Kaisere Hind Award Gobi Guru Rabindranath Tagore also returned his knighthood in protest The roll-out bill was enacted which meant that wartime ordinances became peacetime laws Indians could be held without trial in prison even after the war ended and this was described by Mahatma Gandhi as a black act and then came in April of 1919 the terrible Jallianwalabagh massacre and it's in that context that Mahatma Gandhi changed his views and he wrote in his journal Young India that the Sipoy has been used more often than not as a hired assassin Most soldiers who came back could never come out of the psychological and physical trauma and the deep despair they suffered 100 years have passed since the great war rattled humanity and all it held dear the world hasn't forgotten the lessons it learnt Around the world numerous events and exhibitions are being held to remember those dark and desperate days Memories that have gathered dust with time are being revived and relived Wherever Indian soldiers have fought they have been recognized and the great war as it is called the First World War which saw so many nationalities and I think our soldiers did extremely well Their dedication and daring still resonates in the clarion calls of our modern soldiers The greatest monument to their sacrifice the India Gate or the Great War Memorial still stands proud at the heart of India's capital New Delhi with names of 13,300 soldiers that mostly died in the First World War It's time they got their due respect from everyone everywhere This state of affairs here is as follows Black paper is finished and the white paper is being used but occasionally the black paper proves useful Black paper is very pungent and the white paper is not so strong this is a secret but you're a wise man consider it with your understanding and the black paper which I have with me is very pungent but what can I do only a little remains but even so I must go back to the firing line what is that but to die how long can one conceal one's life or save it a brave man can only live a short time should there be a ridicule in that