As Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, Lord Hardinge, the Viceroy of India, announced that India too was at war without consulting Indian political leaders. Yet, the responses to the war within India, both from the native princes and the political elite, were largely enthusiastic. Of all the colonies in the British French and German empires of the time. British India (comprising present-day India. Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma) contributed the highest number of men-both combatants and non-combatants. Of them, over a million served overseas, specifically in France and Belgium, between August 1914 and December 1919. This volume as about these men it is a visual record of their lives in Europe-in trenches: fields farms billets, markets towns, cities, railway stations, hospitals prisoner of war camps- as well as the world they had left behind in India, the relentless routine of travel and the way we remember them. A memorial at Neuve-Chapelle in the Pas-de-Calais pays tribute to them "To the honour of the Army of India which fought in France and Belgium 1914-1918, and in perpetual remembrance of those of their dead whose names are here recorded and who have no known grave. The year 2014 marks the centenary of the start of the First World War and this book is a part of the series of commemorative events to be held over the coming four years to remember and honour those who served their countries with distinction, bravery and pride This volume documents this prominent contribution of the Indian forces during this tragic conflict.
Santanu Das, educated in Calcutta and Cambridge, is Reader in English at King's College London He is the author of the prize-winning Touch and intimacy in First World War Literature (Cambridge, 2006) and the editor of Race Empire and First World War Writing (Cambridge, 2011) and the Cambridge Companion to First World War Poetry (2013) He is writing a monograph titled India. Empire and the First World War Words Images and Songs for Cambridge University Press and is the presenter for a two-part series on the subject for BBC Radio 4. In 2013-16, he is leading an international collaborative research project on Cultural Exchange During the First World War
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