‘Most of World War I sepoys were peasant-warriors, soldiering was a source of livelihood … a war medal had a certain aura’

World War I saw the service of 1.3 million Indians. With the four-year commemoration of the centenary drawing to a close, author and academic Santanu Das spoke to Manimugdha S Sharma on hidden voices of the war:

Did MK Gandhi feel that the service of Indian troops in WWI wasn’t something Congress could leverage for greater political rights?

Soon after the outbreak of the war, in 1914, Gandhi volunteered to raise an Ambulance Corps in London. Upon his return to India, and particularly in 1918, he threw himself into the recruitment campaign. He toured villages in Gujarat and Bihar and gave a series of recruitment speeches.

For Gandhi, war service was not just a matter of political strategy for the post-war reward of India’s Dominion status. Gandhi’s experience in the imperial wars convinced him that it was the military – an institution trained to kill – that fostered some of the qualities he held most dear: self-discipline, self-sacrifice, courage, resilience, qualities essential to nation-building. Ahimsa, for Gandhi, was not absence but active renunciation of violence, and to renounce something, he argued, one should at first need to know it.

It makes certain philosophical sense but becomes seriously contentious as we move from philosophical ether to the muddy reality of the trenches. And the lives of so many young men are involved. It is as if even before the Indian soldiers had reached the battlefields of empire, they have become fodder in the experimental laboratory of Gandhi for the ‘greater cause’ – be it moral philosophy, empire or the nation.

Tell us something about coercion as a tool of recruitment in India.

Soldiers are often turned either into loyalist imperial heroes or colonial cannon fodder or, more recently, into ruthless mercenaries. I argue that we need to find a more psychologically and culturally nuanced framework to understand their inner worlds and complex motives. Most of the sepoys were peasant-warriors, and soldiering was a source of livelihood. Money therefore was quite central, but fused and confused with it were social aspiration, family traditions, land grants, masculinity and perhaps a residual sense of ‘izzat’, whatever that may mean. A contemporary war poster promises ‘Good Food, Good Pay, Good Treatment, and a Healthy Life’; at the same time, a war medal had a certain aura and prestige, particularly in the martial village societies that went beyond the colour of money.

The whole recruitment campaign can be divided into three rough phases: from 1914-16, it was largely ‘voluntary’, even if propelled by economic incentives; in 1917, we see the beginning of the use of force, though in combination with more traditional incentives and methods; and from April to November 1918, it was largely coercion. Water supply for irrigation was cut off and, in a few extreme cases, women were kidnapped, if a village failed to recruit the set quota of soldiers.

You have researched accounts of many British soldiers of WWI. What do we deduce from it with reference to Anglo-Indian relations?

Nuance is essential. What countless examples show is that, in spite of the racist and often brutal imperial ideology with its power hierarchies – which made Indian soldiers go and fight in a war not their own – there were pockets of intimacy and warmth between individual British officers and sepoys. A classic case is the diary of ‘Roly’ Grimshaw, an officer with the 34^th Poona Horse which saw action in France. He is often outraged at the treatment of the sepoys in the hands of his fellow English officers but he attributes it to individual ‘shortcoming’ rather than the fundamental racist structure on which the whole imperial ideology is based. And his admiration for the bravery of the soldiers, though warm and genuine, is fused and confused with a certain imperial fantasy of the ‘brave Indians’ fighting for Pax Britannica.

Did caste and class influence racism?

Class and caste are equally important factors. Thus, fellow officer MacGregor warmly mentions the martial races – Sikh, Muslim and Hindu sepoys – but the tone changes as he speaks about the ‘low caste swines – nai, mochi and kahar caste only … I feel like getting into an antiseptic bath after every parade with them’. So it’s not straightforward racism but gets mixed with class and caste prejudices.

Do you think that even after a century, Indians still haven’t got the big picture of the war? 

Both in the UK and in India today, the Indian sepoy is always invariably turned into a colonial hero. While the four years have successfully challenged the colour of memory, I think it is important now to go beyond just ‘remembering’ and ‘commemorating’ into inquiring what these practices mean, and whom and why do we ‘remember’? A more critical thinking space needs to be created which would include combatants as well as labourers and doctors, women and children, VC (Victoria Cross) winners and deserters and conscientious objectors; the war is not just combat but a conflict spawning plural narratives and it is important to pay attention to the diverse voices.