'The Coolie’s Great War' book review: The lives history has forgotten

In 2004, Radhika Singha, a professor of Modern History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, wrote a newspaper article about the possibility of Indian troops being sent in support of the US occupation of Iraq. It led her to examine several records of Indian soldiers during World War I, and discover “a story of back-breaking work by construction workers, porters, mule-drivers, stretcher-bearers, cooks, sweepers and grooms”.   

What struck Singha as odd was a confidential letter from Mesopotamia in 1916, urgently calling for Indian latrine sweepers. The reason for its secrecy was that cholera had broken out at Basra, and the sweepers would, thus, be in danger. Thereafter, Indian washermen (dhobis) were also demanded in large numbers, and it was evident that their work in the disinfection sections of military hospitals would expose them to great risk. 

Almost instantly, 1,017 prisoners were made to ‘volunteer’ to go to Mesopotamia. In the first years of the British occupation, there was almost no square yard of open space in Basra free from a faecal deposit. The solution was to build latrine blocks with receptacles fashioned from disused kerosene tins, and to dispose of the solid waste in incinerators. Indian sweepers were imported for this task, who then trained some Arabs. 

While some in the Jail Corps resisted this work, others claimed that they did not know they had been brought for this task. Some who refused were sent back to India to serve their original sentence, while others were given no choice. A tragic entry in the war diary of the 14th ILC records the summary court-martial of one Medid Ramaswamy—belonging to a caste which could not do sweeping work—who attempted suicide by tying his legs and neck with his turban and throwing himself in the river. He was sentenced to six lashes.

The word ‘coolie’ in the book’s title denotes a category of labour consigned to the lowest rung of the global market in the 19th century. In World War I, more than 5,50,000 men in the Indian army’s ranks were noncombatants. They included porters, stevedores, construction workers, those who maintained supply lines and removed the wounded from the battlefield.

There were several service distinctions made between combatants and followers. The so-called ‘untouchables’ were assigned stigmatising work and kept at the bottom of the rung. The book also highlights India’s long history of drawing on ‘tribals’ from Bihar, Odisha and the Assam-Burma hill districts for border-making along the North-East Frontier. In 1917, these labour regimes were intensified to raise Labour and Porter Corps for France. 

Singha’s research focuses on the social history of crime and criminal law, identification practices, governmentality, borders and border-crossing. As part of the decade-long research, she did a two-year fellowship at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library. Some of the other important sources include the National Archives of India, the Delhi Archives, the United Service Institution and the Vidyajyoti College of Theology Library. Needless to say, the book with its extensive research is a delight for history buffs.