Thousands of forgotten WW1 soldiers recognised for first time

Thousands of forgotten soldiers from pre-partition India who served and died in World War One are finally being recognised in the biggest update to casualty records in more than 80 years.

The names of 9,909 British Indian Army servicemen are now being added to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) casualty database after they were uncovered by researchers.

UK volunteers spent years looking for the names in unique registers compiled in the state of Punjab shortly after WW1.

Work is now being done to trace British descendants of those whose sacrifice is now acknowledged.

"The circle has closed. I feel much more complete," says Sunney Palahey, a dentist from Leicester.

For years he had been searching for information about his great-grandfather who he heard had gone to war and had never come back.

But researchers contacted him to say his great-grandfather's name, Kesar Singh, had been found in newly examined registers and that it would now be formally added to official lists.

"It's been recognised by an authority, which it never was before. He is now an entry in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. All the sacrifices seem to have been worth it."

He says this recognition makes him proud to feel part of a global community of those connected with service in WW1.

Around 1.4 million people from the subcontinent – now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – are known to have served in the British Indian Army in WW1.

In the years that followed the war, officials visited every town and village in Punjab in an effort to record the names and fates of each of the 320,000 servicemen who came from that state alone.

Following India's partition in 1947 the state of Punjab was split between India and Pakistan.

Scores of cracked, fragile, leather-bound volumes filled with hand-written records, and each embossed with a village name, now line shelves at the Lahore Museum in Pakistan.

Members of the UK Punjab Heritage Association initiated the project to digitise and analyse the records, a process that has taken several years.

"As a Punjabi myself I feel really proud that I can do this part for the community," says Jasmin Basra, a PhD student at the University of Greenwich, who participated in the pain-staking research.

During the process, Basra unexpectedly stumbled across the names of two of her own relatives, a great-great-grandfather and his brother, who also served in WW1 fighting for the British Indian Army.

"That connection was emotional. As a second-generation British Punjabi, there is almost a disconnect from Punjab as well as not being fully connected to British history, but I think this is a tangible link to all of it," she says.

The work done by volunteers has been gratefully received, and built on, by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which has now issued the largest update to its records since World War Two.

Historians at the Commission say most of the 9,909 men previously omitted from commemoration records were casualties who died of injuries away from the battlefield.

Rulings made by the British Indian Government at the time meant they were not afforded war graves status, but that decision has been overturned.

Of the thousands of newly recognised dead, around 25% are Sikhs, another 25% Hindus, with around 40% having been Muslim.

The CWGC says the new inclusion is not just to preserve the names of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice but also part of a wider effort to redress Euro-centric views of WW1.

Commemoration, it says, should reflect the full global reality of that conflict.

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