01/11/2020
With the guiding aim of encouraging and sharing Sikh History, the Sikh Heritage Association of Warwick and Leamington was launched in 2008 with the “The Lions Kingdom”, the first in a series of lectures that focused upon the Sikh Empire and Anglo Sikh wars. Exhibitions also followed with “Jawans to Generals”, and events such as the first national Battle of Saragarhi commemoration in 2010 in association with the Anglo Sikh Heritage trial. The arts have similarly been supported via exhibitions with the Singh Twins and drama productions such as “Maharajah and the Kohinoor.” Support has been provided to a number of notable Sikh history luminaries and various projects encouraged, such as the National Sikh War memorial trust that currently has a SHAWL member serving it.
Subsequently, the partnership between The Sikh Soldier Film Ltd and SHAWL is hugely welcome; SHAWL wholeheartedly supports the telling of this much-needed narrative.
Over the past century, popular narratives of the First World War have demoted the contribution of soldiers and labourers of the Empire to merely bit-part players. Meanwhile, the principal characters - that is, Western Europeans - took centre stage. Nevertheless, during the First World War, over 3 million soldiers and labourers from across the Empire and commonwealth served alongside the British Army.
With over 1.7 million troops, the British-Indian army was among the largest volunteer armies ever assembled. The bulk of this resource was from the north of India principally in and around the Punjab region. Military historian Major Gordon Corrigan is quoted as saying “the role of the British Indian army was vital to the war effort; had they not helped fortify the front line during the First World War the Germans might well have broken through and made it to the Channel ports.”
Among the ranks, making up 20% of the army, the Sikhs contributed vastly to the war effort despite making up just 1% of India's population at the time. The British were keen to recruit the Sikhs, within the colonial hierarchy; the Sikhs were considered a ‘martial race.’ They were valorised by contemporaries for their warrior past, providing what historian Brian Houghton-Hodgson describes as "muscular value" for British Imperial interests. Whilst good wages and pensions were offered to recruits, Indian nationalists were promised a discussion over being granted dominion status after the war.
The Sikhs travelled far from home, fighting in major battles and offensives from the shores of Flanders in the West to challenging the Ottomans in the Middle East. Despite all this, the contributions of the Sikhs (and the Indian army), if mentioned at all, are often reduced to little more than a sentence in school textbooks and academic histories. Furthermore, despite India’s contributions of manpower and money to the war effort, the British reneged on their earlier promises to discuss dominion status after the war. Instead, the Raj imposed coercive legislation and its actions became increasingly repressive. Political activists being arrested and detained without options for trial and free speech was suffocated. The violence and utter brutality of this period is perhaps most sharply demonstrated by the atrocities committed against innocent civilians at the 1919 Jallianwallah Bagh massacre. As their contributions to the war were largely forgotten and British Rule became ever more oppressive, the general sentiment amongst the Indian masses was that of utter betrayal by their colonial rulers.
Britain's (and Europe’s) refusal to deal with its colonial history has forced those like the Sikhs to remain largely invisible within both academic and popular historical narratives of the First World War to this day. Only recently in films such as 1917 have Sikhs been featured, and even then, they have rarely, if ever played a central role despite being a very visible part of the war effort. The film, The Sikh Soldier attempts to distance itself from the monolithic lens through which the First World War is often seen through, placing the Sikh soldier at the centre of the film's narrative. It works to ‘decolonise’ the histories of the First World War whilst providing greater representation within and a more factual representation of the war’s reality.
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