Forgotten Punjabi WW1 soldiers recognised for first time
Approximately 1.4 million people from the subcontinent (currently India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) are known to have served in the British Indian Army in World War I.
In the years following the war, officials visited every town and village in Punjab for the sole purpose of recording the name and fate of each of the 320,000 soldiers from that province.
Following the partition of India in 1947, the state of Punjab was divided between India and Pakistan.
Scores of cracked, brittle, leather-bound volumes filled with handwritten records and each bearing the name of a village now line the shelves of the Lahore Museum in Pakistan.
Members of the UK Punjab Heritage Association embarked on a project to digitize and analyze the records, a process that took several years.
“As a Punjabi myself, I am really proud to be able to do this role for the society,” says Jasmin Basra, a PhD student at the University of Greenwich who participated in the challenging research.
In the process, Basra unexpectedly came across the names of two of his own relatives, his great-great-grandfather and his brother, who also fought for the British Indian Army in World War I.
“That connection was emotional. As a second-generation British Punjabi, there’s almost a disconnect with the Punjab and they’re not really connected to British history, but I think it’s a tangible connection to all of this,” he says.
