Having visited the Haifa Indian Cemetery in Israel in 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has now paid respects at the Heliopolis (Port Tewfik) Memorial in Egypt where the war cemetery commemorates Indian soldiers who died in World War 1. This is indeed an interesting and welcome development.
The dominant Indian intellectual class of the post-Independence variety has been of the Leftist persuasion. They have always been embarrassed and uncomfortable that “mercenary” Indian soldiers fought for the “racist-capitalist-imperialist” British cause. These entrenched powerful Leftists were quite okay with the Second World War, especially after July 1941 when Comrade Joseph Stalin told them that it was a “good” war. That is why they were uncomfortable with Subhas Chandra Bose aligning with Stalin’s enemies. Clearly, there was no nuance or contextualising for them. If Moscow and the Comintern told them that something was bad, then it was obviously bad.
Unfortunately for us — hapless students of the ’60s and ’70s — the ruling dispensation, despite its claims of being non-aligned, bowed to the Leftist pseudo-historians. The fact that Mahatma Gandhi supported several British imperial military ventures was glossed over. That Indian soldiers in the British Indian Army were volunteers and not conscripts was never mentioned. That ‘soldiering’ was considered an honourable profession by many Indians was not brought up even once. The entire role of the British Indian Army — and of Indian soldiers, particularly — was underplayed. I suppose we were meant to be a tad ashamed that we had actually fought along with the British.
No pride for its own Many years later, when I read a book about General Kodandera Subayya Thimayya, I discovered that Motilal Nehru was actually supportive of Indian officers who had joined the British Indian Army. His son, Jawaharlal Nehru, was different and wrote disdainfully about polo-playing Army officers. And perhaps that prejudice influenced others. The near-traitorous Krishna Menon, either on his own or in order to pander to Nehru, decided that it was his job to “decolonialise” and, by implication, weaken the Indian armed forces. Menon encouraged dodgy favourites — KM Nanavati and General BM Kaul. He dismissed Thimayya’s warnings of a Chinese build-up as a plot by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to ruin the ‘Hindi-Chini’ friendship. And, of course, any associations of the Indian armed forces with their pre-Independence traditions were anathema to Menon.
This excessive embarrassment with the role of Indian personnel continued for many decades, well after Menon’s ouster. India was reluctant to participate in any of the anniversary functions of World War I or World War II even as other allies took part in the solemnities. New Delhi officially stayed away, refusing to acknowledge the sacrifices of Indian soldiers in those global conflicts. British General Edmund Allenby would not have conquered Jerusalem in 1917 if his Indian contingents had not fought so well. The Australians were and are proud of their involvement with British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery in North Africa during World War II.