Oh, what a lovely war, Delulus! The forgotten truth about Indian soldiers in World War I

New research has uncovered names of an additional 9,909 Indian soldiers who died in WW1 but were not accounted for earlier. This flows from a 5-yr research project - The Punjab Registers: Recovering the Names of India's Fallen Servicemen - of Commonwealth Graves War Commission, UK Punjab Heritage Association (UKPHA), and University of Greenwich. On the 100th anniversary of WW1 observed over 2014 and 2018, media overflowed with tales of courage of 1.4 mn Indian troops at Flanders, Gallipoli and other battlefields.

More relevant would have been to bemoan the voluntary conversion of so many Indians into cannon fodder in a fight between colonial powers. WW1 was a tale of folly and futility, of soldiers galore being slaughtered whenever they tried to attack a trench defended with machine guns. British PM David Lloyd George is credited with saying it was 'just blood, mud, and futility'. No glory accompanied soldiers being sent 'over the top' to near-certain death.

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Joan Littlewood's satirical 1963 musical, Oh, What a Lovely War! , starts with soldiers in a trench singing:

Up to your waist in water,

Up to your eyes in slush -

Using the kind of language,

That makes the sergeant blush;

Who wouldn't join the army?

That's what we all inquire,

Don't we pity the poor civilians sitting beside the fire.

News of hundreds of mutinies on both sides was supressed to maintain the fiction of heroism of the war effort. Littlewood's play has a scene with an officer telling his troops to charge to attack enemy trenches. The soldiers refuse to move. The officer asks, 'Do you want to be shot for mutiny?' No, they don't. And so, reluctantly, they charge forward, bleating like sheep to the slaughter. That is what bravery in WW1 amounted to.

The rah-rah crowd extolling Indian soldiers in that war does not find it ironic that those soldiers fought not for India, a nation that did not yet exist, but the British colonial power. Through history until very recently, soldiery was a profession, not a patriotic calling. Soldiers fought for whoever paid them. It was called being loyal to their salt. They were not loyal to any country because countries did not yet exist, only kingdoms and empires did.

I certainly don't condemn the Indians who fought for the British in WW1. They were doing what they had done for centuries. But I cannot get teary-eyed over the supposed bravery of professional mercenaries. Bravery is not a distinguishing characteristic of WW1. Courage has existed in every army since antiquity. Soldiers at Kurukshetra, Kalinga, Panipat, Plassey, Waterloo and Stalingrad all displayed courage under fire. So did Roman legionaries, Mongol horsemen and Zulu warriors. There is no reason to praise an Indian sepoy at Ypres any more than a Chola infantryman, Maratha cavalryman or German conscript.

British, French, German, Austrian and Russian soldiers also enlisted for pay, adventure, tradition or duty, and marched obediently into slaughter. Their willingness to obey orders did not prove exceptional heroism. It merely proved that politicians and generals can convert people into cannon fodder and then, tearfully, hail their bravery.

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Societies commemorate military bravery because it provides meaning to otherwise senseless death. Calling soldiers 'heroes' helps families bear loss and helps governments justify wars. It is psychologically and politically useful. But it can also obscure the larger truth: that the greatest achievement would have been to avoid the war altogether.

In that sense, 'bravery' can become a moral sleight of hand. It shifts attention from those who decided upon war to those who suffered its consequences. Politicians make catastrophic decisions; soldiers acquire medals. The danger of glorifying bravery and courage is that it sanitises war. If every battlefield becomes a stage for heroism, then every war acquires a halo, however futile its objectives.

One can acknowledge that soldiers endured fear, pain and death without calling them heroes or transforming them into icons. Courage is a human quality, and not a uniquely military one. Firefighters entering burning buildings, miners trapped underground, doctors confronting epidemics, and ordinary civilians protecting their families often display equal courage. We do not build national mythologies around them because their courage does not serve a political narrative.

Perhaps the real issue is not how brave Indian soldiers in WW1 were, but whether bravery is the right lens at all. A nation secure in its history need not romanticise death in battle. It can honour the humanity of those who fought while refusing to convert them into symbols of martial glory. The most fitting memorial to the Indian dead of WW1 is not the inscription of their names on India Gate or setting their names in archives. It may be to recognise the universality of their bravery. And universality of the tragedy that consumes it in war.