The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and the Two World Wars
The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and the Two World Wars

Author: Gajendra Singh

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-01-16

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1780938209

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In the two World Wars, hundreds of thousands of Indian sepoys were mobilized, recruited and shipped overseas to fight for the British Crown. The Indian Army was the chief Imperial reserve for an empire under threat. But how did those sepoys understand and explain their own war experiences and indeed themselves through that experience? How much did their testimonies realise and reflect their own fragmented identities as both colonial subjects and imperial policemen? The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and the Two World Wars draws upon the accounts of Indian combatants to explore how they came to terms with the conflicts. In thematic chapters, Gajendra Singh traces the evolution of military identities under the British Raj and considers how those identities became embattled in the praxis of soldiers' war testimonies – chiefly letters, depositions and interrogations. It becomes a story of mutiny and obedience; of horror, loss and silence. This book tells that story and is an important contribution to histories of the British Empire, South Asia and the two World Wars.

The Indian Army in the Two World Wars
The Indian Army in the Two World Wars

Author: Kaushik Roy

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2011-10-14

Total Pages: 579

ISBN-13: 900418550X

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This collection of seventeen essays based on archival data breaks new ground as regards the contribution of the Indian Army in British war effort during the two World Wars around various parts of the globe.

India at War
India at War

Author: Yasmin Khan

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 0199753490

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"First published in Great Britain in 2015 as The Raj at War by The Bodley Head"--Title page verso.

India in the Second World War
India in the Second World War

Author: Diya Gupta

Publisher: Hurst Publishers

Published: 2023-05-02

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 1805260758

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In 1940s India, revolutionary and nationalistic feeling surged against colonial subjecthood and imperial war. Two-and-a-half million men from undivided India served the British during the Second World War, while 3 million civilians were killed by the war-induced Bengal Famine, and Indian National Army soldiers fought against the British for Indian independence. This captivating new history shines a spotlight on emotions as a way of unearthing these troubled and contested experiences, exposing the personal as political. Diya Gupta draws upon photographs, letters, memoirs, novels, poetry and philosophical essays, in both English and Bengali languages, to weave a compelling tapestry of emotions felt by Indians in service and at home during the war. She brings to life an unknown sepoy in the Middle East yearning for home, and anti-fascist activist Tara Ali Baig; a disillusioned doctor on the Burma frontline, and Sukanta Bhattacharya’s modernist poetry of hunger; Mulk Raj Anand’s revolutionary home front, and Rabindranath Tagore’s critique of civilisation. This vivid book recovers a truly global history of the Second World War, revealing the crucial importance of cultural approaches in challenging a traditional focus on the wartime experiences of European populations. Seen through Indian eyes, this conflict is no longer the ‘good’ war.

India's War
India's War

Author: Srinath Raghavan

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2016-05-10

Total Pages: 591

ISBN-13: 0465098622

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Between 1939 and 1945 India underwent extraordinary and irreversible change. Hundreds of thousands of Indians suddenly found themselves in uniform, fighting in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Europe and-something simply never imagined-against a Japanese army poised to invade eastern India. With the threat of the Axis powers looming, the entire country was pulled into the vortex of wartime mobilization. By the war's end, the Indian Army had become the largest volunteer force in the conflict, consisting of 2.5 million men, while many millions more had offered their industrial, agricultural, and military labor. It was clear that India would never be same-the only question was: would the war effort push the country toward or away from independence? In India's War, historian Srinath Raghavan paints a compelling picture of battles abroad and of life on the home front, arguing that the war is crucial to explaining how and why colonial rule ended in South Asia. World War II forever altered the country's social landscape, overturning many Indians' settled assumptions and opening up new opportunities for the nation's most disadvantaged people. When the dust of war settled, India had emerged as a major Asian power with her feet set firmly on the path toward Independence. From Gandhi's early urging in support of Britain's war efforts, to the crucial Burma Campaign, where Indian forces broke the siege of Imphal and stemmed the western advance of Imperial Japan, Raghavan brings this underexplored theater of WWII to vivid life. The first major account of India during World War II, India's War chronicles how the war forever transformed India, its economy, its politics, and its people, laying the groundwork for the emergence of modern South Asia and the rise of India as a major power.

Soldiers of Empire
Soldiers of Empire

Author: Tarak Barkawi

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-06-08

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1107169585

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Barkawi re-imagines the study of war with imperial and multinational armies that fought in Asia in the Second World War.

The Raj at War
The Raj at War

Author: Yasmin Khan

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2016-08-15

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 8184007159

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Two and a half million Indians volunteered in the Second World War. Their stories had been lost and silenced, until now. Award-winning historian Yasmin Khan marshals interviews, newspaper reports and unseen archival material to tell the forgotten story of India’s role in the Second World War. We meet soldiers, sailors and non-combatants – prostitutes, nurses, cooks, peasants – whose lives were upended by a war far, far away. From a small Muslim boy arrested for singing anti-recruitment songs, to cooks preparing chapattis on army boats, to a family listening to illicit German radio broadcasts, and a love letter from the first Indian soldier to receive the Victoria Cross, Khan makes us feel and hear the lost voices of a people involved in a war that wasn’t of their choosing. Dramatizing a cataclysm that transformed the subcontinent and led to its independence, The Raj at War undeniably inserts South Asia back into World War II history and confirms that the Empire – and all its subjects – formed both the heart and limbs of Britain’s war efforts and eventual victory.

No One Ever Asked Me
No One Ever Asked Me

Author: Hollis Dorion Stabler

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 0803243243

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As a young adolescent, Hollis Dorion Stabler underwent a Native ceremony in which he was given the new name Na-zhin-thia, Slow to Rise. It was a name that no white person asked to know during Hollis's tour of duty in Anzio, his unacknowledged difference as an Omaha Indian adding to the poignancy of his uneasy fellowship with foreign and American soldiers alike. Stabler?s story?coming of age on the American plains, going to war, facing new estrangement upon coming home?is a universal one, rendered wonderfully strange and personal by Stabler?s uncommon perspective, which embraces two worlds, and by his unique voice. ø Stabler's experiences during World War II?tours of duty in Tunisia and Morocco as well as Italy and France, and the loss of his brother in battle?are at the center of this powerful memoir, which tells of growing up as an Omaha Indian in the small-town Midwest of Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Oklahoma in the 1920s and 1930s. A descendant of the Indians who negotiated with Lewis and Clark on the Missouri River, Stabler describes a childhood that was a curious mixture of progressivism and Indian tradition, and that culminated in his enlisting in the old horse cavalry when war broke out?a path not so very different from that walked by his ancestors. Victoria Smith, of Cherokee-Delaware descent, interweaves historical insight with Stabler?s vivid reminiscences, providing a rich context for this singular life.

As Told by Them
As Told by Them

Author: Ravi Inder Singh Sidhu

Publisher: Quills Ink Publishing

Published: 2014-05-14

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 8192950840

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This book is a collection of experiences of Hindustani soldiers during the World War II. What they told was recorded in their own words. It is a stirring saga of sacrifice and their spirited will to survive even on a ration of biscuits on battlefields. Besides forming a significant section of manpower in W.W. II, they depict a fascinating historic account of the people of the countries they visited and the troops of the enemy they fought with. They give details and descriptions which have perhaps never figured in any book on Military History. These stories come from soldiers, majority of who were illiterate village boys. Above all it depicts the life in the British period and the administration in those days. The narrations are a slice of British Indian history.

Distant Battlefields
Distant Battlefields

Author: Harry Fecitt

Publisher: Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

Published: 2019-10-01

Total Pages: 588

ISBN-13: 9388161785

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"World War II was a traumatising experience for those nations that were caught up in it. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Undivided India where over two and a half million Indians volunteered to serve in the armed forces and to fight against the evils of the fascist Axis Powers. Those Indians who served and fought had their own motives but a predominant one was pride and satisfaction in doing a soldier's job and earning a soldier's pay. Service in the Indian Army was respected, particularly in rural communities, and money sent home by a soldier could over time transform his family's social status. As it had done towards the end of World War I the Indian Army in World War II opened its arms wide and recruited from many varied castes and backgrounds, and few were found wanting. The demands made on India to provide servicemen and women were massive. Indian Army formations contributed significantly to the defeat of Italian forces in East and North Africa and then to the much more difficult confrontations with German troops. Dark days followed when Japan invaded Hong Kong, Borneo, Malaya and Burma. Indian troops predominated in the defence of those regions and many were killed in action or ordered into captivity by their commanders. After realistic re-assessments of the threats faced in Asia had been made, and the new training and motivation required had been delivered, the Indian Army emerged again in 1944 and 1945 as the most proficient and economical Allied force in Asia. Meanwhile Indian troops, not forgetting the large number of Nepalese serving in the Indian Army, fought Vichy French forces in Syria, nationalists in Persia and Iraq, and above all else Germans in North Africa and Europe – and they won their battles. This book will show you how the Indian Army was tested during World War II, and how it prevailed using courage, professionalism, honour and dignity. "