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The Documentary: India's Forgotten War

The names of Indian soldiers who died fighting during WWI on the India Gate monument, New Delhi, Credit: AFP/Getty Image

25/10/2014 GMT

India's Forgotten War

BBC World Service - The Documentary, India's Forgotten War

How World War One affected India and its people

In the Indian capital Delhi stands India Gate, the largest memorial to the war for which 1.5 million Indian men were recruited. But Anita Rani discovers that World War One is something of a forgotten memory today, seen as part of its colonial history, and she sets out to uncover some of the forgotten stories.
 
We meet relatives of the men who travelled from the rural villages in Punjab - including what is now Pakistan - to fight thousands of miles away from home for a cause they knew little about. Anita's parents are from this region, and she finds out what drove them to fight for the British Empire on the Western Front, Africa and in what is now Iraq. She explores how the women who were left in the villages managed to cope with their rural lives without their men, and uncovers folk songs they composed at the time which reveal their suffering.
 
Not all those who took part in the war were soldiers, and Anita also reveals lost stories from the Labour Corps - the hundreds of thousands of men who worked behind the scenes on the front, in a non-combatant role. They did everything from digging and clearing tranches and latrines, to cooking and boot mending. And we hear about the remarkable actions of a Bengali doctor who risked his life to save others on the battlefield. 
 
We also reveal some of the forgotten story of the home front, in cities such as Bombay, Calcutta and Karachi, where military hospitals were set up to treat the wounded, and much production of food and munitions for the war effort fell to Indian workers. 
 
Not everyone agreed with the involvement in this colonial war though, and we also look at how some deserted, or protested as part of the burgeoning independence movement.

Picture: The names of Indian soldiers who died fighting during WWI on the India Gate monument, New Delhi, Credit: AFP/Getty Image

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