ABSTRACT
Between October 1914 and December 1915, nearly 135,000 Indian riflemen-known as sepoys-fought in the trenches of France and Belgium at the battles of Ypres, Festubert, Givenchy, Neuve Chapelle, Second Ypres and Loos, suffering some 34,252 casualties.1
The Times rejoiced at the time of their arrival in Europe, assuring readers that the men were ‘determined to help with their Emperor’s battles or die’.2 But few could overlook the fact that Britain’s decision to deploy colonial subjects to European battlefields could undermine the stability of imperial rule. It would be much more difficult after the war, for example, for the British to enforce racist policies. As the sepoys took up positions in the trenches in late October 1914, the Punjabi newspaper Zamindar chimed that the soldiers in Europe ‘will see Europe with their own eyes … and will see that there is no difference-except in colour-between Indians and Europeans’.3 German wartime policy also presented a challenge to the future stability of British rule in India (this was assuming, of course, that the British and French armies won the war on the
Western Front). Propagandists, believing that the sepoys ‘nourish and cherish the hope of national liberation as a religious ideal’, distributed pamphlets over the Indian trenches, imploring the men to mutiny and kill their British officers.4 At a prisoner of war camp outside Berlin, Indian revolutionaries and emissaries from the Ottoman Empire attempted to convert the allegiances of the sepoys in their custody with a combination of pan-Islamic and nationalist appeals. Although this campaign ultimately failed, it profoundly shaped British repatriation policy at the end of the war when, as Secretary of State for India Austen Chamberlain cautioned, the British could not allow men who had been exposed to ‘strongly hostile influences’ to return home unmonitored. The 1918 armistice and British repatriation policy therefore presented a host of new challenges to Britain’s colonial subjects from South Asia as they navigated the post-war imperial landscape and secured what was most important to them-safe transportation home.
