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05/13/2005:

"History of empire lies forgotten in quiet tranquillity"

by Randeep Ranesh
On the southern fringes of New Delhi, up from the city's latest spaghetti junction and past its military barracks, is a field that is forever foreign.

Behind a three-storey sandstone gatehouse are manicured lawns, watered gardens and 1,000 graves of the fallen heroes of the British-raised Indian army who died in two world wars. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, based in London, pays for their upkeep.

The plot is a study in quiet tranquillity far from the rude chaos of India outside. Hidden from most maps, the only pilgrims are the dwindling band of war veterans and the families of the dead.

Naresh Kalra, the official in charge of the cemetery, says barely 70 people come a year. Indians rarely ever pay homage to soldiers such as Captain CH Howard of the Burma Rifles or AJ Watson of the Royal Air Force who died serving "their motherland".
Many more know Nicholson's cemetery, a 45-minute drive away. Under matted shrubs lie the shattered marble tombstones of those who expired during the British Raj. Here also are war graves.

Most famous is that of Brigadier General John Nicholson. A strapping, 6ft Irishman, Nicholson "led the assault of Delhi but fell in the hour of victory" in what is known by Indians as the first war of independence, or recorded in British history as the 1857 Indian mutiny.

Nicholson's motherland has largely forgotten the 35-year-old brigadier general. The Raj has disappeared from the imagination of Britons, save for images of steam trains, "civilising" missionary work and impressive monuments built for royal visits.

It is easy to explain why. Modern states would rather remember their triumphs rather than the means they used to achieve them. But this leaves two truths - that of the rulers and that of the ruled. One people's heroes are another's villains.
Full: guardian.co.uk

The second world war is a difficult subject to deal with in modern India. Millions of Indians fought under British officers, but the independence movement was split over which side to back. To a western observer, one of the country's heroes, Subhash Chandra Bose, would be considered a traitor.

Bose, known in India as netaji or respected leader, escaped from house arrest in Calcutta to Berlin where he met Hitler. The Führer advised Bose to join hands with Japanese troops in Asia and offered him passage to Tokyo aboard a German U-boat.

Bose finally arrived in Burma at the head of an 80,000-strong "Indian national army" and advanced to British India's north eastern states. A just-released biopic in India shows him planting the Indian tricolour on Indian soil for the first time.

Though his role in collaborating with the Axis powers makes Bose's reputation irredeemable for many in the west, Indians say he took a heroic stance against oppressive British imperialism. It is also on record that he disagreed with the arguments of racial superiority espoused by Japan and the Nazis. Instead Bose appears a political pragmatist who considered an enemy's enemy a friend.

It would be preferable to remember history as a mixture of trade, migration and the enlightened adoption of cultural and religious traditions. But the course of events rarely runs smoothly and the past, especially in this part of the world, is often a switchback ride of subjugation and imperial force majeure.