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On Forgotten Hindu Soldiers Who Participated in World War I

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The role of Hindus in the First World War is by and large expunged from the history books. They have been conveniently ignored and forgotten. Hindu sepoys were one of the highest numbers of volunteers as combatants and non-combatants in World War I.

You can read more about the Hindu Soldiers Who Participated in World War I in this article with numerous references.
 The role of Hindus in the First World War is by and large expunged from the history books.  Merely a cursory gaze at the figures reveals startling fact – In total 1,338, 620 Hindus participated in the war. This number exceeds the total number of army personnel from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa by 178,000.
 Hindu soldiers were involved in the lands as diverse as Palestine, France, Syria and Mesopotamia. A school of thought says it was the Hindu army which changed the course of the war by turning German soldiers at Marne.
Thousands of Hindu soldiers lost their lives and no hero’s welcome awaited the survivors, such was their fate.
 Traces of Hindu participation are fragmented by the fact that only a limited record of correspondence exist between Hindu soldiers and their families. The reason being most Hindu soldiers were illiterate. They would have one of the literate ones among them write the letter. The letter would then be read out to British officer as part of censorship procedure to restrict passing of militarily sensitive information to the enemy before being dispatched off to the recipient’s village.
 These letters and diaries are the source of information on the anguish felt by the soldiers about the war. The soldiers talk about guns, poisonous gas, destruction, yearning of family. Hindu soldiers would often refer to great Hindu war epic Mahabharata and compare the war of good versus evil to the current one. One of the soldiers wrote that having witnessed the current war, end of the world seems near and all that was written in Mahabharata and Ramayana appears to be true to him.