Paper short abstract:

Drawing on various archival materials - pictures, films, letters, memoirs - this interdisciplinary paper will investigate how the Indian sepoys figured in European cultural memory in 1914-18 and how their service interlocked with the discourses of empire, race and war identity.

Paper long abstract:

In 1914-1918, the Indian participation created a stir in the cultural and literary consciousness in Great Britain. Around 140,000 Indian sepoys served in Europe before Sep 1914 and December 1915: during this time they were obsessively photographed and reported in British newspapers and journals, the Brighton Pavilion was transformed into an Indian war hospital and Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves both wrote about the Indian sepoy. On the other hand, we have rare insights into the tumultuous world of the sepoys themselves through thousands of censored letters, different kinds of visual artefacts as well as literary representations by writers.

Drawing on a range of material from various archives in India, France, Germany and the UK, including freshly recovered diaries and memoirs, and literary representations by European and Indian writers, I shall explore two lines of enquiry. First, how do these Indian sepoys figure in European cultural consciousness and memory during and after the war years and how did their service interlock with the discourses round empire, race and war identity at the time? Second, how can we reconstruct a more intimate history of the Indian sepoy as he encounters Europe, particularly French civilians and British 'Tommies' for the first time? This will be an interdisciplinary paper, recovering and analysing processes of Indian war experience, memory and identity through a dialogue between different forms of historical and literary material.