In Memory of India’s Fallen

This autumn sees the last act of remembrance for 53 Hindu and Sikh soldiers who were cremated on the Downs near Brighton during the First World War. Nearly a century after their deaths, the men’s names have been inscribed in stone by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and unveiled in a simple ceremony, at a memorial erected in their honour. 

At the same time, a small permanent exhibition has been launched in Brighton’s Royal Pavilion commemorating the year (1914-15) when this exotic building, erected for the Prince Regent in the early 19th century, was turned into a military hospital to care for Indian troops wounded on the battlefields of Europe. It was an imaginative gesture by the War Office to house the soldiers in the famous south coast ‘Oriental’ palace on the grounds that they would feel at home in it. The fact that many of the men actually came from simple thatched cottages in the rural Punjab was not discussed. The impression was given, and not corrected, that the Pavilion was still a royal palace, and that the King-Emperor, George V, had given it up for use to his loyal Indian soldiers.