At the start of the war in 1914, over thirteen lakh Indian soldiers began to be shipped overseas to fight alongside the British Army. Of them, 75,000 were never to return home, killed in combat on faraway battlefields. Using rare archival footage, first-person narratives, and expert testimonials, the impeccably-researched one-hour documentary investigates India’s role in the first global conflict. It also recognises and documents the sacrifices of thousands of Indian families, thus restoring to India’s unsung heroes, their glorious and rightful place in history.
As the guns fell silent towards the end of 1918, the First World War had raged for almost five long years. It had come to be known as The Great War, “the war to end all wars.” Millions of soldiers of various nationalities had fought and died on both sides. However, very little is known about the Indian soldiers deployed on foreign soil all over the world. Their enormous sacrifices lost to time, unrecorded by history. Indian Member of Parliament and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Shashi Tharoor, says in the film, “No country lost as many people from any colony in the Empire, as we did and yet, I’m sorry to say, it was given very little attention.”
‘India’s Forgotten Army,’ premiering on 15th August, Saturday 9 PM, is an attempt to trace and document the courage and sacrifice of Indian soldiers, shipped to distant shores to live and fight in deplorable conditions. The film also uses first-person accounts to tell the story of the war and the circumstances that Indian soldiers faced, as revealed in the letters they wrote to their families, more than a hundred years ago. Watch the premiere of ‘India’s Forgotten Army,’ on Independence Day, 15th August, Saturday, at 9 PM, only on HistoryTV18.
