Altered Allegiances: Indian Soldiers, Non-Combatants, and Revolutionaries during the Balkan and First World Wars

Main Article Content

Rebekah McCallum

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, in the years encompassing the First World War, diverging views on colonial rule and securing self-rule were spreading in the Indian subcontinent. When the First World War broke out, many leading revolutionaries encouraged allegiance to the British in their war effort as a means of proving capability for self-rule. Nevertheless, among Indians from different social classes, allegiances were mitigated or reified according to various situations that arose, including the treatment of Indians under British command on the battlefield and official British attitudes towards the Ottoman Caliphate before and after the war. By examining the life work of Dr. Mukhtar Ansari, who led a medical mission from India to the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars, and that of the Indian sepoys in Mesopotamia in 1915-1916, this paper explores the changed and bargained allegiances affected by religious, ethnic, and colonial contexts.

Article Details

Section
Working Paper
Author Biography

Rebekah McCallum, Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University

PhD Student, Indian Ocean World Centre

References

Akçapar, Burak. People’s Mission to the Ottoman Empire: M.A. Ansari and the Indian Medical Mission, 1912-13. New Delhi: Oxford University Press,

Aksakal, Mustafa. “‘Holy War Made in Germany’? Ottoman Origins of the 1914 Jihad.” War in History 18, no. 2 (2011): 184–99.

Basu, Bhupendranath. Why India Is Heart and Soul with Great Britain. London: Macmillan, 1914.

Bhargava, M.B.L. India’s Services in the War. Allahabad: The Standard Press, 1919.

Campos, Michelle. Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians and Jews in Early 20th Century Palestine. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.

Das, Santanu. “Ardour and Anxiety: Politics and Literature in the Indian

Homefront,” in Heike Liebau (ed.). The World in World Wars:

Experiences, Perceptions and Perspectives from Africa and Asia. Leiden:

Brill, 2010, 341-367.

———. “Indians at Home, Mesopotamia and France, 1914-1918: Towards an Intimate History,” in Santanu Das (ed.). Race, Empire and First World

War Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, 70-89.

De Witt, Mackenzie. The Awakening of India. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1917.

Ellinwood, DeWitt C. and S.D. Pradhan, eds. India and World War I. New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1978.

Gandhi, Mohandas K. and Mahadev H. Desai. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Waiheke Island: Floating Press, 2009.

Gardner, Nikolas. “Sepoys and the Siege of Kut-al-Amara, December 1915-April 1916” War in History 11, no. 3 (2004): 307-326.

Ghosh, Amitav. “On to Baghdad: The Battle of Ctesiphon,” Archive for the ‘On the Baghdad’ Category (blog), August 20, 2012,

http://amitavghosh.com/blog/?cat=12

Greenhut, Jeffrey. "Sahib and Sepoy: An Inquiry into the Relationship between the British Officers and Native Soldiers of the British Indian

Army." Military Affairs 48, no. 1 (1984): 15-18.

Hasan, Mushirul. M.A. Ansari: Gandhi’s Infallible Guide. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers & Distributors, 2010.

Hyson, Samuel, and Alan Lester. “‘British India on Trial’: Brighton Military

Hospitals and the Politics of Empire in World War I.” Journal of

Historical Geography 38, no. 1 (2012): 18–34.

India and the War/with an introduction by Lord Sydenham London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915.

Kant, Vedica, Robert Upton, and Chris Gratien. “Indian POWs in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.” Ottoman History Podcast audio. Episode 86, December 28, 2012.

http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2012/12/world-war-indian-soldiers-prisoners.html

Mohamed Ali and Raʼīs Aḥmad Jaʻfrī, eds. Selections from Mohammad Ali's Comrade. Lahore: Mohammad Ali Academy, 1965.

Omissi, David (ed.). Indian Voices of the Great War: Soldiers’ Letters, 1914-18.

London: Macmillan, 1999.

———. “India and the Western Front”. BBC History. March 10, 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/india_wwone_01.shtml

Prasad, Yuvaraj Deva. The Indian Muslims and World War I: A Phase of

Disillusionment with British Rule, 1914-1918. New Delhi: Janaki Prakashan, 1985.

Rose, Sonya O. “The Politics of Service and Sacrifice in WWI Ireland and India” Twentieth Century British History 25, no. 3 (2014): 368–390.

Roy, Kaushik. “Race and Recruitment in the Indian Army, 1880–1918” Modern Asian Studies 47, no. 4 (2013): 1310-1347.

Rumbold, Sir Algernon. Watershed in India, 1914-1922. London: Athlone Press (University of London), 1979.

Sarbadhikari, Sisir. Abhi Le Baghdad (On to Baghdad). Excerpts translated and published by Amitav Ghosh, 2012.

http://amitavghosh.com/blog/?cat=12.

———. Abhi Le Baghdad (Kolkata: privately printed, 1957). Translated in

Santanu Das, “Indians at Home, Mesopotamia and France, 1914-1918:

Towards an Intimate History.” In Santanu Das (ed.). Race, Empire and

First World War Writing, 70-89. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2011.

Saxena, Shyam Narain. Role of Indian Army in the First World War. Delhi: Bhavna Prakashan, 1987.

Singh, Gajendra. “India and the Great War: Colonial Fantasies, Anxieties and Discontent.” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 14, no. 2 (2014): 343-361.

———. “Throwing Snowballs in France: Muslim Sipahis of the Indian

Army and Sheikh Ahmad’s Dream, 1915-1918.” Modern Asian Studies 48, no. 04 (July 2014): 1024-1067.

Sinha, Kali Kumar. The Conflict of the Nations: The War from the Indian

Standpoint. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, 1915.

The London Correspondent of the New York Times, Loyal India: An Interview with Lord Hardinge of Penshurst. London: Sir Joseph Causton & Sons, Dec 8, 1916.

Townshend, Charles. My Campaign in Mesopotamia London: T. Butterworth, 1920.

Ulrichsen, Kristian Coates. The First World War in the Middle East. London: C. Hurst (Publishers), 2014.