The India Army in WW2 is being erased from history

A short article by the historian Robert Lyman, which is actually entitled 'India is being erased from history:
Modern historians perpetuate a cycle of victimhood'.

He opens with:

He ends with:

Link: India is being erased from history

 

It's not uncommon for those gifted independence to create a variety of false narratives for how they 'won' it. The simplicity of that message and its adherents doesn't leave much room for the nuances of history.

 

Lyman has another article here - if you can fight through the ads...

Why should Indians remember India’s sacrifice in World War II

 

Poppycock
Another turd who is trying to stir up the mix for their own agenda

give someone a title of academic and other peoples opinions count for nothing

 

That is a pretty harsh criticism! Perhaps you have misunderstood Lyman's argument; if not perhaps you can explain why you think it 'Poppycock'.

I have met Lyman on several occasions and I can assure you that he is not 'another turd'.

 

I have... problems with Lyman's column. I certainly cannot say that I have read the literature that Lyman is referring to, so I am very much looking in on evidently a continued dialogue between different viewpoints. I take some of his points about Indians having agency despite being under colonial rule, but at times it seems to me that he may be constructing straw-man arguments.

Take this, for instance:

It is also seriously suggested in some quarters that the offer of money likewise persuaded millions of otherwise impoverished Indians to sign up for war work during the industrial expansion of India. According to this narrative, illiterate peasants knew no better than to take the financial bribes offered in exchange for their labour.​

Is that actually a fair reading of the argument he is disagreeing with? Did they "know no better than to take the financial bribes" or were they possibly in severe enough financial straits that in fact the offer of better pay in the military was something they knowingly chose to take? I have read of Canadians signing up for military service because it was a job and they didn't have one.

 

Yes, it's not 'us' erasing the Indian Army from existence, it's the Indians.

 

I do not like headline grabbing people quoting
Xyz have neen forgotten in history.
Why do people find it a requirement to do this and stir up issues

having been lectured in person on how poor the British were against a particular stream i rise when i see that type of headline knowing that those of us with any interest in the period fight tooth and nail to acknowledge the total contribution

memo to them
Do not do sensational baiting headlines

 

Good lord man, get a grip of yourself - you obviously didn’t even read the article.

Once you have, then you might want to offer some constructive criticism as others have.

Regards

Tom

 

Tom you are so right

 

I’m not sure who is confused here, and I don’t know what constitutes a ‘sensational baiting headline’?.

My understanding is that Lyman is, quite correctly, saying that pre-1947 Indian History, specifically the history of the Indian Army, is being erased and distorted by both an Indian desire to present a different narrative of the Raj and of Indian independence and by a Western liberal queasiness over Britain’s imperial past. He seems to suggest that these narratives are consigning the pre-1947 Indian Army to the dustbin of history, a fate that it surely does not deserve. I do not see this argument as in any way ‘sensational’ and I would hope that most members of this forum would agree wholeheartedly with his sentiments.

 

i am
I am a hopless thicko

 

We all have those days!!

Me more than most.

Regards

Tom

 

Not quite sure if it corresponds exactly to the thread: but for the GEA campaign 1914-1917 Indian troops are not to be imagined without at all, this concerns both British and German sources
Clive has certainly overstated his case, but I can understand his concerns:
All too often academics stoop to controversial statements in order to make their mark. This is a fact born out of simple economic interests
When I think of all too many German "academic historians" whose conclusion out of such considerations were already clear BEFORE the sources were evaluated - and who were not in the least afraid of quoting the sources all too obviously out of context to suit their agenda.
In my supreme discipline of GEA, there are there are quite enough negative examples of this:
Schulte-Vahrendorff is a particularly prominent example, but even Professor Jean Bart Gewald of Leiden University is not above exposing himself as a Holocaust freeloader in order to sell his theses profitably. (notwithstanding other studies that are REALLY remarkably GOOD)
I could continue this list ad infinitum to my personal sorrow - although there are several examples of how it can be done seriously.
But as Voltaire (allegedly) said: "Historiography is the agreement to a lie". (I seem to remember that George Orwell also had some very interesting thoughts in this regard)

At this point I pause, because already too dangerously close to the masonic rule and this must not escalate here further
(I really don't envy the mods, because certain topics have all too many interfaces to the present times)

And, as always, remember the very wise words of our Adaministrator: "It's just the Internet"

regards
Olli

 

I think one should particularly take the titles with a grain of salt. If it's not an academic article then the title may have been chosen by an editor - rather than the author - to attract attention.

 

Agreed.

I'm often among the first to detect the whiff off politics and self-interest, but in my view Lyman is no baddie.

His book on Slim is also a good read.

My own perception of the situation in India is that Independence and the wars against Pakistan now loom so large owing to jingoistic national politics that the massive contribution of the Indian Army to Allied victory has been hidden (by misfortune and design) in their shade.

The effect is compounded by the fact that veterans 'over there' have not always been well looked after in latter years, and, as a group, they tend towards the quiet and self-effacing.

British India is viewed by many Indians some kind of bastard interregnum between a series of mostly fictional golden ages (during which the nation or proto-nation, seldom an agglomeration of disparate and competing states, enjoyed a huge economy and strode the world like a colossus) and the noble victory of independence (don't ask about the centuries of disease, death, war and poverty--that didn't really arrive until colonial exploitation; don't mention the caste system, that was a niche thing until the British resurrected it...).

The (British) Indian Army does not fit comfortably into this bold narrative. At times the men who served in it have been presented as simple-minded or worse lackeys who would put down their fellow countrymen for the white-man's silver: slightly suspect at best.

The reason: back to an execrable and polarised national politics fed by bloody awful (and widely read) tendentious popular history books and the caricatures of their media.

To be clear, much of this is equally true in the UK, but the difference is--with all due respect to the members of this fine board--the general public in the UK knows and cares little for British history. And the younger generations (mostly) know and care even less. That's to say that while 'we' are periodically interested in the gaudy and popular episodes (the parts of history that make a good drama if suitably modernised) and the bits that are currently useful to bludgeon political opponents or make us feel warmly proud about ourselves, there is no longer any attempt to craft a national story or continuous narrative of what Britain was, is and could be. Anyone whose job may be considered to cover such a narrative will invariably throw up his hands and declare that the British (probably meaning the English) are so multifarious, genealogically diverse and politically pragmatic that such a project would be meaningless; he might then fix you with a postmodern gaze and wonder who you voted for.

The reasons for all this are too many and too political to enter into properly, but the upshot is that we're a poorer nation as a result of it.

The Indians (massive generalisation, I know) still care deeply about their history (and I know enough to know how little I know of it), but today they're being short-changed by politicians (who often publish self-serving ghost-written vanity titles and milk historical caricatures for support), the media, and inward-looking academics who write, talk and publish predominantly for themselves.

Edit: having read the article now, I see that Lyman doesn't place the blame on anyone in particular (just general ideas and tendencies). He'd do better to name names.

 

I've certainly noticed it. Try looking for RAF Dum Dum on Wikipedia, you won't find it without knowing that it's current name is Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport.

Here is the complete section of it's WW2 history : "Calcutta played an important role in the Second World War. In 1942, the United States Army Air Forces 7th Bombardment Group flew B-24 Liberator bombers from the airport on combat missions over Burma. The airfield was used as a cargo aerial port for the Air Transport Command and was also used as a communication centre for the Tenth Air Force."

Much of it seems to do with the current Indian Government actively promoting a new nationalism that deliberately ignores the old nationalism of The Raj. So ironic that Chandra Bose was actually considered a traitor by most of his own countrymen fighting in WW2.

 

I wonder how many people flying from there realise how the Bose went for a burton? Not the greatest bit of marketing.

The conjunction of Bose and Dum-Dum, on the other hand, is thoughtful.

 

So the crux of this article is disagreeing with one difficult to prove extreme and instead putting forth another difficult to prove extreme? How do you even measure contemporary fervour on an entire subcontinent? This conversation can't be had by treating India as a single entity with a single answer, the experience of British Princely States that had British allied indigenous rulers or monarchs vs those territories annexed by the East India Company would be different. Indian monarchs for example served in Europe and were often key in recruitment efforts among their subjects, it's also true that 20th century recruitment efforts in annexed regions like Punjab focused on land incentives and support from political and religious leaders to drive recruitment. And as the author points out, there was also an independence/national unity angle to recruitment as well (although perhaps more apparent during the First World War).

The article also opens with the view that Indians avoid this topic because it's associated with British rule, if that were the case the INA would be elevated all over the subcontinent but they are similarly as "forgotten" as their Allied counterparts. Even Bose is largely remembered for his role in the independence movement and not the INA specifically. I think the reality is, the subcontinent went through a lot of turmoil and nation building in the decades following WW2, in day to day life other aspects take priority. It would however be interesting to compare how WW2 is remembered in Europe among nations that have largely been stable post 1947 and those that have experienced significant turmoil or war.

(That said, I don't know if pre Raj or post 1947 conflicts are remembered any better by most)