A voice recording, a portrait photo and three drawings: tracing the life of a colonial soldier

Abstract

Out of a total of approximately 1.4 million South Asians fighting in the First World War, more than 90,000 combatants fought on the Western Front in France and Belgium. Nearly 50,000 South Asian labourers were also sent to France and Flanders to support the British troops. During the First World War, South Asian combatants and non-combatants were taken prisoner in France, Belgium, Mesopotamia, East Africa, and other theatres of war. Around a thousand South Asian military POWs and approximately the same number of civilian South Asians living in Europe were detained in German camps. Within this article, these years of captivity in the life of the colonial soldier Gangaram Gurung are reconstructed - by exploring visual, auditory and textual evidence about him.