Steven Purewal, founder of Indus Media Foundation Canada, is the creator of a unique exhibit about the little-known story of India’s contribution to the First World War.

Soldiers from India, who were disproportionately from the state of Punjab, fought on the Western Front as well as German East Africa, Mesopotamia (now Iraq), Egypt, Palestine and Gallipoli (Turkey). A total of 74,000 soldiers from India gave their lives for the British Empire. It was a loss shared by Canada, which saw 66,000 soldiers die.

The exhibit — Duty, Honour and Izzat: The Call to Flanders Fields — is at the Surrey Centre Library until Sunday. It moves to the Surrey Archives Building from Nov. 4-15 and opens for one day on Nov. 10 at Simon Fraser University’s Surrey Central City campus, mezzanine level foyer.

The showing at SFU will coincide with a daylong workshop for Surrey teachers and a talk at 1 p.m. by Major Gordon Corrigan, a war historian and former officer of the Royal Gurkha Rifles, on The India Army and the Great War.

The next day, Corrigan will place a wreath on the cenotaph in Cloverdale during the Remembrance Day ceremony and give a talk at 6 p.m. at Heritage Hall on Main Street in Vancouver on the Role of the Indian and Canadian Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, 1914.

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Q: Who were the soldiers from India who fought in the First World War?

A: The history of the British Indian army really goes back to 1857 to the sepoy mutiny, when Hindu and Muslim sepoys wanted to throw the British out. (Sepoy was a term used to refer to an Indian soldier.)

Punjabis, primarily Sikhs, joined up with the British to quell that mutiny. From that point onward, the British favoured the Punjabis and went on a huge recruitment drive and invested in Punjab. The Punjabi community was a hugely loyal community. Britain took a lot of notice of this one province and favoured its people above any other community in India. That’s why the Punjabi story is unique.

Q: How big of a presence did Punjabis have in the Indian Army?

A: As a minority community, Sikhs made up only one per cent of India’s population; Punjabis, 10 per cent. Even though this population was a minority, by the time war broke out, Punjabis were a huge element of the armed forces: 66 per cent of the cavalry, 87 per cent of artillery and 45 per cent of infantry were Punjabi.

Q: Why is their story relatively unknown?

A: One of the things I typically say is that when you talk about India, it’s such a diverse country you need to get the people right. Would you get the Scottish story right by asking a Sicilian? Typically, that’s what’s happened in the past. Some of the scholarly community has not been Punjabi and this information has remained buried.

The other reason is that when the nation states of Pakistan and India were formed in 1947, Punjab was split in half. Our history fell into a crevasse. No one wanted to own it at that point because it was an Imperial history and the two nation states were moving away from that.

Every time I meet someone and tell them this, it’s like, ‘Wow. We didn’t know.’ That’s the whole point of the exhibit: to get the data out there.

Q: How supportive was India of the war effort?

A: The Indian government supported the war effort, including leading figures in history like Mohandas Gandhi, 100-per-cent support. It was fully supported by government, princes, maharajas. They saw it as a way to build up credibility to gain dominion status for India.

At the time, India was a British colony. White settler colonies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand already had dominion status. The Indians were fighting for a seat at the table, for being treated on an equal basis with white dominions.

Q: Had soldiers from India fought against Germans before?

A: They had prior experience of meeting the Germans in Peking in 1900 in the Boxer Rebellion. They knew who they were. The Germans were overtly racist even at that time. They were literally chomping at the bit to go at the Germans.

It’s very difficult to appreciate the level of loyalty soldiers had unless you read letters from the soldiers who were all volunteer. You’d be astounded at the level of feeling for King George. They were not remarking that they would be fighting for India, but typically, that they would be fighting for their sovereign King.

Q: What’s the connection to Canada?

A: We know that 60 to 70 per cent of the original Canadian Expeditionary Force was British born so they were going to fight for their motherland. The Indians were doing the same thing: they were fighting for their King and fighting for the motherland. It is a huge joint heritage.

People like me were born and raised in England because of our military heritage. We were invited to live in England by the British and that’s the reason why we have a huge Punjabi community, a Sikh community, in the Lower Mainland. It was at Queen Victoria’s behest — you know, ‘Go and see my Dominions’ — that we came out here. Punjab is a landlocked province. We wouldn’t get on boats and end up in Canada unless we were invited.

Q: What’s the connection between soldiers from India and the poem In Flanders Fields?

A: If Punjabi troops in the Lahore Division hadn’t arrived in October and November of 1914 in the Flanders area of Belgium, the Germans would have taken the ports and the Canadian Expeditionary Force would not have landed on the European mainland. John McCrae’s poem In Flanders Field would not have been written.

The Flanders territory was basically held by the British and Indians in the first battle of Ypres and six months later, Canadians landed and then they fought jointly with Punjabi soldiers in the second battle of Ypres. When students learn about In Flanders Fields, we need to teach them this connection.

• For more information about the exhibits, visit imfc.org

kevingriffin@vancouversun.com

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