Chindits, the Burma campaign and war memorials

Delhi's layout has been steadily changing over the years. What used to be a huge roundabout at Dhaula Kuan has now changed into a complicated maze of flyovers that takes one to various destinations like Gurgaon, the airport, Delhi's cantonment, R.K. Puram, Motibagh and Naraina, among others. If you manage to find your way out of this maze towards Naraina on Ring Road (or Mahatma Gandhi Road), after about a kilometre there is an U-turn. A traffic junction at this place, known as Gopinath Bazar, has now been replaced by the U-turn to smoothen out traffic movement. If you take the first turn on the left soon after the U-turn you wil reach a railway level crossing. About a kilometre further on is the Delhi War Cemetery, which is a memorial of British soldiers and officers killed in the two World Wars. Next to it is a civilian cemetery of the British as well. This War Cemetery turned out to be a bit of a surprise for me ... I have lived in and around Delhi for more than three decades. It is one of the cemeteries maintained across the world by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (earlier known as the Imperial War Graves Commission). This is a body that had among its founders British author Rudyard Kipling (whose son died in the First World War). Kipling was also the originator the the term 'White man's burden' that was the expression of the West's mission to 'civilise' the Orient. But of the cruelty of war he also wrote: “The flesh we had nursed from the first in all cleanness was given… To be blanched or gay painted by fumes- to be cindered by fires- To be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation From crater to crater. For this we shall take expiation. But who shall return us our children?” Anyway, I visited this cemetery some months back. Outside it some boys play cricket with a tennis ball.. but inside it is calm. The lawns are well maintained. But the heart wrenches when you read the marble gravestones and find that many of the soldiers died at the tender age of 21 or 22 years. The photo that accompanying this post is that of a gravestone on which the name inscribed is 'E.C.S. Dix, Lancashire Fusliers. Right at the top is his service number - 5189477 while his date of death is given as 12th Januray, 1943, aged just 21 years. Some research on the internet reveals that his full name is Eugene Charles Samuel and that he belonged to the 10th battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers that saw action in the Burma campaign or what has came to be called the Chindits. I also found an account of parts of the campaign written by William (Bill) Dalton, a lance corporal also of the 10th Battalion. Dalton was wounded in machine gun fire on 9th January, 1943, just three days before Fusilier Dix was killed. I have given the link to Dalton's account. Bill Dalton, by the way, survived the war and died only last year at the age of 93 at his home village of Croston near Chorley in Lancashire (county) in the U.K. But surely Eugene Dix deserves a little more attention - who was he? why did he join up? who were his parents? does he have any descendents living? Maybe a little more research will bring out the circumstances of his death.

A correction. Bahadur Shah Zafar's sons were shot dead - not hanged - at Khooni Darwaza by Captain William Hodson who was a young British officer from the Punjab. The Khooni Darwaza, by the way was earlier known as the Kabuli Darwaza and is believed to have been one of the gates of Sher Shah's city of Delhi. It came to be called the Khooni Darwaza from the fact that Bahadur Shah's sons were executed here.
Hodson, it seems, went back with 100 cavalry to Humayun's tomb (near Nizamuddin Auliya's Mazhar) a day after capturing Bahadur Shah Zafar. He had been informed that Zafar's two sons and a grandson - Mirza Mughal, Mirza Khizr Sultan and Mirza Abu Bakr - were hiding there. The three were being taken back to the city when Hodson himself shot the three princes dead.
Hodson wrote to his family: " Today, more fortunate still, I have seized and destroyed the King's two sons and a grandson.... the villians who ordered the massacre of our women and children, and stood by and witnessed the foul barbarity; their bodies are now lying on the spot where those of the unfortunate ladies were exposed. I am very tired but very much satisfied with my day's work."

India Gate had a whole crowd of visitors last evening. It appeared rather attractive after being illuminated in the colours of the Indian flag. In the morning it had a rather ghostly look about it in the fog even at ten o'clock when the Republic Day parade began. The Prime Minister laid a wreath in remembrance for those who laid their lives for the country in war.

If you go close to the India Gate you will notice that it is built of blocks of yellow sandstone. A closer look will reveal engraved on the stones the names of soldiers, their ranks and the names of their regiments. These were men who died in the First World War. India Gate is in fact a war memorial erected by the British in memory of soldiers and men of the British Indian Army who sacrificed their lives in that most horrendous of conflicts.

About 3 kilometres away is another war memorial raised in memory of soldiers belonging the princely states who too helped in the British war effort to "make the world safe for democracy". That memorial is known as Teen Murti, which lies at one end of Chanakyapuri or Delhi's diplomatic district. It consists of statues of three turbaned figures around a column on which are described the theatres of war in which the soldiers of the princely states of India took part.The place is better known as the residence of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who live in a bungalow right next to it. That bungalow, by the way was the official residence of the British army chief in India. The entire complex is now a museum, planetarium and library.

In Dhaula Kuan, another 3 to 4 kilometres southwest of Teen Murti, I discovered another war memorial. It is dedicated to British soldiers and officers who died in the two World Wars. There are only gravestones with the names of the soldiers and the year they died engraved on them. This cemetary is maintained under the watchful eye of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Makes one think about what motivated these young men and some women to give up their lives so far away from home. Many of these British soldiers and officers are listed as 'Indian'. I wonder why.

Enough acrimony, I think, has been exchanged between the British and Indians over the former's rule over the subcontinent for two centuries. Somewhere the fates of those British who came to India as part of the ruling elite were intertwined with us Indians. We must therefore accept our common heritage sinking past differences. It is well over sixty years since they left in any case. Sufficient to make us forget.

Every person has a particular look by which it is easy for others to recognise him or her instantly. Officially this 'look' is called identity that is reduced to certain measurable and checkable features. But it is much more than this.

The same I guess can be said about a city. Each city has a look. So has our capital city of Delhi. It has people, roads and most importantly buildings that outlast humans. If one looks close enough, the buildings tell us stories and often of drama enacted not so long back. The 'Khooni Darwaza', for example is hardly noticed by hundreds of men and women who pass it daily. How many stop to think that this was the place where the sons of Bahadurshah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor were hanged by a British army officer just some time prior to the transfer of sovereignty of India to the British crown? Why did he choose the barbarous path of putting them to death?

The Mughals were the rulers of India before the British took over. They have left their buildings which give us an idea of the lifestyles that they led. Before them the Surs, the Lodis, the Tughlaks and the Mameluks and the Rajputs like Prithviraj. I am sure all these rulers left their stamp on the people whose descendents we are. Therefore it is certain that we carry some signs of the influence they exerted and which forms an integral part of our characters as we rush into the 21st century, economic reforms and picture ourselves as a powerful nation of the future.

It is my intention through this blog to discover this identity of Delhi and therefore of us Indians.