1910-1919

Indian troops in France brought their own music bands which created great interest among the French, who attended concerts in towns where these men performed. Note the dhols and flutes shown here. As one correspondent wrote: “Mr. G.

Indian troops in France were supplied by their own cooks and bakers, with the scent of freshly baked naan in tandoori ovens often wafting over the countryside as reported by the journalists who accompanied them.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers from India were recruited to fight with the Allied armies in Europe, Africa and Mesopotamia during World War I, and most passed through Bombay on their way to the front.

There are hundreds of thousands of European graves across the subcontinent, and perhaps thousands of such cemeteries, many attached to churches, and more or less abandoned by the British when they left, and now kept up by locals and private