INDIAN ARMY AT WAR

The British-Indian Army of 1914-18 was unlike most armies of the First World War. It was hugely diverse, including Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and pagans. The official language of the Indian Army was Hindustani, but such a mix of peoples inevitably led to a myriad of languages spoken by its soldiers, such as Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Pushtu, Dari, Bengali, Tamil, Burmese and Nepali. It reflected the Indian Empire of the time, which included not only India but also modern-day Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal.

Upon the outbreak of the First World War, the Indian Army comprised of 240,000 Indian troops, including combatants and non-combatants, and around 77,000 British. By the time the war ended, some 1.5 million Indians had served, of which over a million had been deployed overseas. Given its size it is remarkable