UK apologises for 'pervasive racism' in commemoration of fallen Indian WWI soldiers

'A soldier of the great war,’ read the numerous war memorials of the Indian soldiers, fallen in the line of duty during WWI in the UK. They weren’t properly honoured, not commemorated by name, or weren’t commemorated at all due to ‘pervasive racism,’ a report commissioned by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) on Thursday found. The graves of the Indian and African WWI martyrs contrast with the soldiers that laid lives across Europe or the UK, defying the morale that all war-dead soldiers must be honoured and remembered the same way. 

Imperial war graves of more than 161,000 mostly Indian or African military service members who laid lives in at least two world wars were ‘commemorated unequally,’ and not defined by the principle of equality of treatment of armed forces in death, CWGC said. The report estimates that between 45,000 and 54,000 military personnel casualties were not commemorated by name, it continued, adding that it may have been the administrative errors and prejudiced attitudes that influenced or played a role at the time of the soldiers’ burial. “Many of these attitudes belonged to departments of the British Imperial Government, including the War Office and Colonial Office,” the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s (CWGC) special committee probing the war graves found. 

Shortly after the report was released, UK’s Defense Secretary Ben Wallace issued an apologetic statement in the House of Commons that read: “On behalf of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the government, both of the time and today, I want to apologize for the failures to live up to their founding principles all those years ago and express deep regret that it has taken so long to rectify the situation. Whilst we can’t change the past, we can make amends and take action.”

Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson also issued a statement: ''Our shared duty is to honour and remember all those, wherever they lived and whatever their background, who laid down their lives for our freedoms at the moment of greatest peril.'' Read full statement here: 

‘They deserve dignity,’ Lammy says

An independent panel of the CWGC led the investigation after a TV documentary presented by David Lammy, a lawmaker from the opposition Labour Party, that focused on the way African casualties were commemorated, according to The Associated Press. A researcher involved in the documentary making said that she had forwarded the report about inequalities in the commemoration of martyrs' graves to the commission more than a decade ago, but no action was taken. She alleged that tens of thousands of soldiers from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, who were only paper registered, were honored anonymously on collective memorials or were not honoured at all. Some battlefield graves of ‘unknown soldiers’ were abandoned, and their remains were never even identified.

[Credit: AP]

Documentary presenter Lammy lamented the differing and discriminatory funeral rites of Indian and African soldiers saying: “No apology can ever make up for the indignity suffered by the unremembered. However, this apology does offer the opportunity for us as a nation to work through this ugly part of our history — and properly pay our respects to every soldier who has sacrificed their life for us.