GERMANY—The staff exercise children at a Nazi baby farm, 1945.
© Cornell Capa Photos by Robert Capa © 2001 / Magnum Photos

Via

I read the news a few days ago that Indian Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi paid homage to Indian soldiers who died in Belgium during the First World War:

In a gesture that will go well with millions of Indian soldiers back home, United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi laid a wreath at the famous Indian memorial at Menin Gate in Ieper, Belgium, saying it felt a shame to be alive when men so brave are dead.
Over 50,000 Indian soldiers laid down their lives in the Fields of Flanders during the 14 months of war during 1914-1915, fighting on behalf of the Allied armies of Belgium, France and Great Britain in the First World War against the Imperial German Army.

This week I taught Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and, although set during WWII, so many things about Kirpal Singh’s condition–”His name is Kirpal Singh and he does not know what he is doing here”–resonated with the earlier history. You’ll remember that Singh is the sapper in that crumbling Italian villa in Ondaatje’s novel; he strips his tent and his body of all military insignia and arms after he hears the news from Hiroshima. He asks “the English patient”:

You and then the Americans converted us. With your missionary rules. And Indian soldiers wasted their lives as heroes so that they could be pukkah. You had wars like cricket. How did you fool us into this?

Photo: Indian Cavalry Transport, September 1916, on the Albert-Amiens Road, France. Via the Wilfred-Owen Digital Archive and the Imperial War Museum. Via.

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