Indian women and the First World War

A young Indian woman and a girl raise funds in England for Indian soldiers fighting in the First
World War

When the men went to war, and nearly 6,00,000 men from undivided
Punjab did sign up, the women were left behind. For many, the wait never
ended; for many, the wait ended but their husbands returned as changed
men; many women married their brothers-in-law thinking their men were
dead, only to see them return after four years; and for many, despair
turned into derangement.

The Great War saw service of 1.3 million Indians, but 74,000 never made
it back home. For their families, war was something they couldn’t quite
understand. And with the men—the sole earning members in most
families—gone, the women suddenly found themselves shouldering all
sorts of responsibilities.

The situation was not very different in Europe where women took up all
sorts of odd jobs and even those involving hard manual labour. On
returning from war, many men found themselves unemployed with their
women replacing them in the work force. In Britain, this led to all sorts of
problems with many war veterans protesting and disrupting
commemoration events.

In India, the women also had to contend with illiteracy and social taboos
while fending for their families. A 1916 play on recruitment by Satish
Chandra Chattopadhyay, Bengali Platoon (Bengali Polton), highlighted
the plight of women grappling with rising household expenses and the
pain of parting with their boys.

One of the characters has a son named Kebla who goes to the war. She
and her daughter-in-law fret about rising prices in a scene. “Not only have
the price of clothes gone up, but matchsticks, soap, thread, combs, even
needles have become expensive. Listen, can anyone tell me the
connection between the war and the price of needles?” Kebla’s mother
asks.

Her daughter-in-law replies: “Mother, don’t you understand? May be the

sahibs are pricking needles into the bodies of their enemies; that’s why
the price of needles has gone up.”

This may sound like a very paternalistic view today (and maybe it was
indeed that way), but the plight of the women is reflective of the situation
on the ground at that time.

In Punjab, with the recruitment officers taking away the men, the women
would follow them for long distances before returning heartbroken—
Women often objected to their sons, husbands or brothers joining the
military. In Chattopadhyay’s play, Kebla’s mother is upset that her son
had signed up for the Indian Army for Rs 11 pay and the signing bonus of
Rs 50.

“What horrors have befallen me! I see that the crocodile has invaded my
house first. Is it to undo me that the burnt faces (offensive slang for the
English) came to the village?” she says in the play.

Kebla objects: “Look, don’t call these eminent people such awful names.”
She goes on: “What shan’t I? I will, a hundred times. First the burnt faces
invade our country, and now they are trying to raid my ladder.”
Haryana historian professor K C Yadav says the recruitment officers
shamed the men who refused to volunteer in front of the women—a sure
shot tool to guarantee recruitment in a deeply patriarchal society. This had
a parallel in Britain where recruitment propaganda was carried through
posters and skits, where a young child asked her father, “Daddy, what did
you do in the war?”, or college girls booed at boys for still staying in their
dorms.

When the Indian soldiers served in Europe, they were amazed by the
openness in the society. It were the gori mems (white women) who
influenced them majorly. Many letters sent by the sepoys to their families
talked about the need for Indian women to be educated and utilise their
time better. When many of these men returned home, they ensured that
their daughters went to school too.

But women from the more privileged classes, while not suffering in the
war or from it, did a lot for the care of those who suffered. There were
some Indian women who took to the streets of London to raise funds for
the treatment of Indians wounded in the war. Sarojini Naidu was one of
them, who also wrote a poem, The Gift of India for all those Indians who
served and died in the Great War. This is one of the many underrated
Indian contributions to the Great War.

As the World War I sucked in millions of young men into killing fields
across Europe, it also turned into an opportunity for women on the
Continent to leave their homes and begin to work. The same did not
begin to happen for Indian women until World War II.

In May 1942, the British formed the Women’s Auxiliary Corps (India)
for female volunteers to contribute to the war cause. This was the first
time Indian women entered the army, and until 1992, it also was the
only time they were allowed to serve in non-medical roles.

As with their counterparts in the United States and Europe, women were
not allowed to serve in combat roles. Instead, they worked behind the
front lines as typists, switchboard operators and drivers, and could be
posted anywhere the Indian Army went. The corps was disbanded in
1947 with Independence.

But women were not just in the auxiliary corps. Civilian women were
also allowed to serve as nurses and were employed in light
manufacturing jobs in the extensive factories on Indian soil that fed the
machines of war.

Here are a few of these early remarkable women.

Bridge in the nurses' mess. Hundreds of Indian nurses have
volunteered and are seeing active service alongside Indian doctors in
the Middle East. 1941-1943. Photo credit: Library of Congress
Woman power in India. Indian women cleaning and oiling spare parts
for tanks supplied under lend-lease. April 1943. Photo credit: Library
of Congress

Women workers in a booming Mumbai textile mill. Thirty five percent

of India's great cotton textiles production, amounting to some
5,000,000,000 yards a year, went into war materials for India and the
alllies. 1941-1943. Photo credit: Library of Congress

The Quetta Platoon, Women's Auxiliary Corps (India), in civilian dress,

1942. Photo credit: National Army Museum, UK