1. IWM invites South Asians to submit stories, photos and objects related to WWII.
2. Project will collect military and civilian narratives from pre-Partition South Asia.
3. Over 89,000 South Asians died in the war, which ended 80 years ago.
Britain’s Imperial War Museums (IWM) has launched India’s War, an initiative calling on the public to share stories, photographs and memorabilia related to the experiences of Indians and all other South Asians during World War II.
By the end of the war in August 1945, the Indian subcontinent had contributed the second-largest fighting force in the Commonwealth, after Britain. Over 89,000 South Asian military personnel died in combat on multiple fronts during the war. Twenty-eight Indian soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest British honour for gallantry.
Although the IWM holds film and photographic material on India’s role in the war, it plans to deepen its archives by capturing personal, individual accounts. “This collecting project is an opportunity for IWM to reach out to our audiences to ensure that these powerful personal stories are properly represented within IWM’s collections,” said Adrian Kerrison, Senior Curator for Second World War and Mid-20th Century, reported PTI.
One such story already in the museum's archives is of Pilot Officer Sayanapuram Duraiswamy Thyagarajan, or ‘Tiger’ Rajan. Born in 1918, he served in the Royal Air Force and was killed at 26 during the Battle of Normandy in 1944. His trilingual headstone honours him in Hindi, English and French.
The India’s War project, launched ahead of the 80th anniversary of the war’s end, aims to highlight military and civilian experiences from pre-Partition India, which included present-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
