Nearly 10,000 forgotten Indian WWI soldiers officially recognised after more than 80 years

Nearly 10,000 Indian soldiers who served and died during the First World War have been officially recognised for the first time in what is being described as the biggest update to Commonwealth war casualty records in more than 80 years.

According to a report by BBC, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) has added the names of 9,909 British Indian Army servicemen to its casualty database after years of research by historians and volunteers.

Most of the soldiers came from the undivided Punjab province of British India, which was later divided between India and Pakistan after Partition in 1947, the report said.

The recognition follows a long effort to digitise and study historic military records preserved at the Lahore Museum in Pakistan, helping restore the identities of thousands of soldiers whose sacrifices had gone officially unrecorded for decades.

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Years of research uncover forgotten names

According to the report, the project was initiated by members of the UK-based Punjab Heritage Association, who worked with researchers to examine fragile handwritten registers prepared shortly after World War I.

Following the war, British Indian officials travelled across towns and villages in Punjab to document the service and fate of around 320,000 soldiers from the province who had served in the conflict. Over time, these records were largely forgotten until volunteers began digitising and analysing them.

According to the report, among the researchers was Jasmin Basra, a PhD student at the University of Greenwich, who unexpectedly discovered the names of her own great-great-grandfather and his brother in the records.

She said finding her relatives created a personal connection to both her family history and the wider contribution of Indians during the war.

Families receive long-awaited recognition

The updated records have also brought closure to families searching for information about relatives who never returned from the war.

Sunney Palahey, a dentist from Leicester, told BBC that researchers informed him that his great-grandfather, Kesar Singh, was among those whose names had now been officially added to the CWGC database.

He said the recognition finally acknowledged his great-grandfather's sacrifice and brought a sense of completeness to his family's history.

The CWGC is now working to trace descendants of many of the newly recognised soldiers.

Correcting a historical omission

According to the CWGC, many of the 9,909 servicemen had died of injuries away from the battlefield and were excluded from official war commemoration because of policies followed by the British Indian Government at the time. Those decisions have now been overturned.

According to the report, of the newly recognised soldiers, around 25 per cent were Sikhs, another 25 per cent were Hindus and about 40 per cent were Muslims.

The Commission said the latest update is not only about preserving the memory of those who died, but also about presenting a more complete and inclusive history of the First World War.