India's Wartime Contribution to the Allied Cause
As a British colony, India was automatically at war the moment Britain declared war on Germany in 1914, with no Indian legislature or representative body consulted on the decision. Despite this, and despite the (correctly justified) grievance this represented, both moderate and militant Indian nationalist leaders, including the Indian National Congress, largely supported the war effort, calculating that demonstrated loyalty would strengthen the case for postwar self-government. The Indian Army eventually fielded over 1.3 million men across the war's theatres: the Indian Corps fought on the Western Front from the earliest months of the war (including at Ypres in 1914-15), Indian troops formed the bulk of Allied forces in the Mesopotamian campaign against the Ottoman Empire, and Indian units served in East Africa and at Gallipoli. Roughly 74,000 Indian soldiers died. The expected political reward did not materialise on the scale promised. Britain's 1917 Montagu Declaration promised eventual 'responsible government' but with no firm timeline, and the repressive Rowlatt Act of 1919 -- extending wartime emergency powers into peacetime -- followed within months of the armistice, directly provoking the Amritsar Massacre and a decisive turn toward Gandhi's mass civil disobedience movement.
- Year: 1914 CE
- Category: Military
