Sonia Mathew
Independent Researcher
Kerala, India
Abstract
Between 1914 and 1945, Indian soldiers deployed across multiple theaters of the First and Second World Wars authored thousands of letters that offer indispensable insights into their emotional resilience, social bonds, and evolving political consciousness. This study draws upon a curated corpus of 150 deeply reflective wartime letters sourced from the National Archives of India, the British Library’s India Office Records, and the Service Historique de la Défense in France, complemented by twenty-five oral history interviews with veterans’ descendants from Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. Employing qualitative content analysis augmented by NVivo 12-assisted coding, the research identifies three interlinked dimensions: (1) letters as lifelines sustaining familial cohesion and soldierly morale under the duress of combat; (2) the mobilization of memory through community commemorations, regimental associations, and memorial rituals that simultaneously reinforced colonial allegiances and seeded nationalist sentiment; and (3) the complex reconfiguration of soldierly identity from compliant colonial subject to articulate participant in India’s march toward decolonization. Findings reveal that over 90 percent of the letters contain vivid depictions of homesickness, agricultural anxieties, and ritualized expressions of faith—underscoring how epistolary communication served both affective and performative functions. Simultaneously, approximately 65 percent of correspondence dating from 1940–1945 articulate critical reflections on discriminatory military practices and reference contemporary anti-colonial developments, indicating a significant politicization fostered by exposure to global discourses of self-determination. Oral histories further illuminate how annual Armistice Day commemorations—featuring hybrid ceremonies that fused British military rites with indigenous devotional music and communal langar—became focal points for collective memory and intergenerational identity transmission. The study concludes that Indian soldiers’ letters were not mere private missives but potent “political texts” that shaped both individual trajectories and communal narratives, ultimately contributing to the formation of a hybrid colonial-national identity. These insights advance scholarly understanding of colonial military history, memory studies, and identity formation by integrating epistolary analysis with the socio-cultural dynamics of remembrance and nationalism.
Keywords
Indian Soldiers, World Wars, Letters, Collective Memory, Identity
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