WW1 - Commemoration of Indian Soldiers - Honouring Muslim Soldiers

Photo: Commonwealth War Graves Commission

 

Commemoration of Indian Soldiers

Over one and a half million Indian army soldiers served alongside British troops during the World War One. Twelve thousand Indian soldiers who were wounded on the Western Front.

The fifty-three Hindu and Sikh soldiers who died in Brighton were taken to a peaceful resting place on the Sussex Downs near Patcham for cremation, after which their ashes were scattered in the sea, in accordance with their religious rites.

The Muslim brothers in arms, totalling nineteen, were buried in a purpose built burial ground near to the Shah Jehan Mosque in Woking. Built in 1889, the mosque is the oldest of its kind in north-west Europe.

 

Honouring Muslim soldiers

Muslim soldiers who died in English hospitals also received burial rites according to their religion. Some were taken to Woking - to a new cemetery near to the Shah Jahan Mosque and some were taken to Brookwood Military Cemetery. There, in a fusion of Muslim practices with British military traditions, they were interred and a bugler played 'The Last Post'

Mahomed Sarwar grew up in the Punjab and, like many young men from a rural population, sought adventure and a life outside his ancestral village by joining the 19th Lancers (Fane's Horse). His regiment went to France in October 1914 as part of the Sialkot Brigade of the 1st Indian Cavalry Division.

 

Mahomed only survived for eight short months. In Flanders, trench warfare made cavalry charges not only impractical but impossible, so the men left their horses behind the lines and served as infantry in the trenches.

By April 1915, Mahomed was in the Kitchener Hospital in Brighton. Mahomd died two months later from typhoid. He was only nineteen.

On his headstone in Brookwood Cemetery, it says:

"For God we are and to God we go” … (Qur'an)