The England and India Cricket team captains worry the red poppy to re-launch the initiative to commemorate the service in World War 1 of Indian soldiers on this the Centenary of the end of the War. As Britain has another conflict with Europe today, though not military, it is immigrants who suffer the emboldened prejudice against them. So let us remember…
Approximately 1.3 million Indian soldiers served in World War One, and over 74,000 of them lost their lives according to the BBC.
Just as quick as you are to be grateful to Britain at every opportunity, and how grateful you are the country offered you a home as a Ugandan Indian, or a penniless migrant from Kenya, or Tanzania or India – remember too you worked for it, you earned it.
You repaid your debt of gratitude manifold to the country. Look the country in the eye not from a position of being prostrate on the floor. My grandfather did not migrate here because of the generosity, great though it is of the British people, but because he was in the British Army in the War, and generously provided his Indian courage to the war effort.
He earned that right to migrate. When your fellow British Indians fought in the First World War – they too earned the right for you to migrate here – lest you forget – until the British Parliament legislated away that right. Lest you forget.
Patriotism is loyalty of the citizen to the country, but the country owes loyalty to its citizens. A British Indian seeks not extra protection but certainly demands no extra prejudice because he is Indian. So do not mistake our gratitude for weakness, our gratefulness for a willingness to be maltreated. We too, by the millions, put the Great into Great Britain. Continue to show us the respect we deserve and demand. We are British Indians. This is our nation. Lest YOU forget.
And of those Indian who fought for British Independence in World War 1, this poem by Housman could have been speaking of them:
Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.
