A Sikh academic is helping young filmmakers who have teamed up with industry professionals and historians to make The Sikh Soldier.
Dr Opinderjit Kaur Takhar MBE, Director of the University’s Centre for Sikh and Panjabi Studies is raising awareness of Sikh and Indian involvement in the Great War. Dr Takhar is Associate Professor of Sikh Studies and Course Leader of MA Sikh Studies in the University’s School of Humanities and is an internationally recognised researcher in Sikh Studies who has published extensively on the Sikh and Panjabi community.
She said, “More than 130,000 Sikhs fought in the First World War, forming 20% of the Indian Army despite being just 1% of the Indian population. Despite this huge contribution for the British Empire, relatively little onscreen stories in Western cinema have been told of their heroic effort.
“It’s a huge honour for me to advise on a short film that puts a Sikh solder at the centre of its story and I think Mohinder’s journey will emphasise the sacrifice and endurance that Sikh soldiers gave to the war effort for the British and hopefully this will start a conversation about that wider contribution.”
The short film, The Sikh Soldier, is a not-for-profit film made by Award winning Writer and Director Joseph Archer. The Lead Actor and Co-Writer, Sky Cheema, who is from Wolverhampton, said, “At the beginning of the year, during the fallout of Laurence Fox’s 1917 comments about the featured Sikh soldier, we didn’t want the conversation of India's involvement in WW1 to end with a debate over someone's comments.