Remembering Britain’s Muslim soldiers

By David Rennie

Growing up in Bradford in northern England, Samayya Afzal’s favourite subject was history, even if every year at school seemed to involve studying the first or second world wars. She noticed that people like her family – immigrants from Pakistan – were missing from lessons about trenches and D-Day, Churchill and Digging for Victory. She knew that her great-grandfather had fought for Pakistan against India, in the bloody aftermath of Independence. Then, last year, she asked to see his medals. Her grandmother handed over a surprise: British decorations, including an Indian Army medal and a pair of Burma Stars, recording service for the British Empire against Japan. It was a complicated moment. Afzal’s earliest political memories involve the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and her instincts err towards pacifism.

Early in October she travelled to the National Archives in Kew, along with 13 other descendants of men who fought in the world wars for the Raj. The gathering had a serious purpose: to uncover family histories that might illuminate the service of 400,000 Muslims who fought for British India in the first world war, with help from a professional genealogist.