A multi-faith event is to take place at the Indian Gate, the southern entrance to the Royal Pavilion estate in Brighton, at 2pm on Sunday 27 October 2024.
The purpose of the ceremony is to commemorate the significant role that soldiers from undivided India – including modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar – played in supporting the British Empire’s efforts in both world wars.
During World War One (WW1, 1914-1918), 1.5 million soldiers from all regions, religions and backgrounds fought in the British Indian Army; and in World War Two (1939-1945), this number rose to over 2.5 million. Their contribution and huge sacrifice will be the focus of the commemoration, but attention will also be paid to the special relationship between Brighton and the colonial troops – how their experiences form part of the city’s multicultural history.
Councillor Alan Robins, until recently chair of the Culture, Heritage, Sport, Tourism and Economic Development Committee, said: “Soldiers from across south Asia are a key part of our heritage and we must share the diverse stories of each of these heroes.”
Indian soldiers in WW1
In WW1, Indian soldiers found themselves in unfamiliar lands, fighting an enemy they knew little about, often unprepared and ill-equipped for the conditions they encountered. Those sent to France in the autumn of 1914 were amongst the first soldiers to experience the full horrors of trench warfare: “The shells are pouring like rain in the monsoon,” one soldier wrote in a letter home. “The corpses cover the country, like sheaves of harvested corn,” wrote another.
As many as 74,187 Indian soldiers died during the war and a comparable number were wounded. Approximately 12,000 troops injured in the defensive lines of the Western Front between late 1914 and early 1916 were brought to Brighton for medical treatment.
Brighton’s Indian military hospitals
Brighton had the greatest concentration of Indian military hospitals in the country, established in what had been the workhouse, renamed the Kitchener Indian Hospital (now Brighton General Hospital); the York Place and Pelham Street Schools; and the Royal Pavilion, including the Dome and Corn Exchange.
The Sussex Daily News (23 November 1914) reported: “Generations of Brightonians yet unborn will marvel in reading of these days.” In December 1914, when the ambulance trains brought the first injured soldiers to Brighton, local people turned out to cheer them.
The care taken in converting the three buildings on the Royal Pavilion estate into a military hospital for Indian soldiers, the majority of whom were illiterate, agricultural workers from the rural north of India, was remarkable. Indeed, the soldiers themselves were amazed at being cared for in such grand surroundings. In 1915, a patient wrote to a friend back in India: “Our hospital is in the place where the King used to have his throne. The men in the hospital are tended like flowers.”
Transforming the Royal Pavilion into a hospital
In the Royal Pavilion, the Banqueting Room and Music Room were transformed into wards and the Great Kitchen was used as an operating theatre. Separate water supplies were provided for Hindus and Muslims: there were segregated bathhouses and latrines and an amazing nine kitchens for Muslims, meat-eating Hindus and vegetarians, each with their own cooks. Orderlies from their own caste or religion cared for the wounded and the so-called ‘untouchables’ were provided with a special building on the eastern lawn.
The reason why such scrupulous attention was given to caste sensitivities was not so much altruistic as political. The Government needed to ensure, for the future security of the British Raj in India, that the Indian Army remained loyal to George V, King and Emperor of India.
Keeping morale high amongst the men and their families back in India was of paramount importance and, to this end, King George V and Queen Mary visited the Royal Pavilion in August 1915. The royal couple were filmed talking to patients and presenting the Victoria Cross to Jemadar Mir Dast.
Of all the men treated at the Royal Pavilion hospital, 32 died. The Muslim dead were taken to a specially established Muslim military burial ground at the Shah Jehan Mosque in Woking. Hindus and Sikhs were cremated on the Downs near Patcham, on a specially built burning ghat; where the Chattri memorial is located today.
The Indian Gate
Unlike the Chattri, the Indian Gate, designed by Thomas Tyrwhitt as a dome resting on four pillars, was not meant as a memorial. It was built and paid for by the “princes and people of India” as a gesture of thanks to the people of Brighton for the care “of her sons who – stricken in the Great War – were tended in the Pavilion in 1914 and 1915”, and is “dedicated to the use of the inhabitants of Brighton”.
The Maharajah of Patiala, Bhupinder Singh, opened the gate to the public on 26 October 1921. In his speech, the Maharajah put great emphasis on Brighton’s reputation as a place of healing and spoke of his nation’s appreciation of the role “Dr Brighton” played in caring for the wounded Indian soldiers.
Vital legacy
But the world moved on, relations with India changed and the sacrifices made by the soldiers of the British Indian Army slipped from official histories and public memory. The event planned for 27 October will go a long way to addressing this.
It will bring together members of Brighton and Hove’s diverse, multi-cultural society in remembrance of all colonial and commonwealth soldiers. It will also shine a light on the part Brighton played in the story of the Great War.
See details of the event on Sunday 27 October at 2pm.
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