Commonwealth War Graves Commission Adds 9,909 British Indian Army Names to Casualty Database

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission added 9,909 names of British Indian Army soldiers who died in the First World War to its official casualty database. The update is the largest expansion of the commission's records since the Second World War. Researchers located the names in leather-bound registers compiled in Punjab after the conflict.

British volunteers and a PhD student spent several years examining the registers now held at the Lahore Museum in Pakistan. The UK Punjab Heritage Association led the digitisation project. The volumes list individual casualties village by village.

Officials originally recorded the names after visiting settlements across Punjab. Approximately 1.4 million soldiers from territories now part of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh served in the British Indian Army during the First World War. Of the newly added names, roughly 40 per cent were Muslim, 25 per cent Sikh and 25 per cent Hindu.

The newly recognised soldiers were largely casualties who died of wounds away from the front lines. In Punjab alone, records list nearly 320,000 servicemen. At the time, decisions by the British Indian Government denied these soldiers formal war-graves status.

The commission states the change helps address earlier Euro-centric perspectives on the conflict. Sunney Palahey, a dentist in Leicester, learned that his great-grandfather Kesar Singh is now formally listed. "The circle has closed.

I feel much more complete," Palahey said. " Jasmin Basra, the PhD student who worked on the project, found the names of her own great-great-grandfather and his brother among the entries. "As a Punjabi myself I feel really proud that I can do this part for the community," Basra said.