For King and Another Country by Shrabani Basu

Author:Shrabani Basu
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789385436499
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

To provide a space for the convalescent soldiers an Indian Soldier’s Club was opened in a building facing the sea in Barton-on-Sea. It was paid for by the Laymen’s Society12 composed mainly of Englishmen who had served in India and those who were grateful to the Indians for the service they had rendered in the field. Supervised by retired Indian officials, the Club provided a place for the soldiers to meet, play cards and socialise. There was also a shop selling watches, pocket knives and other articles which the Indian soldiers wanted to buy before returning to France or being invalided back to India.

The Club opened on a wintry English day on 16 Feb 1915. William Coldstream, ICS, Retd, addressed the gathering with hearty salutations of ‘Sat Sri Akal’ and ‘Salaam’:

Six months ago one could never have expected to see hundreds of soldiers from Hindustan in England, all gathered together as you are here. It is true that you have come from a distant land, but we do not call you foreigners; rather, I should say that you have come, as it were, to your second home,’ said Coldstream. ‘You have come to the country of your Sovereign. And just as we English, when we go to your country of Hindustan, consider that country as our own country, so we wish you to consider that, having come to England, you have come to a country of your own.

We have the fullest confidence that you men of the Punjab, of Hindustan, of Rajputana, of Nepal, of Maharashtra, and of the Deccan – men of the fighting races of India…will not cease to fight until you have conquered the foe… Then, when the war is ended, and each of you is at rest in his own village, sitting on his own dalan in his own house, with wife and children around him, cows and bullocks standing by the stall, you will sometimes, while you thus sit at ease, remember in your hearts the days when, in this Club House at Barton-on-Sea, you found a place of comfort and recreation, and met with kind friends and brotherly treatment in the far-off land of England.13

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