India and the Great War: Colonial Fantasies, Anxieties and Discontent

By Gajendra Singh

Volume 14, Issue 2, pages 343-361

Abstract

India was the site of British fantasies and anxieties during the First World War. It was the chief Imperial reserve for an Empire under threat – 1.7 million Indian sipahis (or ‘sepoys’) were enlisted to fight. At the same time, revolutionary conspiracies in India haunted the imagination of British officialdom. They were used, in the aftermath of the First World War, to justify everything from colonial massacres to the indefinite censorship of the press. How could British India simultaneously be constructed as Imperial success and the source of imminent Imperial decline? What was it about the nature of Empire during the First World War that enabled India to be seen as both fantasy and neurosis? This article will provide some answers with an analysis of wartime revolutionary movements in India and of the war experiences of Indian soldiers.

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