Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War

Around the world, the belligerent states chewed on their new possessions – Eastern Europe and Manchuria – in their respective backyards.

While they had filed into the trenches of an alien continent, to die of gangrene, disease or the cold, the Army had sententiously debated whether it was alright for black Indians to kill White Germans, or even to have their wounds treated by White nurses. But Indians were not for crawling any more. They would not rank with dumb animals, only good f

Early every Saturday, before the sun poured its jellied heat over Madras,

With the war begun, however, Nehru could not accept that Indian soldiers would die for the freedom of a nation which denied that very freedom to India; or that Indian taxes would pay to maintain those troops. Above all, the Congress leaders were appalled by the arrogance with which the Viceroy had committed India to war, without even consulting the

From this elevation, the Tochi river was a twist of green silk scarf, tied to conceal the beige blisters rising from the ground beside

When the war was over, the Indian Army – and the more than two million men and women who served in it – found that they had spent the past six years on the wrong side of history.

They were loyal in return, and around the Cannanore Cantonment, they had grown noticeably lighter-skinned, the wages of their hospitality to British soldiers.

The Army was older than the Raj itself, and it had filled with the silt of centuries, out of which grew all its pomp and folly.

People have two deaths: the first at the end of their lives, when they go away, and the second at the end of the memory of their lives, when all who remember them are gone. Then a person quits the world completely.