Of Loss, Belonging and Remembrance: Indian Poetic Responses to World War I

Abstract

This article undertakes a critical exploration of the Indian poetic responses to World War I. The most striking feature of this poetry was its uniquely diverse nature, which reflected in full the multicultural character of the Indian army at the Western Front and elsewhere in the world. The immense diversity of Indian soldiers triggered a wide range of emotions and ideas from combatants and civilians alike. While we have established writers like Rabindranath Tagore and Sarojini Naidu on the one hand, we have a poetic miscellany of lesser known creative voices on the other, some even documenting their first-hand experiences of the War. Poems, lyrical propaganda, folk-songs, epistolary verse, elegies and even verses accompanying posters make up the various modes of literary circulation during this time of unprecedented global turmoil. Making use of both original compositions and various other works in translation, this article argues that most of this poetic evidence often serves as crucial testimonies, chronicling not only the major historical events of the War years, but also assiduously recording the wide gamut of feelings and emotions associated with the conflict.