The Coolie's Great War: Indian labour in a global conflict, 1914–1921 by Radhika Singha

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Coolie's Great War: Indian labour in a global conflict, 1914–1921 by Radhika Singha Ashutosh Kumar The Coolie's Great War: Indian labour in a global conflict, 1914–1921 By Radhika Singha. Noida, Uttar Pradesh: HarperCollins India, 2020. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Until very recently World War One has been evaluated as a conflict between the different European powers. Non-European involvements have been considered as "contribution." Apart from that, the writings on World War One have been hugely centred on the combatants and their role in the war. Rarely have noncombatants found any space in the discussion. Radhika Singha's book The Coolie's Great War is an attempt to fill this gap in a limited way. The book focuses centrally on the war experience of noncombatants or "follower" ranks of the Indian army such as construction workers, porters, mule-drivers, stretcher-bearers, cooks, sweepers and grooms. Singha has categorized these people as "coolies" as these were presumably unskilled labourers consigned to the lowest rung of the global market in the nineteenth century. Her aim is to create a dialogue between military history and labour history. "Coolie," the word which has been considered as derogatory by the descendants of indentured labourers, was largely used during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for all sorts of presumably unskilled labour. Since official documents excessively used the word "coolie" for menial labour in the military corps, Singha seems to go along with that. The aim of the book, as Singha states, is not only to "rescue the coolie and the menial" in military employment from their condition of historical obscurity. It is also an attempt to develop a less Eurocentric, more transnational account of World War One. Aside from an introduction and an afterword, the book is divided into six chapters with twenty-one photographs. The opening chapter focuses on the colonial military infrastructure in India. It provides details of the combatants' and noncombatants' share in the Indian army during the war. Apart from the colonial construction of martial castes and superior races, distinguished from the menial status of the camp followers, this chapter traces the localities from which noncombatants originated and networks through which they were recruited. Chapter Two focuses on the subalterns of the Indian army, permanent or temporary. Here the author has chosen the term "follower ranks" instead of subalterns and argued that "the followers' work of care bolstered both the racial standing of the British soldiers and the status of superiority of the martial castes" (7). Making the case study of "higher followers" such as stretcher-bearers or kahars, and the mule-drivers, or dhobis, cooks, bhistis (water carrier), sweepers and syces (groom or grass cutter), Singha has explored the service milieu of the above "menial workers." However, she has pointed out that there was a significant overlap in the work during the war. In many cases soldiers had to do fatigue work. In some cases, sepoys chose to enlist in "Coolie Corps" as the wages were higher for coolie work. In this chapter Singha has provided details of the wages/salary, war allowances, bonuses and other benefits to the follower ranks as well as to the sepoys. Singha has argued that the better wages and service conditions for follower ranks were tactics used to reduce desertion and produce greater efficiency. In Chapter Three Singha discusses the Indian labour and porter corps in Iraq during the war. During the Mesopotamia campaign the British Indian army felt from a huge shortage of porters and menial workers. Since the anti-indenture campaign in India was at its peak at this time, Indian army officials decided to recruit the labourers being sent to sugar colonies for labour corps for "military work overseas." Convicts and prisoners were also offered an emancipation from servitude by agreeing to undertake "war service." While discussing the experience of the labour corps in Mesopotamia, Singha shows how upper caste recruits had to do tasks commonly undertaken by low status sweeper castes, such as the cleaning of latrines. Hence their religious and caste status was disregarded. The complaints of the workers were similar to those of anti-indenture Indian nationalists who had...