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Sarika Sharma
A confidential letter from Mesopotamia in March 1916 called urgently for 450 latrine sweepers from India. In temperatures unlike what they had ever faced in India, the Indian Labour Corps had been constructing roads, railways, bridges. Basra was to be a major port to launch the military campaign during World War I. When Radhika Singha came across this letter dated March 1916 at the National Archives in New Delhi, she wondered why it was marked “Confidential”. More research revealed that there had been a cholera outbreak in Basra and “.sweepers were going to be placed in jeopardy at the epidemic front”. Later, dhobis were to be called in, too, tasked with disinfecting military hospitals, exposing them to high risk. By the time the Mesopotamia campaign ended, 3,000 men from Indian Labour Corps had died in Basra alone. During the five-year commemorations of the Great War, not a tear was shed for these dead. Singha’s new book, ‘The Coolie’s Great War’ ....

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