Did you know that during WW2, nearly 2.5 million personnel from the British Indian Army were deployed to help protect Britain at its time of need? A special Muslim contingent called ‘Force K6’ was a Mule Transport Corps a part of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps (RIASC) from the British Indian Army (BIA). […]
Join the Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia project and Peterborough Museum & Art Gallery as we explore the heritage of South Asia through maps and satellite imagery. This is a drop-in session that both adults and kids can enjoy, with crafts and activities as well vibrant discussion on all things archaeology and heritage in […]
Born in 1888 in the Punjab village of Dab, Khan was a Muslim Rajput. Khan’s parents died while he was a teenager, and he became a sepoy to support his two sisters. At the outbreak of the First World War his regiment, the 129th Baluchis, was sent to France. In October 1914, Khan, a machine […]
Sardar Hardit Singh Malik was born on the 23rd November 1894 in Rawalpindi in West Punjab. Sent to England aged 14, he attended Eastbourne College, before studying history at Oxford, and playing cricket for Sussex. After the First World War broke out, Hardit applied to join the British Army as a commissioned officer, but racist […]
Born in Chambra, Uttarakhand in 1895, Gabar Sing Negi was just twenty years of age when, along with his comrades in 2nd Battalion 39th Garhwal Rifles, he sailed for Europe in the autumn of 1914. Like many soldiers making up the Indian Corps in the Great War, life on the Western Front came as a […]
Manta Singh joined the Indian Army from school in 1907. Promoted to Subedar, the equivalent of captain, he served in the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs alongside an English officer, Lieutenant George Henderson. In August 1914 Singh and his friend Henderson, like thousands of others, were sent to France. On March 10th 1915, they joined the first […]
Indra Lal Roy was born in Calcutta on 2nd December 1898. His father was Director of Public Prosecutions in Calcutta, his mother ran their home in Kensington with Indra and his siblings. At the outbreak of the First World War, Roy a 15-year-old schoolboy, declared he wanted to join up. His brother, Poresh, who at […]
In the 1930’s, for many young middle-class men from undivided India, a career in the Army was seen as an opportunity for advancement. Even when war broke out and the hostile nature of the climate in Burma and the challenges fighting the Japanese Imperial Army were understood, men still volunteered to serve. Men such as […]
After the fall of Dunkirk, it is said Britain stood alone. However, while Britain was alone in not being occupied, the men and women defending Britain came from across the Commonwealth and the wider world. The best example of how men and women came together from all nations can be seen in the ranks of […]
By mid-1945, the war in Europe had ended but for those fighting Imperial Japan, the war waged on. For the thousands of prisoners of the Japanese, some captured as early as 1942, harsh treatment, malnutrition and poor living conditions had taken a devastating toll. Muhammad Ismael Khan, a Muslim Baluchi, captured with his men during […]
The first of the Trust’s projects is the South Asian Heritage Month (SAHM), which first took place in 2020 and runs from the 18th of July to the 17th of August each year.
SAHM seeks to commemorate, mark and celebrate South Asian cultures, histories, and communities.
It seeks to understand the diverse heritage and cultures that continue to link the UK with South Asia.
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