A new graphic novel from Canmore-based Renegade Arts Entertainment sets out to explore the history British Indian Army and Sikhs in the First World War and their relationship with the Canadian Forces fighting on the front lines together.
The novel not only looks at those connections, but also reflects upon and explores Canada’s and the Commonwealth’s attitudes towards Sikhs since the beginning of the 20th century.
In July 1914, the Canadian government used a warship, the HMCS Rainbow, to help force a ship carrying mostly Sikhs away from Vancouver’s harbour.
The SS Komagata Maru had brought 376 would-be immigrants to Canada from the Punjab region of India, but once they had reached Vancouver, all but 24 were refused entry because of the government’s exclusion laws.
Former Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier rose in the House of Commons to state that Canadians wanted a “white country” and that citizens of India, despite being members of the British Commonwealth, did not deserve to enter Canada.
“… certain of our fellow subjects who are not of the white race want to come to Canada and be admitted to all the rights of Canadian citizenship,” Laurier is quoted as stating. “These men have been taught by a certain school of politics that they are equals of British subjects; unfortunately, they are brought face-to-face with hard facts when it’s too late.”
Yet, hard facts show that shortly after the Canadian government used its racist policies to force the SS Komagata Maru and its passengers to leave Canada, India was the first of Britain’s Dominions to reach the battlefields of France and Belgium at the start of the First World War.
The Indian Expeditionary Force A (IEF-A) arrived at the Western Front in late September 1914, a full six months ahead of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Canada’s army, which only had about 3,000 professional soldiers at the start of the war, did not reach France until April 1915.
With two Punjabi divisions – largely comprised of Sikhs – in the lead, IEF-A was there in time to stop the German Imperial Army from overrunning the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Without the Sikhs, the all-important port of Calais would have fallen during the First Battle of Ypres, which ended Nov. 22, 1914, and the BEF would have been cut off from Britain. If British troops had been cutoff from the port, the war would have likely ended then in Germany’s favour.
The hard facts also show that the IEF-A came to Canada’s aid during the Second Battle of Ypres and that Indian and Canadian regiments were integrated into each other’s armies throughout the war.
In April 1915, a few months after the Canadians stepped onto French soil, the CEF was sent to Belgium to bolster defenses near the city of Ypres. It was there that the CEF, in its first battle of the war, repelled a German attack that followed the first use of poisonous gas.
With the CEF in bad shape and on the verge of collapse after four days of brutal fighting, the Lahore Division, comprised of men from the Punjab, attacked, allowing the Canadians to withdraw.
The IEF also fought alongside the Canadians at Festubert in French Flanders in May 1915. When the infantry regiments of the IEF-A were withdrawn from the Western Front at the end of 1915 and sent to Iraq, its artillery and cavalry remained behind.
The Canadian Cavalry Brigade was later transferred to Second Indian Cavalry Division, while the Indian artillery was assigned to the third and fourth Canadian divisions and saw fighting with the Canadians at Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele.
That’s not something that typically makes it into mainstream history, however, especially with the likes of Vimy or Passchendaele that are usually thought of as solely “Canadian” victories.
But a new book – a graphic novel, really – from Canmore-based Renegade Arts Entertainment explores the history of the IEF, particularly its Sikh soldiers, and how two of Britain’s dominions came to share a close bond during the First World War that would carry forward to the Second World War.
Duty, Honour & Izzat: From Golden fields to crimson – Punjab’s brothers in arms in Flanders, written by Surrey, B.C. curator and writer Steven Purewal, and illustrated by British artist Christopher Rawlins, is largely built around why Sikhs would rise to defend the British Commonwealth and Canada despite racism and inequality in the world beyond the battlefield.
Izzat translates into reputation or honour.
“For the professional soldiers of the Punjab, the best rebuke to the racists slandering their brethren in Canada as undesirable elements was to perform their duties and shoulder their responsibilities, rather than abandoning them at the precise time they could influences peoples’ opinions for better,” Purewal writes.
Purewal investigates this through text, illustrations, memorabilia and memory, making it richly illustrated and multi-dimensional. Rather than tell a single linear story, he and Rawlins tell numerous smaller stories that help to explain why Indians and Punjabis specifically would willingly defend Great Britain and its dominions.
One piece, for example, is a comic within the graphic novel based on a true story from the Great War of a Sikh soldier, Harnam Singh, who saved his friend, a British officer, Capt. George Henderson. Singh died during the war, but his actions spurred a friendship between his family and Henderson’s family that continues today.
The comic, however, written by Purewal and illustrated by Claude St. Aubin and Ruth Redmond, takes place both in modern day and in 1943 during the Battle of Monte Cassino, Italy.
It too is a story of friendship, but it also confronts racism and respect in Canadian society by looking at the Royal Canadian Legion’s former policy of not allowing Sikh veterans to enter a Legion if they refused to remove their turban.
Duty, Honour & Izzat works to enlighten readers and through its detailed look at the role of the British Indian Army and Sikhs in the First World War, and it does much to dispel stereotypes by carefully showing the link between Sikh and Canadian veterans.
It is also a powerful reminder, or perhaps lesson, that Sikh soldiers were proud members of the British Empire, just like their comrades from Canada and that the First World War was a multicultural war as were Canadian victories at Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele and Cambrai.
“Over the years, … WW1 texts have not depicted the war experience of the Western Front as being multicultural. While it’s often said that there’s nothing good about war, there is good to be found in why they were fought and in the men that fought them. And in that respect, little has been said of why men of the Indus would take up the quarrel of those that fell on distant shores,” writes Purewal.
Duty, Honour & Izzat: From golden fields to crimson – Punjab’s brothers in arms, published by Renegade Arts Entertainment, is available for $29.99
