A new research has unveiled that only 2% of the British people know the fact that approximately 400,000 Muslim soldiers from pre-partion India fought actively for the British army during WWI.
The research, conducted by ICM, has also shown that only 22% somewhat heard about this, but ignorant of the scale of the Indian Muslim soldiers’ participation in the first great war.
Britian and some of it’s former colonies, especially which actively took part in World War I, observed the Remembrance Day on Sunday, marking the date and time when armies stopped fighting World War I. on November 11th at 11am in 1918 (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month). Remembrance Sunday services are being held across the UK to pay respects to the country’s war dead, with the Queen and political leaders laying wreaths at the Cenotaph in London on Sunday.
However, another research by the Survation British Future projected some solace regarding the new generation of Britons. The poll finds that nearly three-quarters (72%) of people think “Britain’s tradition of Remembrance Day brings people together of all faiths and ethnicities.” Just 13% say it can “divide and cause friction between people of different faiths and ethnicities.”
Nearly two-thirds (63%) of ethnic minorities in Britain, including a majority of British Muslims, agree that remembrance brings people from different communities together.
More than half of people from ethnic minorities in Britain say they will wear a poppy.
At least 400,000 Muslim soldiers fought for Britain in 1914-18 as part of the 1.5m-strong army from pre-partition India. A new initiative from British Future launched in October to help promote integration and community cohesion by raising awareness of this shared history, called An unknown and untold story – the Muslim contribution to the First World War.
On the wall of Royal Military Academy Sandhurst’s India Room hangs a portrait of Khudadad Khan, the first Muslim soldier to be awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry. On October 31, 1914, Khan, a machine-gunner fighting on the Western Front, held off the enemy long enough for reinforcements to arrive, despite being injured and under heavy fire.
