Attending a Sikh Li reunion in London

My father was in the Army in the Sikh Li regiment. As most of you would know, the Indian Army is the offspring of the British Indian Army which is part of our colonial history. So the old British officers who were part of the army in India and are now in UK have formed as association which meets yearly for a reunion lunch. When I heard about the association last year, I joined it and this year finally got a chance to attend the lunch in 2016.

To be honest, in the beginning I was not so sure about how I would feel about it - the British ruled our country for so long, we don't really look at that part of our history with a lot of positivity. And then attending a lunch which in a way celebrates that history would be awkward. But surprisingly, it wasn't.

The lunch this year was held at the Bombay Brasserie in Gloucester Road. There were only 3 officers attending who had actually served in India (apparently there had been a lot more 10 years ago but I did not know about the association till now, else would have started attending these reunions since then). They were all in the 90s and had turned up wearing the regimental tie and coat. Some had come from as far as Leicester, Newcastle and York, who at the age of 90 had taken the train alone to come down to attend the lunch! Their spirit was truly worth appreciating.

The rest were all the wives and children and grandchilden and nephews and nieces of those who had served in India. It was a big group of about 30-40 members who have been meeting yearly for more than 50 years! And it was very overwhelming to see the emotion and spirit everyone had towards the association. I think it was this fact - the soldier's spirit - which is common between the Indian and the British army, because of which I did not feel awkward.

Not surprisingly, there were not many Indians there. There was me and a couple of other ex-Armymen who had now shifted to London and were attending. I also found it very touching to see how warm everyone was towards each other and me. A lot of the people there already knew each other, while I was attending for the first time. But I did not feel so at all, everyone started with telling me their stories of previous reunions as well as times in India they could remember.

It was interesting to hear the stories of the ones who were from pre-independence India. One of them had served in 1 Sikh Li from 1944 to 1948. Another had served in Mahar and told a couple of interesting stories of those times - of how he was stationed in Lahore and they were given the duty to protect the trains which were moving between the countries during Partition and they couldn't. And one talked about the war he had been a part of in Burma. One told the story of how they used to defend themselves against Pathans in Quetta in NWFP when they had to every morning build a wall around them to protect themselves from all the guerilla attacks. And one talked about his visit to Port Elizabeth in South Africa which he had visited in the 1950s and where I was travelling to in a few weeks. And the Bangalore of the 1940s and travelling to Tibet....

There were so many stories shared, its difficult to describe what I felt. It was like I had something in common with all these people, a love and respect for the Army and for a soldier - something very few people have today, because of which I loved that afternoon.


Addendum (Oct 2017)

I attended my second lunch in Oct 2017 and met another old British soldier who had fought with Sikh Li in India in the second world war. His family had brought along some of the artefacts from his time which were very interesting to see -  of his first salary slip of less than a thousand rupees, some Japanese currency notes from when he fought with the Japanese, some pamphlets that Japanese planes had dropped in the North East during the war and so on.

He had been a young boy of 20 from a village in Wales who had been recruited and sent to the war in India. Its very tough to imagine how someone so young would have dealt with a new country, a new continent, a new people, all under the cloud of war. He was talking about having had a difficult time in the the war and having difficulty in getting over it when he came back to England after the war. He also talked about serving in Lahore diring the partition and how painful it was. In a few years, we wouldn't have any people left who would rememeber the difficult times of partition and soon such stories will just become stories...