More than 1.4 million soldiers from the British Indian Army served across global battlefields during the First World War, forming one of the largest all-volunteer forces in history.
Now, 9,909 Indian servicemen who were missing from official war records have been formally recognised in the UK.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission said soldiers from pre-Partition India were omitted due to historical oversight. Their names have been restored through the five-year Punjab Registers Project, led in partnership with the UK Punjab Heritage Association and the University of Greenwich.
The soldiers from the Indian Army served during the First World War, including nearly half a million from Punjab representing Sikh, Muslim, Hindu and Christian communities. Despite their contribution, many were overlooked in official records.
The five-year Punjab Registers Project uncovered missing names by digitising and analysing a rare collection of around 320,000 recruitment records preserved at the Lahore Museum, helping restore the identities of thousands of forgotten soldiers.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission described the update as its largest addition to casualty records since the Second World War. Historians found that most of the previously unrecognised Indian soldiers died of injuries away from the battlefield and were denied official war graves status under colonial-era policies, a decision that has now been reversed.
The missing names were confirmed through a major verification exercise involving researchers, volunteers and Indian Army specialists, who reviewed thousands of historical records using computer-assisted analysis. The process identified 9,909 previously unrecorded casualties.
The Punjab Registers Project is part of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's Non-Commemoration Programme, launched in 2021 to address historical inequalities. The initiative has so far identified more than 20,000 additional names for official commemoration.
Around 25% of the newly recognised soldiers were Sikh, 25% Hindu and 40% Muslim. The CWGC said the project is part of a wider effort to ensure the history of the First World War reflects the contributions of soldiers from across the former British Empire.
‘Giving families their history back’
British historian, author and chair of the UK Punjab Heritage Association, Amandeep Madra OBE said the project restores a missing chapter of the shared history between Britain and Punjab by recognising soldiers whose sacrifices had been excluded from official records for more than a century. He said, "These men were never commemorated, not because they didn't serve, but because a decision made a century ago excluded their sacrifice from the record. Putting that right means giving families around the world their history back, and properly and equally commemorating the men who died."
Madra added, "This has only been possible because the Lahore Museum kept these fragile records safe for a hundred years, because the University of Greenwich and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission took that archive seriously, and because volunteers gave their time to recover, name by name, this previously lost history."
A dentist in Leicester, Dr Inder Singh Palahey spent years searching for details about his great-grandfather, Kesar Singh, who went to war and never returned. The project finally confirmed his service and sacrifice. He said, "From just hearsay to now discovering the facts about my great-grandfather's ultimate military sacrifice has been incredibly poignant." He added that having Kesar Singh officially commemorated "ensures the whole family's sacrifice is recognised, which simply means everything to us."
The first Sikh to represent England in rugby, Manjinder Nagra discovered through the project that her maternal great-grandfather, Jagat Singh, had never been properly commemorated. She said, "Learning that my maternal great-grandfather will now be officially recognised on the CWGC casualty database was incredibly moving and overwhelming." Nagra added: "After all these years, he is finally being given the honour, dignity and remembrance he always deserved."
A PhD student at the University of Greenwich, Jasmin Basra, who worked on the research project, said she felt proud to contribute to preserving Punjabi history. During the project, she unexpectedly discovered the names of her own great-great-grandfather and his brother, who had served in the British Indian Army during the First World War.
She said: "That connection was emotional." Basra added: "As a second-generation British Punjabi, this is a tangible link to both my Punjabi heritage and British history."
Director General of the CWGC, Claire Horton CBE described the Punjab Registers Project as a landmark step in recognising soldiers whose sacrifices had gone unrecorded for more than a century.
She said: "The Punjab Registers Project is a landmark moment in that mission. The recovery of every one of these 9,909 names helps restore missing chapters in family and world histories." She added that commemoration is "about personal identity, family legacy and recognising the human cost of war."
Gavin Rand, Professor of History at the University of Greenwich, said the project corrects a historical injustice while helping families and communities reconnect with their shared history and heritage.
