Supporters

In order to progress the understanding of the role of Indian soldiers in the First World War and its implication on modern times, the Palan Foundation has developed additional projects that are of benefit to its Remembering Indian Soldiers Heritage Lottery supported the project.

 


Elizabeth Weigler

Elizabeth Weigler graduated from Ripon College in 2010, having earned a BA in Anthropology and History. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California at Santa Barbara, in the Department of Cultural Anthropology. Her advisor, Dr. Mary Hancock, oversees her dissertation work regarding Sikh diasporic identity and individual agency in the process of communal memorialization. This process is approached through the acknowledged intersection of historical consciousness and group identity creation and maintenance. Elizabeth’s MA research concentrated on the Milwaukee area Oak Creek and Brookfield Gurdwaras, offering a comparative analysis of their respective vulnerability to racialized violence; it was completed just prior to the Oak Creek attack. She has lived and studied in India twice; first for six months in Pune, Maharashtra and second for four months with the State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship Program for Punjabi. In 2015, she received a Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant for my Ph.D. research in London, England, which began March 2016.


Alan Wakefield

Alan Wakefield was born in Marlborough, Wiltshire in 1968. He graduated from the University of Reading in 1990 with a degree in History and followed this with an MA in War Studies from King’s College London. Having worked as a curator at the National Maritime Museum and RAF Museum, Alan qualified with an MA in Museum Studies from University College London. Employed as a curator in the Photograph Archive of the Imperial War Museum since 2000, Alan is currently Head of Photographs. In 2004, he co-authored Under the Devil’s Eye: Britain’s Forgotten Army at Salonika 1915-1918 for Sutton Publishing (republished by Pen & Sword in 2011) and in 2006 Christmas in the Trenches 1914 – 1918 for the same publisher. In 2009, Alan edited for publication by Haynes the diary of a Royal Field Artillery signaller who served on the Western Front, titled Plough and Scatter: the Diary-journal of a First World War Gunner. He is currently working on a book covering the military campaign in Mesopotamia. Alan currently holds the position of Chairman of the Salonika Campaign Society and is a member of the British Commission for Military History. He is currently advising the National Trust on a documentary covering the experiences of British forces in the Salonika Campaign and working with the CWGC and British Embassy in Athens regarding First World War Centenary commemorations in Greece.


Manish Tiwari

Manish Tiwari strives to bridge the communications gap between products and their multicultural audience through marketing and communications. He founded an agency in 2005 that specialises in brand communications for an increasingly diverse audience. Here & Now 365 is the UK's leading ethnic advertising and marketing agency through its understanding of the country's eclectic audiences and influences. The company has worked with numerous well-known brands is also the largest agency representing Indian media in the UK. More recently, Manish was appointed as the marketing and PR coordinator for the UK Welcomes Modi event, where the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi addressed the Indian Diaspora at the Wembley Stadium. Manish has many accolades to his name including winning the Small Business of the Year Award 2015 by the English Asian Business Awards and presented by Lloyds Banking Group, The Best Social & Charitable Campaign 2014 by Asian Media Awards 2014 presented by ITV, the Asian Lite Campaign of the Year Award for three years consecutively in 2011, 2012 and 2013, the UK Telegu Association award for outstanding contribution to the community and Sanch Foundation award from Baroness Verma in 2013. Here & Now 365 has also been awarded Best Agency of the Year by B4U and the CBS award for Best Campaign Depicting South Asians in 2012.

 


Michael Noble

Michael Noble is the Community Liaison at the Centre for Hidden Histories, one of five World War One Engagement Centres, established by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to engage with and support communities as they seek to commemorate and reflect upon the century-long legacy of the First World War. The center has a particular interest in the themes of migration and displacement, the experience of ‘others’ from countries and regions within Europe, Asia and the Commonwealth, the impact and subsequent legacies of the war on diverse communities within Britain, remembrance, and commemoration, and identity and faith. Michael is responsible for developing the center’s network of community contacts and developing and running the community engagement and training programme. Prior to working for the Centre for Hidden Histories, he spent many years in the adult education and skills sector, working in partnerships and community liaison roles.


Dr. Antonia Moon

Dr Antonia Moon is an archivist and a lead curator at the British Library, working on the India Office Records. Since joining the Library in 1997, she has worked to make the Records accessible to national and international audiences. Recent projects include the digitisation of archives on the history of colonial science and on the Indian contribution to the First World War. Antonia is a Member of Council of the British Records Association and acting Chair of the South Asia Archive and Library Group.


Colin Kerr

Colin Kerr is Director of External Relations for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, based in Maidenhead. He has been a Director of CWGC since 2011 and is responsible for all of CWGC’s work in commemorating the two world wars. In 2015, he established a partnership with USI in Delhi and CWGC is now partnering USI in the “India Remembers” project. In Delhi, he works closely with both the British Council and the British High Commission.


Mira Kaushik OBE

With a background in literature, film, theatre, and television, her professional experience includes TV and audience research for the BBC, translation, broadcasting, working with the Asian Women’s Voluntary Organisation and coordinating the Festival of India at the Commonwealth Institute.

Since her appointment in 1987 as Director of Akademi (formerly known as the Academy of Indian Dance), the organisation has excelled as a strategic arts development body of global importance through its work with audiences reaching millions. Recent key achievements include the BA Honours course at the Contemporary Dance Trust, the production of site-specific shows: Coming of Age and Escapade at the South Bank Centre, Waterscapes at Somerset House, Sapnay, Awaz/Voice, Dreaming Now and Bells at Trafalgar Square and more recently Sufi:Zen, which toured the United Kingdom in 2010. Akademi is in the process of creating The Troth for 2017/18, a production based on the eminent story Usne Kaha Tha written one hundred years ago in India. It is a story of an Indian soldier who came to England to participate in World War I.’ In 2007 she was awarded an Honorary Order of the British Empire for services to dance.


Lakshmi Kaul

 

Lakshmi Kaul is a political activist based in London with a degree in Human Rights and Journalism. A member of the Conservative party, she works with the British Parliamentarian, Bob Blackman (MP of Harrow East). She is the Deputy Chair of the Brentford and Isleworth Conservative Association and the founder of Kashmiri Pandit Cultural Society UK. Being a Kashmiri Pandit herself and a human rights activist, Lakshmi has highlighted the plight of persecuted minorities in the Indian subcontinent, especially from the Jammu & Kashmir region. As a mother of an eight-year-old, Lakshmi encourages young mums to play an active role in local politics as well as entrepreneurship.


Brig. Rajesh Kumar Jha

 

Brig. Rajesh Kumar Jha is currently posted as the Defence Adviser at the High Commission of India, London since October 2014. He was commissioned into The Bombay Sappers in 1985. An

of National Defence Academy, he held the appointment of Academy Cadet Captain and represented the NDA team in football, cricket, and tennis. He was awarded the “Pollock Medal” for his outstanding performance at Indian Military Academy. He is a paratrooper and as part of Parachute Brigade, participated in the first-ever intervention operations by the Indian Army, “OP CACTUS”, during the coup in the Republic of Maldives in 1989. Brig. Jha commanded the Republic and Army Day Parade contingents of the Bombay Sappers and won the coveted “Best Marching Contingent Trophy” for Army Day Parade in 1989. He has a varied operational, staff and instructional experience, Important assignments of the officer include Instructor at Officers Training Academy, Chennai, Force Engineer Adviser of UN Mission in Sierra Leone, GSO-1 (Operations), HQ Northern Army during Op PARAKRAM, Supdt of Trg, BEG & Centre (Kirkee), Col in-charge Administration, in Eastern Ladakh and Brig Administration, Officers Training Academy, Gaya. He has commanded an Engineering Brigade Regiment and after induction into the coveted general cadre, Commanded a Mountain Brigade in Sikkim. His Operational experience also includes the Kargil War in 1999. He has been awarded eight Commendation Cards by Army HQ for his contributions/achievements. Brig. Jha has had varied experience across the entire spectrum of terrain and operations in his 30 years of military service. He was selected for induction into the General Cadre in 2011 and went on to Command a Mountain Brigade in Sikkim in 2012-13, where he created World's Highest Corps Battle School at an altitude of 12,800 feet in a record time of Four and a half months.


Alan Jeffreys

Alan Jeffreys is currently Senior Curator, Social History at the Imperial War Museum. He is also a series editor of Helion’s historical series ‘War and Military Culture in South Asia, 1757-1947’. He is co-editor of ‘The Indian Army, 1939-1947: Experience and Development’ (Routledge, 2012), author of the forthcoming ‘Approach to Battle: Training the Indian Army during the Second World War’ (Helion, 2016) and editing a volume on the Indian Army in the First World War to be published in 2017.


Claire Horan

Claire Horan is the Access and Outreach Manager at the National Army Museum. With a background in community engagement and audience development, she joined the Museum in 2014 to deliver the outreach programme. The British Army has served on every continent and at the height of the British Empire, it was approximated that they policed one-quarter of the earth's surface. The Collection tells the story of the British Army's relationship with the world. Learning is central to the National Army Museum's mission and formal and informal learning audiences are key to maximising engagement with and participation in the museum’s mission. In a modern-day context of religious extremism, transnational conflict, and domestic anxiety, the National Army Museum is offering new ideas in engaging with communities in a complex environment with contemporary conversations. While the Museum has been closed for redevelopment Claire has developed new outreach offers and workshops and reached over new audiences in excess of 230,000 in 2015. In 2016, the museum is looking to connect with new partners and explore how communities and creatives can explore and use their collection to help them engage their own communities with the story of the Indian Army in the First World War.


Diya Gupta

Diya Gupta is a second-year PhD researcher in the Department of English at King's College London, working on discovering the Indian soldier's experience in the Second World War through letters, interviews, memoirs, and other life-writing material. Diya seeks to highlight how Indian soldiers understood and explained their own war experiences, and how such self-representation, in turn, engages with photographs, paintings and other forms of visual and material culture. Diya is also looking at the literary and intellectual responses to the Indian war experience. She is considering a selection of civilian literary works, as well as examining the complex political climate of the 1940s in both England and India, by studying the elite intellectual discourse of the time. Diya's writing on the Indian soldier in the Second World War has been published in The Telegraph (India) and the AHRC-funded literary journal The Still Point. She was an invited speaker on King's College London's radio show 'Footnotes' on the theme of conflict. She has also been a project researcher for the AHRC-funded BBC Monitoring Workshop on the Second World War, organised by the Imperial War Museums, and is working on a series of blog posts on archives and fragments for The Still Point.


Caroline Goffin

Caroline Goffin discovered the history of Indian soldiers fighting on the Western Front via a play written by Dominic Rai in 1993. Due to the impact, this play made she worked with the Mán Melá Theatre Company (1994 to date) being involved with the dramatisation of “Across the Black Waters” by Mulk Raj Anand in 1998 and linked symposium at the Imperial War Museum, London for Remembrance weekend, combining literature and history. Her interest is in the way fiction, and the voices of individuals bring historical facts to life. SaltSarkar.co.uk.


Simon Doherty

Simon Doherty is a publisher and writer who, with Tom Donovan, wrote The Indian Corps on the Western Front: A Handbook and Battlefield Guide, which was published in 2014. He is currently writing a book in the same series about the Indian Army on Gallipoli in 1915 which will be published later this year.


Davinder Dhillon

Davinder Dhillon is a passionate campaigner for keeping the legacy of Indian soldiers who fought for freedom alive. He took over the stewardship of the annual Chattri Memorial Commemoration in Brighton in 2000 after the Royal British Legion could no longer sustain it. Davinder felt strongly that the contributions and sacrifices made by Indian soldiers, particularly in WW1 should never be forgotten and today's generation should be aware of their heritage. Since taking over the annual event, Davinder has single-handedly helped to keep the awareness of the Memorial Service in the public psyche with the number of attendees increasing from a handful to over 400. Further, the Memorial has now become a landmark that is profiled locally, nationally and internationally. It attracts visitors from all over the world. The success of the Memorial Service stems from Davinder getting his family, friends, and volunteers involved in organising it. True to his beliefs, Davinder feels that this serves to not only to underline the contribution made by the sons of undivided India but also honours their rightful place in British and world history. It is this heritage that can help in building cohesive communities in the UK and beyond.


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