Having enlisted in the British Indian Army during the peak of the Second World War, my grandfather went home and broke the news to his appalled father. It had been just one year since he'd got married. After the failure of all the blandishments, inducements and entreaties to persuade my grandfather to stay home like a good boy rather than go off to war, his dad reluctantly bid him adieu, knowing perhaps, that there was no chaining his free spirit.
Armed with a kit with the standard-issue khaki uniform, hat and boots, my grandfather got ready for life in the army. The first two months in the army were spent loading and unloading supplies and digging trenches, in addition to the small arms training that was mandatory for all recruits. The new recruits prepared for the rigours ahead by digging, lifting, hauling and shooting; all on a monthly salary of Rs 10 per month - a sum that was not considered all that bad, back in those days.
My grandfather was recruited as a Sepoy Storekeeper. He spent two months training how to shoot weapons like sten guns (widely used in the Second World War), pistols and rifles, after which the third month was dedicated to learning the trade of the storekeeper, the position he'd been chosen to fill.
That wasn't all, either. My grandfather and his best friend Krishna Nayar were both Kerala born-and-bred, and had been brought up on rice meals all their lives. In the army though, a nasty shock to their culinary sensibilities awaited them, in the form of the unfamiliar north Indian fare of yellow lentils and unleavened flatbreads (dal and rotis) which the army had decided would serve as native 'Indian' fare for all Indian army personnel.
But you just can’t keep a good man down. The Army began to pick out recruits for promotion based on an examination. Out of the 600 people who took the examination, my grandfather stood first. He had his reward in a triple promotion. He skipped from the rank of Sepoy Storekeeper straight to the rank of Havildar Storekeeper, a prestigious position which made his salary jump to the then princely sum of Rs 70 per month. Three months into his first job, he sent his entire salary to his overjoyed and proud father.
That was how he got his first promotion.
After his promotion, though, he was posted at Allahabad Arsenal, where he got his first taste of discrimination. The facility had British officers, sergeants and men, working along with the Indians. White men of the same rank, whose uniform bore the same three stripes as his, were paid seven times as much as my grandfather. The British ruled the country at the time, and the British officials would bark insults at the Indians with impunity, and the Indians had no choice but to tolerate the slights that came their way. "Bloody Indians!" they'd say as they passed (this must've really stung, because my grandfather remembered it and repeated it with great bitterness, though 75 years had passed). There was a separate mess for British personnel and a separate mess for the Indian personnel, all nicely segregated, apartheid-style.
Getting your own back was out of the question, of course, but a measure of vindication was to come later. The post-independence Indian Army had many British officers who had opted to serve out their tenure in India rather than to retire prematurely. As an MT (Mechanical Transport) instructor, my grandfather, still at the rank of Havildar, had the privilege of teaching a class full of lieutenant colonels and colonels. The Commandant himself used to sit right behind him during the class.
"But you're an Indian! How are you so good at this?" came the surprised exclamation, after his very first class. Hardly a politically-correct remark, but to an Indian in a newly-liberated slave nation, such praise was a triumph, a victory of personal merit over colonial prejudice; hard-won and infinitely precious.
Vous pourriez lire la version française de ce blogue à : http://waranenguerre.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-prendre-du-galon.html
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