The circle has closed. I feel much more complete.
For more than a century, nearly 10,000 soldiers from Punjab who served and died in the First World War existed only in crumbling handwritten registers, unacknowledged by any official body and absent from the monuments that shaped how the world remembers that conflict. Through years of painstaking volunteer research, their names have now been recovered and will be formally added to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database — the largest update to its casualty records in over 80 years. The recognition is both a correction of a bureaucratic injustice and a quiet reckoning with the Euro-centric lens through which the Great War has long been told.
- Nearly 10,000 Punjabi soldiers died in WW1 but were denied official war graves status for over a century due to a British Indian Government ruling that excluded those who perished away from the front lines.
- Their names survived only in leather-bound registers held at the Lahore Museum — fragile volumes that slipped from official memory when India was partitioned in 1947 and records were scattered across new borders.
- UK volunteers, many connected to the Punjab Heritage Association, spent years digitising and cross-referencing the handwritten entries, with one researcher discovering her own ancestors among the names midway through the work.
- The Commonwealth War Graves Commission has now overturned the century-old ruling, formally recognising all 9,909 men and framing the update as part of a wider effort to correct the marginalisation of non-European contributions to the war.
- For descendants like a Leicester dentist who had searched for years for proof of his great-grandfather's sacrifice, the moment of recognition carried a weight no bureaucratic announcement could fully contain — 'The circle has closed.'
In the Lahore Museum, a set of leather-bound registers had sat on a shelf for decades, filled with careful handwriting that recorded the names of soldiers who went to war and never returned. For over a century, those names belonged to no official memory. Now, nearly 10,000 of them are being added to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database — the largest update to its casualty records in more than 80 years.
The soldiers were from Punjab, the region that once spanned what is now India and Pakistan. Around 320,000 Punjabi servicemen served in the British Indian Army during the First World War. After the war, British officials recorded their fates in handwritten volumes, each embossed with a village name. But when India was partitioned in 1947, those records scattered across new borders, and the names inside them gradually vanished from official recognition.
It took years of volunteer work, much of it driven by members of the Punjab Heritage Association, to bring those names back. Researchers digitised the registers and cross-referenced entries by hand. Among them was Jasmin Basra, a PhD student at the University of Greenwich and a second-generation British Punjabi, who midway through the project discovered the names of her own great-great-grandfather and his brother in the very records she was helping to restore.
Most of the 9,909 men had died not on the battlefield but from injuries sustained away from the front lines. A ruling by the British Indian Government at the time had denied them war graves status — a decision that stood for over a century before being overturned. The soldiers came from across Punjab's religious communities: roughly a quarter Sikh, a quarter Hindu, and around 40 percent Muslim, their descendants now spread across Britain, India, and Pakistan.
For families, the recognition means something deeper than a database entry. Sunney Palahey, a dentist from Leicester, had spent years searching for any official trace of his great-grandfather Kesar Singh, who had gone to war and never come home. When researchers found the name in the Punjab registers, Palahey described a feeling of completion that no amount of family storytelling had been able to provide. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission frames the update as part of a broader correction — an acknowledgement that more than 1.4 million people from the Indian subcontinent served in that war, and that their contribution has for too long been absent from how it is remembered.
In a leather-bound register sitting on a shelf at the Lahore Museum in Pakistan, someone once wrote down a name in careful handwriting. That name belonged to a soldier who had gone to war and never returned. For more than a century, it stayed there—recorded but forgotten, acknowledged by no official body, honoured by no monument. Now, nearly 10,000 such names are being pulled from those cracked, fragile volumes and added to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database, marking the largest update to casualty records in more than 80 years.
The soldiers were from Punjab, the state that once stretched across what is now India and Pakistan. Around 320,000 servicemen from Punjab served in the British Indian Army during World War One. In the years after the war ended, British officials moved methodically through every town and village, recording the names and fates of those who had fallen. They filled volumes with handwritten entries, each book embossed with a village name. But when India was partitioned in 1947, those records became scattered across borders, and the names inside them—9,909 of them—gradually disappeared from official memory.
It took UK volunteers, many of them connected to the Punjab Heritage Association, years of painstaking work to bring those names back into the light. They digitised the registers, analysed the handwriting, cross-referenced the entries. Jasmin Basra, a PhD student at the University of Greenwich, was among those who spent countless hours on this work. She is Punjabi herself, a second-generation British Punjabi, and she felt the weight of what she was doing. Midway through the project, she discovered something that made the work suddenly personal: the names of her own great-great-grandfather and his brother, both of whom had served in that same army, in that same war.
Most of the 9,909 men being formally recognised now were casualties who died not on the battlefield but from injuries sustained away from the front lines. At the time, the British Indian Government made a ruling that denied them war graves status. They were soldiers, but officially they were not war dead. That decision stood for over a century. Now it has been overturned. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which has built its work on the volunteers' research, has decided that these men deserve to be counted, to be named, to be remembered.
For descendants, the recognition carries weight that extends far beyond bureaucracy. Sunney Palahey is a dentist from Leicester who had spent years searching for information about his great-grandfather, Kesar Singh. He knew the man had gone to war. He knew he had never come back. But there was no official record, no place where his sacrifice was acknowledged. When researchers contacted Palahey to tell him that Kesar Singh's name had been found in the Punjab registers and would now be added to the CWGC database, something shifted. "The circle has closed," Palahey said. "I feel much more complete." For him, the recognition meant that his great-grandfather's sacrifice was no longer invisible, no longer a family story told in the absence of proof. It was now part of the official record of the war.
The 9,909 names represent a cross-section of Punjab's religious communities. Around 25 percent were Sikhs, another 25 percent Hindus, and roughly 40 percent were Muslim. They came from villages across the region, from families whose descendants now live in Britain, in Pakistan, in India, scattered across the world. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission says this update is not simply about preserving names. It is part of a broader effort to correct the way World War One has been remembered—to move away from a Euro-centric view of the conflict and acknowledge the full global reality of what happened. More than 1.4 million people from the Indian subcontinent served in the British Indian Army during the war. For too long, their contribution has been marginalised in how that war is commemorated. Now, at least for these nearly 10,000 men from Punjab, that is beginning to change.
Notable Quotes
It's been recognised by an authority, which it never was before. He is now an entry in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. All the sacrifices seem to have been worth it.— Sunney Palahey, descendant of Kesar Singh, a Punjabi soldier who died in WW1
As a second-generation British Punjabi, there is almost a disconnect from Punjab as well as not being fully connected to British history, but I think this is a tangible link to all of it.— Jasmin Basra, PhD student and volunteer researcher who discovered her own relatives' names in the registers
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why did these names disappear in the first place? They were recorded—someone wrote them down.
They were recorded, yes, but in a way that didn't connect to the official machinery of commemoration. The registers were local, hand-written, kept in Punjab. When the partition happened in 1947, those records ended up in Pakistan. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission—the body that decides who gets officially remembered—had already made its rulings. Most of these men died from injuries away from the battlefield, and the British Indian Government at the time said that didn't count as war death. So they fell through the cracks.
But someone must have known. The families knew.
The families absolutely knew. But without official recognition, there was no monument, no entry in the global record, no way for that knowledge to be validated by an authority. It was a family story, a memory, but not history as far as the institutions were concerned. That's what makes Sunney Palahey's reaction so powerful—he'd been searching for years, and when he finally got confirmation that his great-grandfather was real, that he mattered, it completed something.
What changed? Why now?
UK volunteers, many of them Punjabi themselves, decided to go back to those registers at the Lahore Museum and actually read them. They digitised them, analysed them, made them searchable. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission saw the work and recognised it was legitimate. They decided to overturn the old ruling. It's not that new evidence emerged—it's that someone finally took the time to look at what was already there.
Does this change how we understand World War One?
It should. We talk about WW1 as if it was a European war with some colonial soldiers attached. But 1.4 million people from the Indian subcontinent served. That's not a footnote. When you add nearly 10,000 names to the official record, you're saying: this war was bigger, more global, more complicated than we've been remembering it. You're saying these men matter.