‘No Pakis at Dunkirk’: Remembering and Forgetting Force K6 in Europe 1939-1945

Abstract

The 2.5 million men and women of the Indian Army who served during the Second World War are not widely known about, either in Europe or in South Asia, the anguish of Partition overlaying their memory in India and Pakistan, and the new reality of post-war Austerity Britain taking precedence over remembering colonial contributions. Among those 2.5 million, the 4,227 men of Force K6 were unique in that they spent most of their war in Britain – the heart of Empire – 630 of them having been present at Dunkirk, a British lieu de mémoire on the French coast. This thesis aims to recover their little-known story and analyse how and why they have been forgotten. The study aims to show that they are not remembered due to what Aleida Assmann has called ‘selective forgetting’ – what stays in the collective memory of a nation is what fits within their framework of culture and history. These soldiers fitted neither in the UK nor Pakistan, and so they have slipped away from official and popular memory, despite the efforts of family members and some local historians. Through several different frames of memory the story of these men and their odyssey will be presented and analysed. As this is social and cultural history, the men themselves are in the foreground, with case studies that show individual soldiers and their families, and reflect diverse aspects of their experience. Their multiple identities then and now will be analysed, and the transnational encounter which is at the core of their story will be presented, showing that the normal rules of ‘race relations’ in Britain were suspended for the duration of the war. With an eye on the dangers of instrumentalising or abusing their memory, the thesis will show how they are currently remembered, and that they could be better remembered.