Summary: During World War I, over 600,000 troops from South Asia were part of the British army's invasion of Ottoman Iraq. Thousands were taken prisoner in this failed campaign and became part of a larger story that is the tragedy of the First World War, witnessing and sharing the plight of deported Armenians as they marched across Anatolia. In this podcast, Vedica Kant talks about the experience of Indian POWs in the Ottoman Empire as well as that of Ottoman soldiers captured by the British army and brought to India and Burma, with additional commentary by Robert Upton regarding military recruitment in British India and the complex relationship between imperialism, war, and nationalism for Indian intellectuals of the period.
