'India Must Come To Terms With Its Military History'

Kant has an M.Phil degree from Oxford and and a Bachelor's degree from Singapore Management University. Quite appropriately, the title of her profusely illustrated book (Lustre Press/Roli Books) is prefaced with: "If I die here, who will remember me?" and has a forward by noted author Amitav Ghosh.

Thus, what did the Great War mean for Indian soldiers who had to fight a battle they were unprepared for, in lands they had never seen, against an enemy they didn't know and hitherto unheard of forms of warfare? How did the war impact the political climate in India?

Using first-hand accounts such as letters home, documents from various archives and rare photographs, Kant reconstructs the story of a war which was as much India's as it was England's.

The book documents, for the first time, India's contribution to the First World War, with details of the different theatres in which Indian soldiers took part. Additionally, Kant also examines the unsettling encounters the Indian soldiers had with foreign, especially European, culture and how it impacted the way they viewed life and living back home.

As for the conclusions to be drawn from the Indian effort, Kant writes: "In addition to its impact on the national politics of India, at a more micro level, the war had a bearing on the quotidian lives of the millions of soldiers who had experienced it first hand and were, in fact, significant contributors to its outcome. It is almost impossible to document or distil into one clear, coherent narrative the precise manner in which the war impacted its Indian participants. What the soldiers and other non-combatants made of the war and how they were influenced by it was determined by very individual factors such as theatre of battle, religion, class, caste and regional identity to name just a few."