3 Review(s)

In the last decade, India’s monumental yet long-overlooked contributions to the Allied victories in World Wars I and II have begun garnering the commemorative and discursive attention that they deserve. With the unearthing of fresh shreds of evidence of the Indian soldier’s stunning valour and course-altering feats on unfamiliar, distant, and gruelling battlefields — especially those of war-ravaged Europe — the mainstream comprehension of how Indians impacted the World Wars, and how the two watershed conflicts in turn impinged on India’s future, has only become more layered. In 2023, several of these intricacies, ranging from how European schoolchildren now view the subject to how the wars shaped independent India’s diplomatic priorities, were discussed at an international conference on the titular theme organized by the United Service Institution of India (USI) and the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), two of India’s oldest think-tanks. This volume is an edited compilation of the essays and papers presented by seasoned experts and practitioners at that event.