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Indian Voices of the Great War: Soldiers' Letters, 1914-1918. Selected and introduced by David Omissi. London: Macmillan, 1999. ISBN 0-333-- 75145-0. Pp. xxviii, 382. L15.99 (pb).
Why do men fight? More specifically, why did the Indian sepoys and the sowars fight for the British? Most of the historians of the Indian Army follow the colonial British officers' view that special qualities of the sahibs enabled them to motivate the Indian armed personnel. Philip Mason, in A Matter of Honour: An Account of the Indian Army, Its Officers and Men (1988 [1974]), and Stephen Cohen, in The Indian Army: Its Contribution to the Development of a Nation (1991 [1971]), harp on the father-son relationship between the sahibs and the sepoys.
However, there is a caveat. In order to get a balanced picture, we need...