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In search of Lascars

Ansar Ahmed Ullah trawls history for the past
IN 2012 I got involved with the Imperial War Museum's research project, Whose Remembrance?-- a study aimed at investigating and opening up understanding of the role of colonial troops and civilians in the two world wars.
Hundreds of thousands of Africans, Indians, Garibbeans and other people from former British colonies contributed to the winning of the two world wars. Their story remains under-researched and relatively little known. There are still many ways in which die 'colonial story' has yet to be fully told.
A central objective of the project was to uncover emerging trends in work that has already been done or is currently underway, and to establish how the IWM and other repositories of relevant information can contribute to a fuller understanding of different communities' past heritage and history.
I was one of three external specialist researchers recruited to assist IWM to address how the number of Black & Minority Ethnic (BME) visitors to the IWM's physical and virtual sites can be increased; how a fuller understanding by minority groups with a past history can best be developed; and to identify gaps in research and how these might be best addressed so as to allow die investigation and presentation of a more comprehensive and coherent story.
I chose South Asian seamen, and, to be more specific, seamen of Bengali origin who were from present-day Bangladesh, the eastern half of Bengal in the then British India.
This was a natural progression from my last research project, Bengalis in London's East End that had looked at the first Bengalis who had settled in the East End of London. I also knew that one of my grandfather's cousins had been a seaman who had come to England in 1936.
From our research at the Swadhinata Trust we knew that the Bengali seamen formed the first sizeable South Asian community in Britain. They settled in the Midlands, Gardiff and in London's East End close to the Docks. These early Bengali seamen were commonly referred to as' lascars'. The word was once used to describe any sailor from the I ndian subcontinent or any other part of Asia, but came particularly to refer to people from West Bengal and modern-day Bangladesh. It comes from the Persian Lashkar, meaning 'military camp', and 'al-askar', the Omani word for a guard or soldier.
During the First World War more lascars were needed to take the place of British sailors who had been recruited into the Royal British Navy. As a result the numbers of Asian lascars grew further. By the end of the First World War Indian seafarers made up 20 per cent of the British maritime labour force. The Indian Army was likewise a major contributor of men to the First World War effort. Nearly a million Indians sensed in that conflict. The Indian Army grew even larger during the Second World War - amounting to two and half a million men.
Glose to Tower Bridge, in Trinity Square Gardens, near Tower Hill tube station, is Tower Hill Memorial, a monument that commemorates British Merchant Seamen who lost their lives in the First and Second World Wars.
Many of the names on the monument indicate seamen of Bengali origin with names such as Miah, Latif, Ali, Choudhury, Ullah or Uddin. However, these named individuals only represent the privileged few Bengalis employed as British crew members, and exclude some 4,000-5000 lascars who died at sea and whose names were never known.
For the First World War the total loss of seamen of all backgrounds, recorded at Tower Hill Memorial, is 17,000. Indian sources, however, give the figure of 3,427 lascars dead and 1,200 taken prisoner. For the Second World War, Indian sources also give an estimate of 6,600 Indian seamen dead, 1,022 wounded and 1,217 taken prisoner.
While researching I was also contacted by a gentleman from Portsmouth whose grandfather had come to Britain as a seaman. His grandfather worked as a chef, was a founder member of the Muslim funeral service which is still operating from the East London Mosque and had served in London during the war. The gentleman had given me information about his grandfather's soldier service book which gave his unit as the Indian Pioneer Corps. While I was aware IWM didn't hold personal records I was hoping to find information about his grandfather's unit, the Indian Pioneer Corps. On contacting IWM's Collections I was informed that it was difficult to trace any information about the Indian Pioneer Corps as it was not a front 1 ine unit but there was good regimental history in their collection.
Armed with that information, I visited IWM's research room. I found an excellent brochure on the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps and an excellent book by a Brigadier. The Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps was formed in 1939 to assist with the clearing of obstacles, the smoothing of roads and to execute repairs. Furthermore, I found papers by a colonel who had commanded the Pioneer Corps.
80 Company, the unit that my contact's grandfather had served in, was active during the Blitz in London, and was established to attract Indian residents in Britain in early 1940. Although it was anticipated that the London
docks would be a fruitful area for recruitment, the numbers were never as great as hoped for. The highest number of other Indian ranks at its peak in June 1941 was only 172.
The Imperial War Museum (IWM) has extensive collections, many of them described on its own website. There are books and publications, including printed ephemera, booklets, handbooks, maps, newspapers and journals, arts, documents & sound, exhibits, film & photographs.
The theme of colonial troops is well documented, although the collections tend to be slanted towards the experiences those who commanded units experiences of the men and women from the colonies who joined up or who contributed to the war effort.
Whose Remembrance? The team recommended I take a look at some of the collections held at Duxford Airfield, the former Battle of Britain airfield, where there are large stores of archives. In particular it was recommended that I take a look at the BBG Monitoring Report transcripts of what came over the radio during the Second World War. Rather interestingly there are transcripts from so called 'Freedom stations', which were broadcasting during the Second World War against the British government's line - a useful source for students of India's independence movement.
I spent a fair amount of time browsing IWM's online catalogue. Typing in the word Bangladesh produced 57
items - mostly books but also some photographs, for example of an old Navy ship that had been sold to the Bangladesh Navy; the Bangladesh Army training abroad and with the LIN; and films - mainly of Chittagong. I wasn't expecting to find a large collection as Bangladesh as an independent state didn't exist during both First and Second World Wars. Interestingly, I came across a film showing the 81st West African Division fighting the Japanese from Mowdok, India (Bangladesh). 1 wasn't aware of African troops fighting in Bangladesh.
I then came across a Bengali in London in 1940. The photograph featured a Miah Jorif (I suspect they got his name the wrong way round, it would normally be Jorif Miah), a waiter at the Istanbul restaurant in Soho, at work at the salad table, which, according to the original caption, is "the pride and joy" of his heart. The caption stated that Miah was originally from Bengal and had been in Britain since 1940.
Another photograph titled, 'Muslim Community: Everyday Life in Butetown, Cardiff in 1943' showed visitors to Butetown for the opening of the new Mosque enjoying a meal at The Cairo' cafe. In the photograph are 'Abdul Aziz, from Calcutta, who runs a cafe in South Shields, Mrs Aziz and their daughter Joynob, Mrs Annie Nian, with her son Kenneth and Azin I Illa, a seaman from Bengal'. This was my first discovery of a direct reference to a Bengali seaman.
In my search I came across an Indian seaman (though perhaps not a Bengali), a Xavier Fernandez from Bombay who was injured when the Russian convoy in which he was sailing was attacked. He was in hospital, undergoing a process of rehabilitation in 1942. Another photograph showed a seaman, who seemed a Bengali, by the name of Mohamed Maberzak (I am assuming
his last name is spelt incorrectly and perhaps should be Mubarak) undergoing treatment at the same hospital.
I knew from my previous research that most Bengali seamen worked in the engine room as 'donkeywallahs' (named after the engines 'donkey engines') and that those who greased and oiled machinery' were known as 'telwallahs'. Others worked supplying the furnace with coal and disposing of the ashes. The working conditions were harsh and hot, and many seamen died of heat stroke and exhaustion. You can imagine my delight at discovering a photo of three stokers of the Royal Indian Navy on the mess deck of the sloop HMIS SUTLEJ in 1944.
We also knew from research that many Bengali seamen worked as cooks. I came across a photograph of the Royal Indian Navy at Stamshaw, Portsmouth in 1942 on training, showing cooks with some of their specially prepared dishes on their way to the mess.
Duxford has wealth of archival documents including the proceedings of Nuremberg and Tokyo war crime trials - of interest to me as Bangladesh itself is at present proceeding with war crimes trial of Bangladesh War of 1971. Within the Tokyo trial papers I came across a Bengali Justice Radhabinod Pal who was representing India. I also came across a broadcast where Mohammed /Mi Jinnah, was asserting for Pakistani state as a land for India's Muslims.
South Asian historians who are studying India's independence and the partition would find Duxford
collection hugely useful as a source of evidence to cross check or to use it as a supplementary source.
In my short period of research I found only a handful of direct references to Bengali seamen or lascars but that is not to say there aren't other references in the vast collections at the IWM. Research is very' laborious and time consuming task. One would need to probe further into the collections fora larger find.
Other stories of Bengali seamen travelling and settling in America and Australia are gradually emerging. Earlier this year a new book titled 'Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America' by Vivek Bald told stories of Bengali seamen arriving in the States.
According to Vivek Bald, the first small groups of South Asians to arrive from India, consisted of peddlers who came to American shores in the 1890s. The second wave came in the 1920s and 1930s. They were seamen, some merchant marines. Most were Muslim men from what was then the Indian province of Bengal.
The Bengalis got off ships with little to their name. They were mostly illiterate and worked as cooks, dishwashers, merchants, subway labourers. In New York, they gradually formed a small community of sorts in Spanish Harlem. Many married Latino and African-American women as there were no Bengali women around and settled in established neighbourhoods of colour, Harlem, West Baltimore and in New Orleans.
One such seaman was Habib Ullah who came from Noakhali and settled in Harlem. Habib Ullah had left East Bengal's rural Noakhali district at the young age of 14, travelled to Calcutta and found a job on an outgoing ship. Bald's book documents Ullah's arrival in Boston, where he either jumped ship or fell ill. He ended up in New York, married a Puerto Rican woman and moved to East Harlem.
Habib Ullah's son Ullah Jr. remembers his father worked as a cook. He would leave the house at the crack of dawn for the subway' ride. He would come home tired, take a nap and then cook dinner, rice and curry. Later he and Ibrahim Chowdry, another Bengali migrant, opened their own restaurant, The Bengal Garden. Occasionally they'd head down to the Indian seamen's club in the Lower East Side and after 1947, to the Pakistan League of America, an organisation Chowdry' and Ullah cofounded. Ullah Jr. called his father's friends "Chacha," the Bengali Muslim word for uncle. There are plans to film a documentary based on the findings of th is book.
Sometimes one small artefact can tell an extraordinary story. Samia Khatun, an Australian academic of Bengali origin, came across a book found outside an abandoned mosque in 1960s by a group of local historians in the inland desert town of Broken Hill. They' labelled it as a Quran. The book remains in the tiny mosque in Broken Hill and has been repeatedly' referred to as a Quran in Australian historiography.
Samia Khatun took a look at the book in 2009, and revealed that it wasn't a Quran but a Bengali book consisting of 500 pages of puthi poetry performed in rural Bengal and printed in the port city of Calcutta in 1896.
Tracing how this book travelled across the Indian Ocean and over 500 kilometres of Australian desert would reveal a fascinating interconnected geography of camels, ships and trains.
With the Centenary of First World War 2014 - 2018 anniversary celebrations for Britain and the world looming round the corner I am sure there will be a great deal more to discover of the South Asians experiences who served during that war. The discovery and documenting lascars contribution during Britain's war