New Delhi: More than a century after the First World War ended, nearly 10,000 soldiers from undivided Punjab who had remained absent from official war records have finally been recognised as war casualties, marking one of the largest revisions to historical military records in recent decades.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) has announced that 9,909 Indian Army personnel have now been added to its official database following extensive archival research conducted under the Punjab Registers Project. The initiative was carried out in partnership with the UK Punjab Heritage Association (UKPHA) and the University of Greenwich.
The newly identified names belong to soldiers who served in the British Indian Army during World War I but were never formally commemorated due to historical record-keeping gaps.
The breakthrough came after researchers digitised and examined thousands of fragile recruitment registers preserved at the Lahore Museum. These archives documented around 3.2 lakh recruits from undivided Punjab, enabling historians to identify soldiers whose sacrifices had gone unrecorded for generations.
Researchers said many of the newly recognised servicemen had died within India during the war rather than on overseas battlefields, a factor believed to have contributed to their exclusion from official memorial records.
The updated database is being described as the most significant single addition to the CWGC’s casualty records since the end of the Second World War.
For many families, the recognition brings long-awaited closure.
Among them is UK-based Dr. Inder Singh Palahey, who had spent years searching for details about his great-grandfather, Kesar Singh, who never returned after leaving for the war. The newly recovered records helped establish his military service and sacrifice, ending decades of uncertainty surrounding his family’s history.
Historians associated with the project said the exercise restores an important chapter of Punjab’s contribution to the First World War. During the conflict, soldiers from Sikh, Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities across undivided Punjab formed a substantial part of the British Indian Army.
Project members noted that the omission was not due to a lack of service but because of administrative decisions made more than a century ago that left thousands of names outside official commemorative records.
Officials involved in the initiative described the effort as an important step towards historical accuracy and equal recognition for all Commonwealth servicemen who lost their lives during the war.
The CWGC said every recovered name strengthens the historical record and ensures that thousands of soldiers, whose sacrifices had remained overlooked for generations, will now be remembered alongside other First World War casualties.
