As willing volunteers, 2.5million Indians who fought for Britain in the Second World War played a key role in helping to defeat Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
Troops of the British Indian Army fought alongside their British counterparts in South-East Asia, during the invasion of Italy, in the Middle East and in North Africa.
But, until he made a documentary for Channel 4, Bafta-winning journalist Mobeen Azhar, 44, was largely ignorant of his Indian grandfather’s contribution to Britain’s victory.
In Soldiers That Saved Britain, Mr Azhar discovers that his late grandfather, Major Nawab Din, signed up to the Indian Signal Corps in 1931.
In 1942, he contributed to British triumph in the landmark Battle of El-Alamein, which marked a turning point in the Second World War.
But Mr Azhar expresses his belief that the role played by Indian troops in Britain’s victory has been ‘overlooked in the UK for so long’.
He also struggles with the notion that his grandfather made an active choice to fight for a country that ‘colonised his homeland’, but concedes at the end of the programme: ‘I’ve had a bit of a shift.
‘I can be angry and upset and disgusted at the idea of empire and I can still acknowledge that millions of Indians volunteered, joined an army, fought, sacrificed and defined history,’ he adds.
Tonight’s programme also reveals plans to build a new bronze memorial to the Indian soldiers who fought in the Second World War.
The work is being designed by artist Mahtab Hussain, whose grandfather also fought for Britain in the war.
His design includes a Gurkha, a Skikh, a Hindu, a Muslim and a woman, to reflect how Indian troops were part of a ‘multi-faith army’, Mr Hussain says.
The artist is working in collaboration with the Royal British Legion. It is hoped the memorial will have a permanent place in London.
If commissioned, the work will be the second memorial to Indian troops in the capital.
The first, the Memorial Gates at Constitution Hill, was inaugurated by Queen Elizabeth II in 2002.
Her Late Majesty shed a tear when she laid the foundation stone the previous year.
As well as those from India, the memorial commemorates the soldiers from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Africa and Sri Lanka who fought for Britain in both World Wars.
When war broke out in Europe for the second time in 25 years in September 1939, there were 250,000 men in the British Indian Army.
By the end of the war, the number of volunteer soldiers from India who had signed up stood at 2.5million.
Nearly 90,000 Indian troops were killed.
India had by then been a direct part of the British Empire for nearly a century. The country would not achieve its independence until 1947.
Mr Azhar’s parents came to live in the UK in the 1960s, settling in Huddersfield in West Yorkshire.
His grandfather, who passed away aged 75 in 1989, did not come to live in Britain.
He was born in 1911 in the city of Sialkot, a city in the Punjab that is now part of Pakistan.
The Battle of El Alamein was widely hailed as one of the turning points in the Second World War.
More than 4,000 Allied servicemen lost their lives and almost 9,000 were wounded in the combat that saw General Sir Bernard Montgomery’s troops defeat German general Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps.
At the time of the battle, which began on October 23, 1942 and ended on November 4, the Allies were fighting to keep their vital supply lines open from the Mediterranean to the East.
Rommel had inflicted heavy defeats on Allied forces in Africa, forcing them back to the village of El Alamein, about 60 miles west of Alexandria.
On October 23 General Montgomery ordered a counter-attack with almost 900 guns levelled at the German positions to be discharged at once.
While previously the Suez Canal was threatened, and with it Allied access to the rich oilfields of the Middle East, now the Allies were able to press their advantage and eventually push the Germans and Italians out of Africa.
Recalling the importance of the Allied victory at the Battle of El Alamein, Sir Winston Churchill said: ‘Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.’
Mr Azhar says at the start of the documentary that his history classes at school felt ‘quite explicitly white’.
He adds: ‘I really want to know what motivated a brown man from India one day to say, ‘I’m going to join the British Army?’
‘Because a lot of that to be honest, is a big part of my history. And so I really want to understand what he went through. And I want to understand who he was. ‘
He adds: ‘Empire is ugly and brutal and bloody. And I don’t want to hear anyone talk about, “Yes, but we gave them railways”.
‘You know, I’ve been hearing that my entire life.’
Mr Azhar enlists the help of his cousin and researchers to uncover the extent of his grandfather’s service in the war.
He is shown a photo of his grandfather dressed in the uniform of the Pakistani arm after the war.
A visit to the Royal Signals Museum in Dorset then reveals that Nawab joined up the day before his 20th birthday, on November 3, 1931.
As a signaller, Nawab’s duties would have included the operation of wireless phones and telephones, laying cables, and generally helping to maintain communication between commanders and troops on the ground.
But all of these tasks would have been carried out often in significant danger, on or near the battlefield.
Mr Azhar says he feels ‘really uncomfortable’ at the idea that his grandfather would have been reporting to a senior British officer who may have been younger than him.
‘I can’t really separate that from the fact this is in a colonial context,’ he says.
The journalist adds: ‘…I am in this country primarily because Britain was seen as the mothership, and it was seen as the mothership because it colonised a huge amount of the world.
‘And my grandfather, as happy as he looks here, he wouldn’t have been in this role if India hadn’t been colonised.’
Mr Azhar then retraces his grandfather’s steps in Egypt and speaks with military historian Dr Rob Lyman.
The expert tells him: ‘Your grandfather was here as part of the fourth Indian Division, in one of the most cataclysmic battles of the Second World War.’
Dr Lyman explains that the signals squadron was the ‘beating heart’ of the 4th Indian Division.
‘Your grandfather would have been responsible with his men for laying lines to each of the brigade headquarters and then from the brigades to the battalions,’ he says.
‘And then looking after the lines. So it’s a very very difficult dangerous job. These weren’t just ordinary soldiers, they were the brightest and the best.’
He adds: ‘Your grandfather would have gone home, not a worse man but a different man.
‘The reason he didn’t talk to his children and didn’t talk to you of course, is because these were experiences that he had gone through, which you couldn’t comprehend.’
But the expert insists that Mr Azhar’s grandfather’s experience should not just be viewed through the ‘lens of colonialism’.
He says: ‘He volunteered for the Indian army. He was a professional soldier. He would have recognised that defeating the forces of Fascism was important for India.
‘I think that is a really important thing for us to grasp. If we solely see his actions through the lens of colonialism, in my view, we remove his personal agency. We mustn’t do that. ‘
One of the most consequential battles of the war started on October 23.
Around 200,000 Allied soldiers, including Indian troops, fought for nearly two weeks against more than 100,000 Germans and Italians at El Alamein in Egypt.
The victory came at significant cost. Of 200,000 Allied troops who took part, there were more than 13,000 casualties, including 4,500 deaths.
Winston Churchill described the battle at the ‘turning of the Hinge of Fate’. He would later write: ‘It may almost be said, before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat’.
Mr Azhar says: ‘It was men from the 4th Indian division- my grandfather’s regiment– that made the decisive breakthrough.’
Dr Lyamn tells the journalist: ‘This is a moment when they can all look at each other and say, we have absolutely done it.
‘There would have been a real sense in your grandfather that they were the victors of El Alamein.’
The Soldiers That Saved Britain airs at 7.10pm on Channel 4.