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Indians helped greatly in both wars.In WW2, 2.5 million Indians volunteered to fight. They fought alongside their British brothers. Indians fought with distinction throughout the world, including in the European theatre against Germany, in North Africa against Germany and Italy, in the South Asian region defending India against the Japanese and fighting the Japanese in Burma.Unfortunately, the memories of those brave men is largely ignored in India due to successive nationalist governments ignoring their contribution due to them trying to paint a picture that Indians hated the British, which is quite frankly, untrue. More Indians volunteered to fight in British ranks than those who join subhas chandra bose‘ army of rebels who joined imperial japan.Without those brave Indians, Japan would have taken South Asia, and been able to link with Nazi germany via the Middle East, leaving China and Russia surrounded. The immense resources Nazi germany and imperial japan could have acquired in that scenario would have left the allied powers with a near impossible task to win the war.The numbers are staggering: up to three million Bengalis were killed by famine, more than half a million South Asian refugees fled Myanmar (formerly Burma), 2.5 million soldiers manned the Indian army and 89,000 of them died in military service. 89,000 is a big number, but when you consider that as a percentage of 2.5 million, it demonstrates just how good and how skilled those Indian troops were.South Asia was transformed dramatically during the war years as India became a vast garrison and supply-ground for the war against the Japanese in South-East Asia.Yet, this part of the British Empire's history is only just emerging. By looking beyond the statistics to the stories of individual lives the Indian role in the war becomes truly meaningful.Has the massive South Asian contribution to the World War Two been overlooked?In some ways, it hasn't.Everyone has heard of the Gurkhas and many people have heard something of the role of Indian soldiers at major battles like Tobruk, Monte Cassino, Kohima and Imphal.The Fourteenth Army, a multinational force of British, Indian and African units turned the tide in Asia by recapturing Burma for the Allies. Thirty Indians won Victoria Crosses in the 1940s (an extremely high proportion in percentage terms).Increasingly, for both the World War One and Two, the contribution of soldiers from across the Empire-Commonwealth has been coming to light.But what about all the other people who were caught up in the war?Numerous other South Asian people sweated behind the scenes to secure supply lines and to support the Allies.There were non-combatants like cooks, tailors, mechanics and washermen, such as a boot-maker to the Indian army named simply as Ghafur who died at the battle of Keren in present-day Eritrea and whose grave can still be seen there today.What do we know about the thousands of women who mined coal for wartime in Bihar and central India, working right up until childbirth? Or the gangs of plantation labourers from southern India who travelled up into the mountains of the northeast to hack out roads towards Myanmar and China? Or the lascars (merchant seamen) such as Mubarak Ali, remembered simply as "a baker" who died in the Atlantic when the SS City of Benares was torpedoed?There were millions of other South Asians working towards the imperial war effort and we never hear about them.It wasn't glamorous work: "coolies" loading and unloading cargo at imperial ports or clearing land for aerodromes did not share the prestige of fighter-pilots.But their work could be very dangerous.Thousands of Asian labourers died building treacherous roads at high altitude, including the Ledo Road between China and India, working with basic pickaxes and falling prey to malaria and other tropical diseases.Harbour accidentOthers died in industrial accidents - there was an incredible explosion in Bombay harbour in 1944, when a ship loaded with explosives and cotton caught alight, blew warships to smithereens and made over 80,000 homeless.Factory workers and dockworkers also suffered from aerial bombardment - official figures suggest several thousand deaths from Japanese bombs on India's eastern coastline. The men and women who kept the imperial war effort going in South Asia did not write diaries and memoirs.Often for them it was just a job, a way of earning enough money to eat. They did not see it as belonging to a heroic part of world history, worthy of inclusion in history books. The illiterate left little trace of their service. And often their work - hard and poorly paid - was tough and dangerous whether it was wartime or not.British officers wrote hundreds of accounts of their time in South Asia but there is not a single written memoir by an Indian rock-breaker, road builder or miner.Quick profitsIt's not a simple story of heroism or patriotism; many of these workers were more motivated by the need for bread than by the need to defeat the Axis.And it's not a straightforward case of imperial exploitation - many elite South Asians made quick profits in the war and transformed their own fortunes.Experiences of the 1940s depended on caste, class, vantage point and region: a Punjabi soldier could see things very differently to a metropolitan student in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) or a factory-owner in Kolkata (Calcutta).Often those who worked towards the war were Anglo-Indians, adivasis [tribespeople], Parsis and Christians - and their histories slipped by the wayside during the writing of post-independence nationalist myths.The people who made up the war effort soon had their lives shaped again by the Partition of 1947 and the carving up of new countries.This wartime history belongs to Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan as much as to India.In the rush to write new histories of nation states after 1947, much of the history of the 1940s was locked out from official memory. Tales of the freedom struggle took precedence. And in Britain and the US, the emphasis was placed on remembering military contributions to major battles, not on the everyday lives of anonymous workers.As one report put it at the time, this was not the "forgotten army", but the "unknown army". Perhaps now we can finally start to appreciate the fullest extent of WW2.Why remembrance of Indian soldiers who fought for the British in World War II is so politicalDuring the Allied invasion of Italy in early September 1943, an Indian lieutenant wrote a letter to his beloved.Here I am penning this to you in the middle of one of the biggest nights in the history of this war. Love, I am sure by the time you receive this letter you will guess correctly as to where I am. I bet you, you wouldn’t like to stay here a single minute… Oh! it is terrible. Yet in the midst of this commotion, I sit here, on my own kit-bag and scribble these few lines to my love for I do not really know when I will get the next opportunity to write to you.The lieutenant formed part of the largest volunteer army in the world, 2.5m men from undivided India – what is today India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – who served the British during World War II. They were fighting for Britain at a time when the struggle for India’s freedom from British rule was at its most incendiary.The two world wars will be remembered on November 12 in the UK by two minutes’ of silence, church services and the laying of poppy wreaths. Such commemorative practices are directed towards “the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women”. But the use of the term “Commonwealth” glosses over the imperial legacy intertwined in this war effort.The British memory of World War II, with its 60m dead on all sides, is framed through several broad narratives: personal and familial loss, the battle against fascism and the UK’s refusal to capitulate, and the war’s transformative impact on European geopolitics. But there are rich seams of forgotten stories beyond these Eurocentric points of reference: this was a world war, and experiences under British colonialism and Empire are intricately woven through its fabric. As historian Yasmin Khan has pointed out: “Britain did not fight the Second World War, the British Empire did.” Today’s remembrance services avoid interrogating this colonial past and the range of Indian war experiences that ensued.A time of resistanceIndian participation in the war began with four mule companies being sent off to France to assist the British Expeditionary Forces in September 1939. The then-viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow, did not consult the burgeoning Indian political leadership before doing so. This undemocratic inclusion in World War II led to Mahatma Gandhi launching the 1942 Quit India movement – mass agitations against 200 years of British rule – which was suppressed, in turn, by a brutal use of force, including firing on civilians and public floggings.In 1940s India, unlike Britain, conscription was never introduced. Enlisting was therefore voluntary – and new recruits were ostensibly granted the power to choose whether to sign up to go to war. The British Empire, however, needed men urgently, and requirements for entry were considerably relaxed, including the acceptance of underweight and anaemic applicants – those most desperate for a steady income.Indian responses to the war were wide-ranging and complex, as soldiers’ letters connecting battlefield to the home-front reveal. While many letters were deferential to the British Empire as economic provider, others revealed an awareness of soaring rates of wartime inflation in India, with ordinary people being priced out of food and essential items.A “havildar clerk” or sergeant from the Royal Indian Army Service Corps wrote back home in May 1943:Everything has gone high in price in our homeland. They have written that no cloth is available for less than one rupee per yard. We being earning [sic] can pull on somehow or other but the poor have to suffer much. But what can be done? What power have we got to do anything.The letter, which is kept in the British Library archives, highlights the soldier’s psychological despair of being a hapless spectator from an overseas battlefront to hunger and want in his homeland. More than 3m people died in the man-made (Japanese occupation of Burma, U-Boats sinking ships and Winston Churchill’s orders to take food) Bengal Famine of 1943, through a combination of starvation and the associated diseases of cholera, diarrhoea and dysentery.The famine could have been prevented had large-scale exports of food from India not been sent to war theatres and had aid arrived in time.World War II also became an opportunity for armed resistance to British rule in India, spearheaded by the charismatic Subhas Chandra Bose. The Indian Legion in Germany and the Indian National Army in Japanese-controlled East Asia, formed from prisoners-of-war belonging to the imperial Indian Army and expatriate Indian communities, were persuaded to fight against the British to secure independence. They lost the war, but were hailed by the Indian public as heroes. Something which many who actually fought in the Indian National Army, probably cringed at considering that they didn’t really have a choice.A complex legacyThe history of Indian participation in World War II has left a difficult, sometimes fraught legacy, both in the UK and the Indian subcontinent. Current UK commemorations do not capture this complexity or encourage us to think critically about established narratives about war.In India, official remembrance for World War II remains a controversial subject, as it is a reminder of the colonial past, although efforts are being made to change this lack of public commemoration. In my interviews with survivors and their family members in India, I have found that many have kept remembering the war in private, through old uniforms, battlefield objects, dusty photographs and conversation.The letters I am studying, too, evoke the varied and personal experiences of colonial troops: homesickness and longing, life in the desert, entertainment provided by mobile Indian cinemas, the joys of eating a bada khana(enormous feast) and the annoying lack of cigarettes. These words document the immediacy of their war experience. More than silences and wreaths, they bring forgotten Indian soldiers back into the narrative of World War II and deepen our understanding of a global history of terrible violence.As a Brit who joined the army at 16, and whose ancestors were in India during ww2, I can honestly say that without India, the war would have been lost for the allies, and it is a travesty that in India, the jewel of the empire, nationalists have been allowed to win, and subsequently allowed to bend the education system to reach Indian history with an unfortunate bias against British rule. British rule wasn’t perfect, but where would India and the world be now, if not for it?Britain, especially now, ought to distance from the US and it’s rogue ‘America first’ policies and realign itself with India, Australia and Canada to become the foreman at economic power on earth, capable of rivalling even China and the US.

The below content is completely from various sources listed below and most importantly from the Wikipedia. For further details, use the below references.Economic History and Modern India: Redefining the Link". The Journal of Economic Perspectives. American Economic Association. 16 (3): 109–130. doi:10.1257/089533002760278749. JSTOR 32169532. the first oil well in India3. Oil & WWI4. India: The Emerging Giant. Oxford University Press.The history of the Indian oil industry extends back to the period of the Britishraj, at a time when petroleum first became a primary global energy source.Colonial rule, 1858-19471866 : Oil discovery at Nahorpung,Assam. 1882 : Big "Oil Seepage" in Digboi during construction of Dibrugarh-Ledo Railway Line. The first oil production started in India were in 1889 near the town of Digboi in the state of Assam.This discovery came on the heels of industrial development. The Assam Railways and Trading Company (ARTC) had recently opened the area for trade by building a railway and later finding oil nearby. The first well was completed in 1890 and in 1893 first refinery started at Margharita, Assam. The Assam oil company was established in 1899 to oversee production. In 1901, Digboi Refinery was commissioned supplanting the earlier refinery at Margharita. At its peak during the Second World War the Digboi oil fields were producing 7,000 barrels per day.At the turn of the century however as the best and most profitable uses for oil were still being debated, India was seen not as a producer but as a market, most notably for fuel oil for cooking. As the potential applications for oil shifted from domestic to industrial and military usage.This was no longer the case and apart from its small domestic production India was largely ignored in terms of oil diplomacy and even written off by some as hydrocarbon barren. Despite this however British colonial rule laid down much of the country’s infrastructure, most notably the year 1909, IBP was incorporated as the Indo-Burma petroleum company limited in Rangoon and in 1942 the corporate office of the petrochemical company was shifted to Calcutta, 1928, Asiatic Petroleum Company ( India) started cooperation with Burmah Oil Company. This alliance led to the formation of Burmah-Shell Oil Storage and Distributing Company of India Limited. Burmah-Shell began its operations with import and marketing of Kerosene. On 24th of January, 1976, the Burmah Sell was taken over by the Government of India to form Bharat Refineries Limited. On 1st August, 1977, it was renamed as Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited.Independence, 1947-1991After India independence, the new government moved to a Communist system, often termed as License Raj. In terms of economic policy this meant a far bigger role for the government and little or no role for the private sector. This resulted in a focus on centralized planning, heavily bureaucratic and inefficient system that meant a large public sector and economic protectionism.The foreign companies continued to play a key role in the oil industry. Oil India limited was still a joint venture involving the Indian government and the British owned Burmah oil Company (presently, BP) whilst the Indo-Stanvac Petroleum project in West Bengal was between the Indian government and the American company SOCONY-Vacuum(presently, ExxonMobil).This changed in 1956 when the government adopted an industrial policy that placed oil as a “schedule A industry” and put its future development in the hands of the state.In October 1959 an Act of Parliament was passed which gave the state owned Oil and natural gas Commission(ONGC) the powers to plan, organise, and implement programmes for the development of oil resources and the sale of petroleum products and also to perform plans sent down from central government.In order to find the expertise necessary to reach these goals foreign experts from West Germany, Romania, the US, and the Soviet Union were brought in.The Soviet experts were the most influential and they drew up detailed plans for further oil exploration which were to form part of the second five-year plan. India thus adopted the Soviet model of economic development and the state continues to implement five-year plans as part of its drive towards modernity.The increased focus on exploration resulted in the discovery of several new oil fields most notably the off-shore Bombay High field which remains by a long margin India’s most productive well.Liberalisation, 1991-presentThe process of economic liberalisation in India began in 1991 when India defaulted on her loans and asked for a $1.8 billion bailout from the IMF.This was a trickle down effect of the culmination of the cold war era; marked by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, India’s main trading partner. The bailout was done on the condition that the government initiate further reforms, thus paving the way for India’s emergence as a free market economy.For the ONGC this meant being reorganised into a public limited company (it is now called for Oil and Natural Gas Corporation) and around 2% of government held stocks were sold off.Despite this however the government still plays a pivotal role and ONGC is still responsible for 77% of oil and 81% of gas production while the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) owns most of the refineries putting it within the top 20 oil companies in the world.The government also maintains subsidised prices.As a net importer of oil however India faces the problem of meeting the energy demands for its rapidly expanding population and economy and to this the ONGC has pursued drilling rights in Iran and Kazakhstan and has acquired shares in exploration ventures in Indonesia, Libya, Nigeria, and Sudan.India’s choice of energy partners however, most notably Iran led to concerns radiating from the US.A key issue today is the proposed gas pipeline that will run from Turkmenistan to India through politically unstable Afghanistan and also through Pakistan.However, despite India’s strong economic links with Iran, India voted with the US when Iran’s nuclear program was discussed by the International Atomic Energy Agency although there are still very real differences between the two countries when it comes to dealing with Iran.