A More In Depth History
Introduction
This paper records the history of
the Chattri on the Downs at Patcham. There will be no discussion of how or why
the Indian soldiers that it commemorates came to be fighting on the Western
Front in 1914-15 or of the hospital arrangements in Brighton at that time.
Suffice to say that in the autumn of 1915 when the Indian Corps was sent to the
Mesopotamian front a year-plus-long association of Brighton with convalescent
Indian soldiers came to an end. The last Indian wounded departed in February 1916.
The Chattri stands in memory of
all Indian soldiers who died during the First World War, 1914-1918, but it is
particularly associated with the 53 Hindu and Sikh soldiers who died in
hospitals in Brighton and whose remains were cremated at this spot.
The original idea for a memorial
is attributed to Lieutenant Das Gupta of the Indian Medical Service, who
approached the then mayor of Brighton, Mr J. (later Sir John) Otter in August
1915 for permission to erect a memorial on the site where cremations took
place. The mayor embraced the idea with great enthusiasm and became the driving
force behind it. From study of the bulky file preserved in the India Office
Library the debt to Sir John Otter becomes increasingly apparent. Sir John’s
name not only appears again and again but he is in fact almost the only local
dignitary whose name figures in correspondence until many years later after his
death, when a succession of reluctant town clerks wrangled over maintenance of
the Memorial. Initially Otter acted in his capacity as mayor, but after
relinquishing that post in 1916 he continued as Chairman of the Indian
Memorials Committee for Brighton. It is even suggested in official
correspondence that he quietly and without thought of recognition or recompense
paid for some outer parts, such as railings and so forth, out of his own
pocket.
In 1916 Otter proposed two
memorials. One to be erected on the ghat, the site on the Downs near
Patcham where the Sikh and Hindu soldiers were cremated (Mohammedan dead were
buried at Woking), which he envisaged would bear “a tablet with names and to
contain one of the stone slabs on which cremation took place.” The other, in
the town, would be of a more general nature to commemorate the link with the
Indians (the southern gateway to the Pavilion).
Fortunately these notions were in
accord with the thoughts of the King’s commissioner in charge of the welfare of
Indian troops, Sir Walter Lawrence. As early as December 1915 he wrote to the
India Office: “I feel that it would be wise on political and historical grounds
to spend a good deal of care and some money on preserving the memory of the
Indians who have died in France and in England.” In forwarding a copy of this
letter to the under secretary of state, Military Department, an unknown War
Office staff officer suggests that the Army Council would make arrangements for
“the erection of adequate memorials” and “it is proposed to deal, in the first
instance, with the cemeteries at Netley and Brockenhurst…”
On 16th February 1916 the Secretary
of State for India, The Rt. Hon. Austen Chamberlain, concurred, he was indeed
“in entire accord with Sir Walter Lawrence’s recommendations.” These included:
“that where cremation has been resorted to, a simple monument of an oriental
character should be erected on the site of the crematorium.” But there the
matter rested until Alderman John Otter’s proposals came to the attention of
the India Office in June 1916.
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