Geschichte und Erinnerung: The Lost Narratives of the Indian Legion

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In 1944, Subhas Chandra Bose, a prominent Indian freedom fighter and political leader, raiseda military unit consisting of Indian prisoners of war and assigned it to the Waffen-SS inGermany to facilitate India's independence struggle against the British Raj. This military unitwas named 'The Indian Legion', or more commonly in the East, the 'Azad Hind Fauj'.My proposed research focuses on the documents (diaries, letters, correspondences,pictures, etc.) of Indian soldiers from the Indian Legion who fought in Europe during WorldWar II. I aim to carry out this project from the theoretical perspective of memory studies.Recent developments in memory studies suggest that memory can no longer be confined to thenational paradigm espoused by Pierre Nora and Jan and Aleida Assmann, but instead can andshould be explored in a range of other ways, e.g. through gender, religion, and ideology. Myresearch will approach the historical accounts of the Indian Legion through the notions of timewhich are central to the debates on memory in culture or literature.