Conflict & War - WW1 & WW2

To the Indians who Died in Africa

Eliot‟s To the Indians who Died in Africa is not his best known work and yet it has an interesting history. Its implications and perspectives are vast and two Indian academics, A.N. Dwivedi of Allahabad University and K. Narayana Chandran of Hyderabad University, have expressed quite contrary views of it.

The poem had escaped my attention until Sir Christopher Ricks, former Professor of Poetry at Oxford and now at Boston University‟s Editorial Institute, had read my T.S. Eliot and India in the September 2008 issue of this publication. He said that it made him think of TSE‟s poem to the Indian soldiers who died in the North African campaign during the Second World War. When I asked him where I could locate the poem he pointed me in the right direction for which I am thankful. Let me quote the poem: