Kohima, May 29 (EMN): Chief minister Dr Shürhozelie Liezietsu will be visiting France during the next few days and make stopovers at WWI memorials to pay tributes commemorating the 100th year anniversary of the Naga Labour Corps’ participation in the First World War (WWI).
As per the chief minister’s office sources, this year being the 100th anniversary year of the Naga Labour Corps who were involved in the Great War, chief minister Liezietsu will be retracing the footsteps of the Naga unit in France, acknowledging that had it not been for them, the socio-political association Naga Club might not have held the significance it does for the Nagas today.
On May 31 next, the chief minister will be laying a wreath at the Neuve-Chapelle Indian Memorial of the British Indian Army in Pas de Calais, and also visit Mametz in the Somme, Hauts-de-France region, a site of intense and sustained fighting between German and Allied forces during WWI.
According to records, the Indian Memorial at Neuve Chapelle commemorates over 4,700 Indian soldiers and labourers who lost their lives on the Western Front during WWI and have no known graves. The location of the memorial was specially chosen as it was at Neuve Chapelle in March 1915 that the Indian Corps fought its first major action as a single unit.
Mention may be made here that the government of Nagaland has recently dedicated a massive monolith in the state capital Kohima on April 21 last, commemorating the 100th year anniversary of the participation and sacrifices of the Naga Labour Corps in WWI, which is considered to have direct bearings to the state of Nagaland.
Chief minister Liezietsu, who unveiled the monolith then, had said that as per records, around 2000 Nagas were recruited and designated as the Naga Labour Corps, leaving their homeland for the first time to fight for the then Crown in the Great War. Citing written documents, he said the Naga Labour Corps, formed in the Naga Hills under the command of the then Deputy Commissioner Herbert Charles Barnes, arrived in France in two groups - 688 men on 21 June 1917 and 992 men on 2 July 1917, had worked in various places around France on salvage work and road repairs among others.
The Naga unit was said to have been divided into 35th, 36th, 37th and 38th (Naga) Labour Companies, and he said records has it that the 35th company in particular left the Naga Hills on 21 April 1917 and subsequently after the war, returned to India in June 1918.
“Unfortunately during the Second World War in 1940, the building holding the lists of men of the Naga Labour Corps units was destroyed by Japanese bombings. The relative lack of historical records should however not deter us from commemorating their pioneering ventures which led to the subsequent state of Nagaland,” Liezietsu was quoted as saying during the event.
Many had lost their lives in the war, but those who returned from France were said to have formed a socio-political group called the Naga Club in 1918 and this association had, later in 1929, submitted a representation to the Simon Commission, asserting the right of choice of self-determination of the Nagas when the British left India.
