Where Sikh Soldiers Fell, Italy Remembers

More than eight decades after the guns of the Second World War fell silent, the memory of thousands of Sikh soldiers who fought on distant European battlefields survives in military archives, cemeteries and scattered historical records. In Italy, a group from the Sikh diaspora is now working to bring those stories out of the archives and into public memory.

The World Sikh Shaheed Military Memorial Committee (WSSMMC), an Italy-based voluntary organisation, has spent years tracing the footsteps of Sikh soldiers who fought and died on Italian soil during the two World Wars. Since 2016, the organisation has worked with local authorities and communities to identify soldiers, locate sites connected with their service and build memorials recognising their sacrifice.

Led by members of the Sikh community in Italy, including president Prithipal Singh and executive member Manjinder Singh, the initiative has so far identified and commemorated more than 2,000 Sikh soldiers who lost their lives during the conflicts.

The effort recently reached another milestone at Forlì, near Bologna, where the organisation installed a stone memorial wall bearing the Khanda, one of the most recognisable symbols of the Sikh faith. The memorial carries the names and photographs of Sikh soldiers who died while fighting in Italy.

Mayors and representatives from nearly 20 Italian communes were invited to take part in the commemorative events, underlining the growing involvement of local communities in preserving this chapter of wartime history.

“Since 2016, we have been searching, locating and documenting the places where Sikh soldiers were martyred fighting during the World Wars,” said Manjinder Singh, who is currently visiting Punjab.

At Forlì, the commemoration also took on a distinctly Sikh character. An ardas was offered and an Akhand Path organised in remembrance of the soldiers who, as Singh described it, “died fighting for foreigners in foreign land”.

A diaspora effort spanning decades

The initiative predates the formal establishment of the committee. Its beginnings can be traced to the early 2000s, when seven members of Italy’s Sikh diaspora joined Sikh historian Bhupinder Singh Holland and Italian doctor Dr Roman Rossi in an effort to locate and honour Sikh soldiers buried or remembered across the country.

What began as an attempt to recover names and places gradually developed into a wider memorial project. Volunteers began visiting battle sites and cemeteries, organising prayer services and working with Italian communities to install plaques and memorials at places linked to Sikh participation in the wars.

Many of those involved are not professional historians or researchers. They are members of the diaspora who pursue the work alongside their occupations and businesses.

“Most of us are businessmen and spend from our own pockets to build memorials,” said Manjinder Singh, who has lived in Italy for around 25 years and runs a biscuit manufacturing factory in Mantua.

For the volunteers, the project is also an attempt to add a community perspective to a history largely preserved through British and Commonwealth military documentation.

Indian soldiers served in vast numbers during both World Wars, but their individual and community histories have often remained less visible in popular accounts of the conflicts. The Sikh contribution forms an important part of that story.

Singh believes conventional military records, while invaluable, do not always convey the wider historical and cultural significance of Sikh participation — from the identity of the regiments in which they served to the way their sacrifices have continued to be remembered within Sikh communities.

“We are trying to create a bridge between the official military record and Sikh community memory,” he said.

During his visit to Punjab, Singh also visited the Sultanwind memorial, among the prominent memorials associated with soldiers from the region who served during the World Wars.

Italians join the remembrance

An important part of the committee’s work has been the response from Italian communities living around former battlefields and military sites.

According to Singh, local residents and authorities have increasingly joined commemorations and shown an interest in understanding who the Sikh soldiers were and why they came to fight thousands of kilometres from their homes.

In some places, he said, Italians have displayed a striking commitment to preserving these stories.

“They are more interested in keeping alive the stories of Sikh soldiers than our own people,” Singh said.

Over the years, the organisation has held commemorative programmes and installed memorial plaques at several locations associated with Sikh soldiers, including Cassino, Florence, Ravenna, the Sangro River region and, most recently, Forlì.

These places were part of a much larger wartime landscape in which Indian troops fought far from home, often in difficult terrain and conditions. For the Sikh diaspora now settled in Italy, remembering them has consequently become about more than recording military history.

The memorials also connect three different worlds: the soldiers’ homeland in India, the European country in which they fought, and the Sikh diaspora that now calls Italy home.

For the volunteers behind the project, that connection is precisely what gives the memorials their significance. They are intended not simply as markers of battles fought generations ago, but as places where descendants, local residents and visitors can encounter a history that might otherwise remain confined to official records.

As Singh put it, the memorials have gradually become spaces “where military history, Sikh identity and local memory meet” — ensuring that the stories of soldiers who travelled far from Punjab to fight on European soil are not lost to the archives.