GRAVE CONCERN: British tombstones at the South Park Street Cemetery. Pix: Goutam Roy

On the day the Japanese surrendered to the Allies in 1945, Frank Philip ‘Joe’ Kendall, a squadron leader with the Royal Air Force (RAF), flew in from Europe to touch down at the Drigh Road airbase in Karachi. Kendall would later joke that the Japanese knew he was coming.

Kendall was there to direct air operations from Karachi, the hub for all East-West traffic in colonial India. He spent two and a half years coordinating what was unofficially the Evacuation of the Empire from the East. In that time he came to love a land that he would return to — now India and Pakistan — over half a century later. In 2002, and by then 80, Kendall visited for the second time. Accompanying him was his son John.

The Kendalls visited several cemeteries during their two trips but were dismayed by the condition of some. However, the attitude of many local people, who viewed the cemeteries as part of “a shared heritage,” was heartening. “They were trying to do what they could to preserve them from further ruin. One chowkidar in Kanpur pleaded with us that we do our best to get people to help. Hence the germ of the idea for indian-cemeteries.org,” John Kendall says in an e-mail.

Once back in England, Kendall started the site in an effort to preserve the images and the information contained in the historic cemeteries he had visited, and those that he hadn’t, across India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Burma.

But Kendall’s is not the only site devoted to the preservation of British graves in the subcontinent. The British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia (BACSA), a voluntary non-funded organisation, has in its 26 years built up an archive of over 1,300 cemeteries with details of size, inscriptions and photographs of the tombs. The catalogue is online in the private papers section at the British Library in London.

Kendall had worked with BACSA earlier and now began to forward material from his site for inclusion in its archive, even as a cross-pollination of archival material began to pour into his own site. People sent in pictorial and anecdotal material, feedback on family connections discovered and posted comments on how the site had helped them carry personal history into the present.

For John Kendall, an engineer by profession and a resident of Leicester, where 25 per cent of the population is of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent, the response to the site has been gratifying. Cemetery news is picked up and then passed by intent and chance thanks to the chaos theory that underlies the World Wide Web. History is written in many ways but here they were actually tracing family genealogy and epitaphs — that which underlie generations of proud families, lonely soldiers, traders and merchants, and deep loss.

Contributors to the site become amateur historians. For example, an Australian lady ‘discovered’ a whole branch of her family in Luxembourg through the web site: “Whoopeee — what a bonanza is in store for both sides of the globe as far as Luxembourg!!! My new-found rellies ‘could have wept’ when their search produced a hit. They found a photo of one of my great grandmothers in an old suitcase!”

While Kendall is an unobtrusive custodian, BACSA traverses the cemeteries in a more vigorous manner; dispensing grants for preservation projects to local communities and helping families trace their forbears. Historian and author, Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, honorary secretary of BACSA, has visited many old European cemeteries in India, including those in Meerut, Mathura, Lucknow, Delhi and Calcutta. “South Park Street cemetery in Calcutta is my favourite. Because I know the histories of so many of the dead buried there, it is almost like meeting old friends when I walk through it,” she writes.

For Kendall, “The most moving are those which commemorate those who have died in tragedy, especially the very many children whose tiny monuments litter all the cemeteries I have visited.” One in St John’s Church in Calcutta, he recalls, reads that Hilda Mary Anderson aged 7 months died from “sheer want of proper nutriment” in 1857.

But though a small group of people is dedicated to preserving this heritage, Kendall points out that the prism through which history is looked at now is very different in today’s UK and India . “Empire has been extremely unfashionable in the UK in recent years. This has probably contributed to the lack of mainstream involvement in the preservation of our heritage abroad,” he notes. But this is passing, he feels. “The history of the British involvement in India is back on the school curriculum for the first time in decades but in a way which is sympathetic to all views. The British shaped much of what India is today, and in turn Indians are shaping the multicultural Britain of tomorrow,” says Kendall. “If we exploit this evolving relationship, cemeteries can be preserved with enthusiasm on the ground in India, and supported where necessary by resources in the UK,” he says.

Llewellyn-Jones too is certain that the tolerant spirit of India will help in preserving this shared heritage. BACSA is currently sponsoring a Burdwan University scholar who is researching historical cemeteries. In Calcutta it works with the Association for the Preservation of Historical Cemeteries in India, an autonomous group passionate about preserving the city’s history.

And if you thought interest in dead men’s tales was dwindling, think again. BACSA’s membership is up, which is a good sign as its members pay for restoration projects. The organisation expects a further surge in interest when the Ecclesiastical Burial records from undivided India go online on the British Library website later this year.

According to BACSA, nearly two million Europeans are buried in South Asia. This has led to the emergence of what is called cemetery tourism where families travel overseas to pay their respects to their forebears who died in distant lands. But neither BACSA nor Kendall’s outfit organises such tours. Their effort is buoyed more by their love for history and heritage.

In a recent issue of the BACSA journal Chowkidar, one such successful search for one’s departed family member is recounted. Jan White was looking for her brother’s tomb. Baby Geoffrey Millen was nine months old when he was buried in 1935 in the British Military Cemetery, Trimulgherry, Secunderabad. Their father was with the 4th Indian Divisional Signals. Jan’s clues were a photograph of an engraved headstone and she knew a tree had been planted on the grave. BACSA and the local bishop deduced that the baby had probably been buried in “Cemetery No. 5 at Secunderabad which was opened in 1860 and closed in 1954. The plot number was unknown,” Chowkidar said. White visited Trimulgherry last year and found not just the little tomb but also the burial register, battered but still legible.