Retracing Footsteps of Ancestors
on the 100 year anniversary of the King's Indian Orderly Officer’s visit to London in 1922
Two years ago, Gaurav Bagwe came across some information that inspired him to dig into his family history - particularly into the life of his great great grandfather Captain Vishram Rao Chavan. His journey of discovery brought him to London and he is retracing the steps of his ancestor a hundred years later. In this interview, Gaurav tells us about how and why he started researching this family member and what the experience meant to him and his family. We also spoke about serendipitous encounters and surprises he came across during his visit, the effect of historical spaces and our connection with the past. Scroll to the end to watch the video.
Originally from Nasik, India (same town as interviewer - Manasi Pophale) Gaurav is an economist based in Washington DC, United States of America.
Manasi Pophale (MP): Tell us about this project.
Gaurav Bagwe (GB): This project is basically a deep dive into the life of my great-great-grandfather. So, this is my father's mother's granddad, or my grandmom's paternal granddad. He served in the British Indian army and he fought in World War 1. Later, exactly 100 years ago, in 1922 he was a King's Indian Orderly Officer for which he spent three months in London. So the project is about discovering more about his life in the army and finding out more about his time in London.
MP: And how did it start?
GB: So initially, it started out as a distraction from when I was completing my dissertation work - this was two years ago in 2020. I needed a side project to take my mind off economics. I remember one day I got an email from ancestry.com uk which said that they had new records for World War 1, and I remembered vaguely my grandmom telling me that her granddad had fought in a war. I was curious whether I'd be able to find something about him. So I started off by creating an account - the free trial on ancestry.com and just typing out all sorts of permutations and combinations of his name. I knew that likely the name, the way it's spelt now, is not the way I would find it back then. And then it was about finding a lead and taking it from there.
MP: Once you finished your ancestry.com research, what else did you start digging up?
GB: Once I actually landed up on the way his name was spelt back then, I was surprised that I could find a lot about him online. This was because he had received a few medals from his service in the war and there were there was mention of his service in a few digitised books and other sources online, and also because he had been appointed as the King's Indian Orderly Officer for 1922. And so there were public records about his time in London and photographs online. These have probably existed for a while but I didn't know anything about them so there was a lot of Google searching a lot of going through older newspaper articles. This gave me plenty of information to go with.
King’s Indian Orderly Officers, 1922
MP: What surprised you when you came across these photographs and articles?
GB: Well, firstly the fact that they existed and that I didn't know about it! And a lot of the people in my family didn't know about it either. My parents had no idea that he spent time in London and that all of this material existed. I think the biggest shocker was that I was actually able to find videos from back then, that have been recently uploaded on YouTube! There are actually videos of my great great granddad on YouTube which was very surprising because I didn't even think of videos from so far back then and much less of him being in them.
MP: And how did it make you feel when you saw this stuff come up online?
GB: It was a mixture of feelings… I was very excited! Excited because I felt like I had discovered something new, not just for myself but also for my family and I was excited to share it with my immediate and extended family. I was really happy and excited and encouraged by their reactions. They were thrilled that someone from my generation was taking an interest in their grand dad and therefore, also, their lives. That was very encouraging. I think another feeling that I had was that a lot of these events or people, like King George the Fifth and monuments in London, which I had viewed or experienced as a tourist in the past - I didn't know that I would have had such a personal connection to them. And so I was struck by that. I had this personal connection in a way that I never knew about when I visited these places as a child.
MP: Why did you decide to come to London this month (April 2022)?
GB: Yes, so this month is exactly a hundred years since my great-great-grandad was in London. One of the reasons was to mark his time here and it felt like the right time to do it. I think another reason that I came here was to dig more and I knew that there were a lot of sources at the British Library that I hadn't tapped into before. So this was an excellent opportunity to do that. And then finally, research online or looking at primary sources is one thing and gives you one kind of perspective into what his experience would have been; but I think inhabiting the spaces where he would have been gives another perspective and I wanted to do that and retrace his steps. Those are some of the things that I was thinking about when planning this trip.
MP: Where all did you go in London to retrace the steps?
GB: The big one was where he and the other officers lived - 49 St George's Drive. I decided to stay pretty close to that area so that I could walk around and explore that area just as he would have a hundred years ago. We went to the house and were very lucky because I happened meet the present-day owner of that house! I was taking pictures outside it and he asked me why I was interested in the house. I gave him a background and he was kind enough to let us take a peek inside the house. So I got to see the inside of the house and while a lot of it has changed, some of the old features of the house are still intact. That really felt like inhabiting the space that he would have while he was here.
MP: What kind of emotions did you feel when you entered that house?
GB: First, I just felt lucky that I could go in and that I actually happened to meet the owner there! It definitely felt like history coming alive. It's strange because in India it's not that uncommon to inhabit spaces where your ancestors have been and lived, because we often have connections to our ancestral villages and homes. But I think what was particularly striking about this experience was that I was in London. I was far away from home and in my family at least my immediate family, there was this idea that me and my parents were the first amongst our family to have traveled so extensively. But little did we know that a hundred years ago my great-great-granddad was actually such a pioneer and he had done it way before us. So I think it was a reminder of that too.
MP: What else did you do in London?
GB: We walked around quite a bit in the areas he would have been in that I knew from research. We also we went to the British Library as I mentioned earlier, to look at more primary sources and material because I know they had a bunch of documents relating to what the thinking behind setting up the King's Indian Orderly officers as an institution was. They also had more information about the house he would have lived in and correspondences between the India Office and the British Indian Army. I also wanted to know a little bit more about history of the regiment he served in and I got a lot of information about that at the Library.
MP: Was this stuff that you would not have been able to find online and required you to come here?
GB: Yes it did because a lot of this stuff isn't digitised yet. Some of it has been but most of the stuff I encountered at the library this week has not been digitised yet and so it would probably take a while for me to do the same kind of research sitting in DC. I think there's also benefit to actually being in the library and witnessing what they have there on display and just by happenstance picking up something that may actually be relevant. That could be a lead to something else which you can't do as easily when you're just researching online.
MP: What were the few things that you found in the library that were most exciting?
GB: I found more details about his time in the army and what happened after World War 1. I think we got a few leads onto why he may actually have been chosen as one of the four officers in 1922. So, I learned that in the in February of 1922, the Prince of Wales was visiting India and that my great great granddad and his regiment were part of some of the ceremonies that that were part of the official visit of the HRH Prince of Wales. HRH was very impressed with his regiment - the 116th Marathas and had specially congratulated them. I'm guessing that, that perhaps was an indicator that he wanted to select someone from this particular regiment as a King's Indian Orderly Officer for that year. Because my great great granddad was the highest ranked Indian officer in that regiment, he was probably selected based on the interaction that had happened a few months prior during the Prince's visit.
MP: Who were the other officers who were with him?
GB: The other officers were from different regiments so not all of them were from the Maratha Regiment. Lieutenant Bhosle, Lieutenant Joseph and Lieutenant Nanjapa were the three other officers. And what was interesting about them is that in some of the other years, a lot of the officers were picked either from the same caste group or the same religious group. But in his year, and in couple of other years, they were mixed caste, which was interesting because it made me think about what their interactions would have been like back then and why that year they hadn't gone with the same religious group or same caste group for all of the officers.
MP: Did this project make you curious about your great great grandfather's life before and after the army and before and after he visited London?
GB: Yes! I don't know, maybe one day I'll come across his own diary or papers about his time because it definitely made me very curious about what his experience would have been like. I wonder if how he viewed the world or viewed the Empire changed or stayed the same after his visit here. I would like to find out what he communicated to the rest of the family or to the rest of his officers once he was back. It made me much more curious about all these things.
MP: How did this project affect your relationship with history?
GB: I think it made some of these larger events that you study in history textbooks like the First World War, which seem so far removed from our experience when studying them as a school kid, it made them much more personal. It felt like I had a personal stake in understanding these events and these spaces better that when I experienced them as a tourist before. It gave me a totally new perspective through which I'll take a look at larger historical events. So, I think it's made me study my history again.
MP: Do you feel history connects to identity in any way?
GB: It surely does! I don't know if I have come to any new conclusions about my identity but the project has posed a lot of interesting questions. One relates to how we think about history and in particular how we think about our ancestors and what they did. I think my great great granddad's service in the British army probably led to mixed feelings in my family (and even within me) about his legacy in some ways. I didn't know when I started this, what exactly to think of his service. On one hand I knew that he had won these medals because of his acts of bravery he had made a life, or made a mark for himself by his service and on the other hand I know he was working for a colonial institution. So it raised all of these questions about mixed legacies and how we think about them, how we relate to them and how it informs our identity. How do we think about our identity in relationship to our ancestors and the people who came before us.
MP: How do you feel about your identity in relation to your ancestors?
GB: I think that's a very difficult one. At least for now, the way I'm thinking of my identity (I know it's easier said than done) as someone who is gathering all the facts, digging in deeper and collecting strands of information that were out there but that weren't salient to my family and definitely not the relatives in my generation. I think the way I see my role in all of this at this point, is bringing all these documents and threads together and just presenting them as I found them to my family and then giving them the space to maybe feel whichever way they want to feel about it. I don't think I would say I feel necessarily proud of his legacy or what he's done but I definitely have an appreciation for his life and a sense of curiosity. I want to just learn more about his experience.
MP: This is a good segue to ask you about the legacy of this project.
GB: I have been collecting all of this information and compiling it on a website but based on Manasi your suggestion and the suggestion a few of my other friends, I think I'm also going to do a wikipedia page. It would be nice if there were other people in a similar sort of situation and they were interested in doing research about their own ancestors, the wikipedia page would be a handy way to get access to the resources I used and found useful. On the personal or family legacy front, it would be lovely if people in my generation took an interest in this and continued it in whichever way they could. I would be delighted to know if other people did a similar versions of the tour I'm doing here this summer. I think I want to upload like a Vishram Rao Chavan - that was his name, Itinerary for London and if people in my family were interested in traveling to London, they could to take his tour and explore London through his eyes. I would love for the legacy of this project to go in that direction, where you take this experience and bring it to discovering new spaces in London.
MP: Last question - if anyone wants to research their own family legacy, how would you advise them to go about it?
GB: I think Google and ancestry.com is is a great start. I suppose it really depends what kind of material they are expecting to find. I'm not a historian but I would assume that there is a whole bunch of material about him and about a lot of other ancestors in India and I would want to dig into that in the future. That's what you would want to look into. I don't know how well-documented it is or how well archived it is so it may it may take a little bit more digging. But I think my lesson from all of this was when you have one or two leads, just kind of run with it and keep digging and I think in the end you find something. So, I think persistence definitely helps!
MP: Does sharing it help?
Yeah! I think another thing I mentioned before was that every time I told someone about the fact that I was doing this project and that I have this great great granddad who did this, they were just thrilled to hear about it. I mean I wasn't expecting other people to be as excited about it as me but it was really heartening to see even colleagues or friends being so thrilled hearing about this project. I think it got them excited to do something similar with maybe their own family histories.