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After decades of indifference, Indian leaders finally pay respects to WW1 dead
YPRES (Belgium): On the 11th hour, of the 11th day (November 11) of the 11th month of the year 2006, Sonia Gandhi becomes the most senior Indian leader ever to lay to rest the ghosts of Indian soldiers who fought and fell here in World War I.Eighty-eight years after the so-called Great War ended, leaving a variously estimated 43,000 to 65,000 Indians dead on the battlefield, Gandhi marks the ultimate sacrifice of the men who valiantly fought a white man's war, thousands of miles away from home, in a cause that was not their own. Flying into Belgium on Friday, for a three-day visit, Gandhi's first scheduled official act is the trek to Ypres, the flat, battle-scarred wastelands in the west Flanders region, 130 km from Brussels. Posted by: john 2006-11-10 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=171588 |