Macron's gift to Modi pays tribute to Indian soldiers who fought in France in WWI

A gift Prime Minister Narendra Modi received from President Emmanuel Macron pays tribute to the soldiers from India who had fought for the British Army in France during World War I.

Modi on Friday attended the Bastille Day parade in Paris as a guest of honour on an invitation from Macron. He was the second prime minister of India to be the guest of honour at the Bastille Day ceremony. His predecessor Manmohan Singh had done so in 2009 on an invitation from then-French president Nicholas Sarkozy.

The Bastille Day is the national festival of France. It is celebrated on July 14 every year to commemorate the ‘Fête de la Fédération’ that was held on the same day in 1790 on the occasion of the first anniversary of the fall of the infamous medieval prison-fortress — the flashpoint of the 1789 French Revolution.

Macron gifted Modi a framed photo of the Sikh soldiers of the Indian Expeditionary Force (IEF) marching on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris on Bastille Day on July 14, 1916.

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The photo shows a French woman witnessing the parade offering one of the Sikh soldiers a flower.

Over one million soldiers from India had been sent overseas to fight for the British Empire against the German Empire on the Western front during World War I from 1914 to 1918. Nearly 62,000 of them had been killed on the battlefields in Europe and Mesopotamia, while 67,000 others had been injured.

The Sikh soldiers in the 1916 photo had fought in the Battle of the Somme between July 1 and November 18, 1916, on behalf of the British Empire and the French Third Republic against the troops of the German Empire.

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The photo was shot by a journalist of a news agency in France. Its original copy is preserved at the National Library of France.

Macron gifted the photo to Modi on a day a contingent of 269 personnel of the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force again marched on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris – participating in the Bastille Day parade along with the troops of armed forces of France. A tri-service contingent of India had taken part in the national day parade of France even on July 14, 2009, during Manmohan Singh’s participation in the ceremony as the guest of honour.

“This 14 July, soldiers and Rafale aircraft from India are marching and flying alongside our troops. We honour the memory of those who fought with the French in the First World War. We shall never forget,” tweeted Macron as he hosted Modi at the Bastille Day ceremony.

The Prime Minister also received from the French President a copy of “A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time)” – a seven-volume novel written by Marcel Proust published between 1913 and 1927 – as well as a reproduced version of “Charlemagne Chessmen” a group of 11th-century chess pieces made from ivory, now preserved in the Cabinet des Médailles at the National Library of France in Paris.