THE PROJECT
The old Second World War battlefield of Point 5846 near Imphal.
India's battlefield heritage
India has a rich battlefield heritage. Given its long and complex history, this should come as no surprise. What is perhaps more surprising is how invisible and peripheral many of these battlefields are to Indians today. Sites of fierce battles have long since been forgotten. Some have been built over entirely, while only parts of others survive. Few are marked out with proper signage. While battles are mentioned in the media and in school books or are written about, oddly the actual battlefields themselves receive little to no attention.
This is a pity. Battlefields allow us to connect with our history in a tangible way. These are often sites where battles that shaped our nation and region took place. Exploring battlefields allows us to truly understand how those historical events unfolded and reflect on their wider significance. They are spaces where history comes to life. As such, they have both educational and recreational value, where tourists, students, and anyone interested can get a sense of history.
This makes it all the more important that a lot more is done to promote and, ideally, protect India's battlefield heritage. As the country's population and demand for land grows, the threats to these sites of historical importance will only increase. If India's battlefields are not promoted and preserved, a key part of the country's history and heritage will be lost forever.
The Battlefields Project
The Battlefields Project hopes to make a contribution here by developing battlefield tours that cover these historical sites and make them more accessible to anyone wishing to visit them. This involves researching, conceptualising, designing, and launching tours that take in battlefields and related locations in the vicinity. It builds on its founder Hemant Singh Katoch's work to promote the Second World War battlefields of Northeast India and Burma/Myanmar since 2012.
This started with creating WWII-themed battlefield tours in Manipur around the Imphal battle of 1944; these gradually expanded to take in the Kohima-Dimapur area in Nagaland, the Dibrugarh-Ledo-Digboi area in Assam, and Jairampur and the Pangsau Pass in Arunachal Pradesh. Eventually large parts of Burma/Myanmar were covered too to make up an overall Burma Campaign battlefield tourism circuit of Northeast India and Burma/Myanmar. All of these WWII-themed tours are offered by Battle of Imphal Tours, a tour company Hemant founded in Imphal in 2013 and for which he now serves as an Adviser.
The Battlefields Project encompasses this work and takes it forward by developing battlefield tours focused on other historical periods in India.
