British military scientists sent hundreds of Indian soldiers into gas chambers

www.theguardian.com...
British military scientists sent hundreds of Indian soldiers into gas chambers and exposed them to mustard gas, documents uncovered by the Guardian have revealed.

British military did not check up on the Indian soldiers after the experiments to see if they developed any illnesses. It is now recognised that mustard gas can cause cancer and other diseases.

The Indian tests are a little-known part of Porton's huge programme of chemical warfare testing on humans. More than 20,000 British soldiers were subjected to chemical warfare trials involving poison gases, such as nerve gas and mustard gas, at Porton between 1916 and 1989.

Reading this makes me feel like the British Empire wasn't really that better off than the Nazi's. What kind of a lunatic govt. sends its own troops who risk their lives for Britain into Gas chambers ? I do know the British Empire wasn't really on the moral right, but this is something i never expected...

Never heard of that before, sounds very messed up if they really did do that.

a reply to: DarkvsLight29

Based on the language in the article, it doesn't sound like there is any question of whether or not they did this. They did it.

The brutality is nothing new, empires have done horrible things to large numbers of people, for thousands of years. And this will continue until the end of mankind, it is inevitable unfortunately.

a reply to: maddy21

"The Indian tests are a little-known part of Porton's huge programme of chemical warfare testing on humans. More than 20,000 British soldiers were subjected to chemical warfare trials involving poison gases, such as nerve gas and mustard gas, at Porton between 1916 and 1989."

Timelines are always interesting..would have thought we would have evolved a bit from the Early 1900's...guess not

The Brits never considered colonial troops as their own, just the pawns of war
They even aabused their own troops throughout history
As has done every government no doubt

originally posted by: maddy21



Reading this makes me feel like the British Empire wasn't really that better off than the Nazi's. What kind of a lunatic govt. sends its own troops who risk their lives for Britain into Gas chambers ? I do know the British Empire wasn't really on the moral right, but this is something i never expected...

Britain did similar experiments in the field just as the Americans did, in both events the 'field' was populated areas of their own countries. Porton Down has many dark secrets, and there was a time a few decades ago when quite a few scientists suicided, or were suicided, and I never yet found out just what that was all about.
In any case Dr Kelly was another, only much later, and there's not much doubt that he was murdered.

Add to that, the serious number of computer scientists/engineers who died in highly suspicious circumstances and who worked directly for Marconi or associated companies between 1985 and 1988, and many on the SDI project, while 15 of those 25 deaths deaths were in early 1987.

There were more who died earlier, also working on SDI

ALL countries have done this type of attrocity time and TIME gain ( Maybe NOT Luxembourg)THEY JUST CLASSIFY it so we don't KNOW
The RNC is WORSE than the DNC in horrible ways since WWW II,but WE won't EVER know what the hell I'm talking about.
We'll just see snippets of the evils done and react to them.

It is sick but this is what they do. From countries the world over. The US sprayed chemicals off the coast of San Fransisco just to see what if anything would happen to the citizens in that area. Civillians at that even. The list goes on and on and on.

I had never heard about this one though, good OP. More attention needs to go to these things.
Dont believe for a second that these trials are not still occuring to those serving to this day either. They are. Just take the shot and dont ask questions private!

a reply to: Raggedyman

More out of curiosity than anything else how do you know how they considered their colonial troops?
Empire just look at Britain's history - how men were treated by Elizie 1st when she had won. She refused to help the sailors and soldiers who fought for her leaving them dying on the streets. Henry 8th dissolved the monasteries and turfed all the sick and homeless onto the streets.

Now getting down to Porton Down people are naive because Porton even tested some of its nasties on the British public at places like Lulworth Cove etc so soldiers - anyone for those who control the Brits goes and you don't have to be British to be badly treated.

Yes Britain has a horrible history, but funnily enough the hate is usually targeted against its innocent people, not the ones who ruled it and allowed, in fact instructed policies that any decent minded human would be disgusted by.
Look at who gave rothschild via Wellington the gold rights in South Africa etc and killed off the women and children of the Africaans in order to allow that right.

a reply to: maddy21

Did you know the British were the first in modern history to create concentration camps? They did this during the Boer war and killed 10's of thousands of prisoners, mainly women and children, in South Africa. link

What an ethical and moral government eh?

Cheers - Dave

a reply to: Shiloh7

Sorry
I meant the British government not the people
It was never intended that way

Oh how do I know, the British government refused to let Australian soldiers go home to defend Australia from the Japs, they forced them to stay in the Middle East to fight Churchills war
Australia was mostly defenseless against Japan's empire

a reply to: maddy21

Yes they did it and very much worse, Porton down has always defended itself through the official secrets act and silence, claiming that it was in the interests of national defence, some of there experiment's in later years were on behalf of the US own chemical and biological weapon's division's but most were home grown and just as evil as anything the worst of the Nazi's scientists came up with during WW2.

Not all department's of porton down or indeed all scientists are guilty of this but those that are should have been brought to trial long ago, sadly that will never happen and such callous disregard for human life will continue to go unpunished.

Now we know about there testing on British and Commonwealth service personnel on christmas island with there nuclear test's and several in Austrialia in the 1950's as well but most people even today despite the public exposure have never been made aware that they themselves have been in the firing line of those unethical scientist's.

Here is some more reading but there are litterally hundred's of pages on the net and several on ATS as well that go into this in deep detail, it is good to see a new post keeping it alive as it is something we should never forget, forgetfulness bring's complacency and complacency bring's permissiveness.
www.theguardian.com...
www.rt.com...
tapnewswire.com...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

Almost invariably the top brass and politician's whom have been most permissive of these test's have been during time's of right wing Tory government though some were also committed under Labour government's but it has to be said that those individual's most responsible have been drawn from the Etonian upper class and echelon's of the wealthy portion of British society, those that regard the common folk as disposable vermin to be used and put down when they are no longer usable a little like Cameron's government with his veiled hate speech's against the elderly under whose administration it was never more dangerous to be elderly and go into hospital for fear you would be bumped off.

It was not just Indian servicemen. It's well recorded that the British authorties tested this type of stuff on British servicmen for decades on either side of WW2.

There's a danger to play this type of action up without considering the context of the time, but looking down a narrow view of anti-colonialism et al, as per the slant from the OP.

You can almost see the decendents of this particular limited incident being riled up by a smart lawyer, secure in the knowledge he'll make a bucket of cash. Not that I'm cynical about the motivations of people bringing up the long past.

a reply to: maddy21

Porton Down have experimented on our nations citizens via spraying, our troops, both colonial and British Mainland resident, and on animals and plants in both the lab and out of doors.

The history of that place is one of absolute misery. The U.K. also nuked the Australian outback and had military units belly crawl through the area to test the outcome, not to mention allowing the aboriginal population, who considered the area sacred, to repopulate it, with inevitable and terrible consequences.

To be frank, our military intelligence and research and development architecture has always contained at least one branch whose actions are not just deeply questionable, but grounds for a face stomping. Still does today. Someone has to be controlling our proxy agents in the Middle East and North Africa after all.

a reply to: TrueBrit

I don't GET how people equate our leaders choices to OUR national identities individually.
Collectivist thinking HAS TO GO.

a reply to: cavtrooper7

I think that the issue is that it is hard to separate individuals from the group they seem to be a part of from a distance, precisely because we have this strange system, where although we have democracy, the people have no real power at all.

The vast portion of the power our nation has is operated in secret and without our oversight. The things that really matter have never really been up for public debate, and the things that need changing the most are not being tabled for a re-adjustment. Our government can fiddle with the benefits system all they like, tamper with our safety and job security till the cows come home, but we will not have true representation, until the people can force change by weight of opinion directly.

First thing on the agenda, banning proxy war. Second thing on the agenda, the arrest and conviction of anyone responsible for dishonourable conduct in service to our nation, no matter what level of service, secret or otherwise, they were involved in.

a reply to: TrueBrit

GOD that would be PERFECT.
THEY wouldn't HAVE to do what I WISH just what is best for the country and not their bank accounts.

originally posted by: maddy21

www.theguardian.com...
British military scientists sent hundreds of Indian soldiers into gas chambers and exposed them to mustard gas, documents uncovered by the Guardian have revealed.

British military did not check up on the Indian soldiers after the experiments to see if they developed any illnesses. It is now recognised that mustard gas can cause cancer and other diseases.

The Indian tests are a little-known part of Porton's huge programme of chemical warfare testing on humans. More than 20,000 British soldiers were subjected to chemical warfare trials involving poison gases, such as nerve gas and mustard gas, at Porton between 1916 and 1989.

Reading this makes me feel like the British Empire wasn't really that better off than the Nazi's. What kind of a lunatic govt. sends its own troops who risk their lives for Britain into Gas chambers ? I do know the British
Empire wasn't really on the moral right, but this is something i never expected...

This was nothing to do with them being indian.


We were doing it to our own troops to.

Not trying to excuse it. Just pointing out it wasn't anything personal at India like Hitler as we were happy to do it to our own.

no, this is ok. its from before Neuremburg, when we decided to punish the Nazi's for things the whole world had been doing up until that point. Granted, the Nazi's took it to a much higher degree....but make no mistake: Hitler isn't the only monster lurking in history during that time.

Thanks for sharing. Im pretty well aware of the public info on the US. Maybe understanding Europe would help. The 40's were a time that is right on the heels of eugenics falling out of fashion. Seeing this happen in the 30's...not quite as surprising. And is more likely borne of Imperialism and British exceptionalism.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
And is more likely borne of Imperialism and British exceptionalism.

Then how do explain them doing thecsame experiments right through to the 60's on British soldiers too.

Indian soliders were not singled out.

The disregard for life and health was across the board.