Sir Charles James Napier was a British General and Commander-in-Chief of the army of the East India Company.

When Napier first assumed command at a station in Poona (Pune), India, in 1841, he hoped to 'catch the rupees', that is, make money for his daughters. Many ambitious British people had ventured to India in the pursuit of money, including British women, who travelled to India in order to marry the British men posted there. In the 1660s, the Company paid for ‘some gentlewomen’ to be sent to India, in an effort to improve the social life of British Company officials there. Such schemes were soon discontinued, but women continued to travel to India in search of husbands, their numbers rising in the 19th century. Such women were disparagingly called the 'Fishing Fleet'.

In 1843, Napier led the Bombay Army of the East India Company in a battle against the Baluchi army of Talpur Amirs at Meeanee, Sindh. Napier’s capture of Sindh, a large province in the south-eastern region of modern-day Pakistan, paved the way for further annexations of the Punjab by the East India Company during the Anglo-Sikh Wars. 

After the First Anglo-Sikh War, the young Maharaja Duleep Singh was dethroned and sent into exile to England. From there, and from countries across Europe, he attempted to organise uprisings against British rule in India. In 1887, he wrote a letter to the Russian Emperor in which he said, ‘The British raise an annual revenue from the country of some £50,000,000 and £60,000,000 sterling, out of which an army of 100,000 Europeans and Officers and English civilians (who receive very high salaries) absorb at least £25,000,000. The rest is employed in the administration of the country and in the payment of interest upon capital advanced by England for the construction of railroad and upon the Public debt of India and pensions to retired officials in England... India has been a gold mine to England and most of her wealth has been and is derived from that source.’

Into this world, my grandfather, Mahomed Gama, was born in 1895, in the city of Old Mirpur in Pakistan, on the border of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. He served in the Mercantile Marine in the First World War and was the recipient of two war medals for his service. Mirpur and Poonch in the Punjab contributed a disproportionately high number of men, mostly Muslim, for the war effort: 21,000 in the First World War and 60,402 in the Second World War.

For detailed information about this monument, visit the Pantheons: Sculpture at St Paul's Cathedral website.