Between 1930 and 1933 – over a decade before the Nazis opened the Auschwitz concentration camp – British colonial authorities were already using gas chambers on human subjects. This fact alone overturns the carefully polished image of Britain as a so-called “civilized” empire. Long before Europe shuddered at Hitler’s crimes, Britain had already begun its own gas chamber experiments—not on its enemies, but on the very Indian soldiers who fought under its flag.

In this shocking and little-known episode, British military scientists conducted horrific chemical weapons experiments on Indian colonial troops. Hundreds of soldiers, loyal to the Crown, were marched into gas chambers and exposed to mustard gas, suffering agonizing injuries.

These were not isolated accidents. They were deliberate experiments. And unlike the Nazis’ genocidal chambers, which sought extermination, the British defended theirs as “research.” But the truth reveals only cruelty and racism disguised as science.

The empire that boasted of bringing civilization was secretly inflicting torture on the same men it claimed to protect. Worse still, it later condemned others for war crimes while keeping its own horrors under lock and key.

Rawalpindi: The Colonial Laboratory of Pain (1930s–1940s)

The so-called Rawalpindi experiments began in the early 1930s inside a British military base in Rawalpindi, now in Pakistan. This was not a battlefield—it was a hidden laboratory of pain. British scientists from Porton Down, their top chemical warfare research center, were stationed there. Their mission was to design poison gases for possible war with Japan, but their method was to turn Indian soldiers into experimental material.

For more than a decade, stretching through the 1930s and into World War II, hundreds of British Indian Army soldiers became unwilling test subjects. These men were disciplined soldiers, bound to obey orders. That obedience was exploited—leaving them as guinea pigs in chambers filled with poison.

The trials had a racist foundation too. Documents reveal that scientists wanted to test whether mustard gas inflicted greater damage on Indian skin versus British skin. It was colonial science at its most brutal—reducing humans to racial categories to measure suffering. In all, over 500 Indian and British soldiers were forced into Rawalpindi’s gas chambers.

Step-by-Step Torture: The Chronology of Cruelty

In the early years, 1930 to 1933, Indian sepoys were marched into gas chambers wearing almost no protection. They had only crude respirators, along with shorts and thin cotton shirts. When the mustard gas was released, every exposed inch of their body was left at risk.

As the 1930s rolled on and war approached, the tests escalated. Gas doses and exposure times were adjusted to calculate exactly how much would incapacitate a soldier. In effect, the scientists were measuring the breaking point of the human body.

One horrifying incident records a soldier’s gas mask slipping off inside the chamber. He suffered severe burns to his eyes and face, injuries so bad that they left him in unbearable pain. By 1942, a secret Porton Down report admitted that there were a “large number” of serious burns among the Indian and British test subjects. That same report gave a chilling description: “Severely burned patients are often very miserable and depressed and in considerable discomfort, which must be experienced to be properly realised.”

The truth was unbearable. Some men were hospitalized for weeks with blistering burns across their bodies, including the most sensitive areas such as their genitals. Others went temporarily blind. Some were left with permanent lung damage. And all of this was done not for their protection, but to find the so-called “safe” limits of mustard gas for military use—an experiment carried out at the expense of colonial soldiers’ lives and dignity.

These men had no real choice. They could not refuse. As colonial troops, obedience to British command was law. Consent was never meaningful. Years later, Alan Care, a lawyer for British veterans, confirmed what was obvious: “I would be astonished if these Indian subjects gave any meaningful consent… No one would have agreed [to these experiments] if they knew beforehand what was going to happen.”

Thus, young Indian men who had joined the army to serve with honor found themselves trapped—literally locked inside gas chambers—by the very empire that demanded their loyalty.

Secrecy, Silence, and Betrayal

The worst part of this atrocity was not only the suffering but the cover-up that followed. These trials were buried under secrecy. Soldiers were ordered never to speak, and all reports were marked confidential. The empire ensured that these crimes would not stain its reputation.

The British military never followed up on the Indian test subjects. Once experiments were finished, the soldiers were sent back to normal duties with burns, scars, and invisible damage. No one checked whether they developed cancer, whether they died early, or whether their families suffered the consequences. Mustard gas is now recognized as a deadly carcinogen, yet these men were abandoned.

For decades, this chapter remained hidden. Only in 2007 did the truth emerge, when Britain’s National Archives released files and The Guardian reported the findings. These records showed the experiments were far larger and far more brutal than anyone had admitted. The revelations shocked historians and enraged Indians.

When confronted, Britain’s Ministry of Defence could not even confirm whether the Indian soldiers had volunteered or been forced. The reality was clear: in a colonial army, “volunteering” did not exist. Obedience was compulsory. Yet instead of apologizing, officials at Porton Down excused themselves with the line that the trials “took place in a different era, during a conflict, and so their conduct should not be judged by today’s standards.”

The arrogance was striking. Rather than admit guilt, Britain defended its crimes as products of their time. To this day, there has been no apology, no recognition, and no compensation. The number of Indians who suffered and died is not even known—because no records were ever kept. Their pain was erased by empire.

The Rawalpindi trials were part of a much larger British program. Between 1916 and 1989, at least 20,000 British servicemen were subjected to chemical weapons experiments at Porton Down in the UK. Many of them later revealed they had been tricked—told the experiments were for curing the common cold. A formal inquiry in 2003 looked at deaths but filed no charges.

But unlike the British test subjects, who at least received some acknowledgement, the Indian guinea pigs of Rawalpindi were forgotten. Their suffering was silenced, their names erased, their stories untold. This contrast exposes the true mentality of empire: British suffering deserved recognition; Indian suffering could be hidden.

Britain’s Mask of Morality: The Hypocrisy Behind the Gas Chambers

The Rawalpindi mustard gas experiments are not just a dark chapter of colonial history; they expose a larger truth about the hypocrisy of the British Empire. During the Second World War and in the years that followed, Britain repeatedly presented itself as a principled defender of liberty, contrasting its so-called “gentlemanly” conduct with the barbarism of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. British leaders stood among the loudest critics of the Nazi gas chambers and the cruel medical experiments of Nazi doctors.

Yet, behind closed doors, Britain had already built its own gas chambers in India. These chambers were not used for extermination but for “testing.” The difference in scale and intent does not erase the reality that Indian soldiers—men of color serving loyally under the British flag—were tortured and maimed in the name of military science. The same empire that claimed to bring “civilization” to its colonies was, at the same time, forcing its colonial subjects into chambers of chemical agony.

This double face of empire becomes even clearer when we examine the mindset of its leaders. Winston Churchill, celebrated as the heroic Prime Minister of WWII, had long supported the idea of using chemical weapons against indigenous populations. In 1919, while discussing ways to crush rebellions in the North-West Frontier and the Middle East, Churchill famously declared: “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas... I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum.” To Churchill, poison gas was a legitimate tool of empire—a method to terrify “uncivilized” populations into submission. This callousness at the very top of the British establishment made atrocities like Rawalpindi not an accident, but an extension of imperial thinking.

The irony is even sharper because Britain was a signatory of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which banned chemical warfare. The empire regularly criticized others for breaking it. Britain condemned Japan for its use of chemical weapons in China during the 1930s, and after the war it sat in judgment of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg. Yet, at the same time, its own scientists were gassing Indian soldiers in secret.

The Rawalpindi trials were never revealed to the Allies or the global public. They were buried, hidden from view, because British officials knew the truth: if exposed, these acts would be recognized as morally indefensible and legally criminal. Instead, Britain carefully cultivated an image of honorable warfare, proudly claiming that it had never used poison gas in battle during WWII. But as the records now show, the empire was perfectly willing to use poison gas—just not against its enemies on the battlefield, but against helpless colonial soldiers behind closed doors.

This contradiction stands as one of the starkest examples of how colonial powers held two different standards—one for Europeans, another for colonized people.

Legacy of Betrayal: What Rawalpindi Tells Us Today

The Rawalpindi mustard gas experiments remained hidden for decades, forgotten even as Britain built a global reputation as a beacon of democracy and justice. But once revealed, they destroy the illusion of imperial benevolence.

Indian soldiers fought and died in the tens of thousands for Britain in both World Wars. They trusted the Crown’s promises, believing that loyalty would be honored. Instead, some of them were dragged into gas chambers, their bodies burned and lungs scarred, all for the sake of testing poison weapons. The British authorities of the time never informed the Indian public (or even the soldiers themselves in many cases) about the risks, never obtained genuine consent, and never ensured post-experiment care. These men were used up and thrown aside, their suffering unacknowledged. Such actions can only be described as war crimes and a betrayal of the very people without whom Britain could not have survived the wars.

Unlike the Nazi crimes, which have been fully documented and memorialized, British colonial atrocities remain in the shadows. This silence sustains the false myth that British rule was somehow more humane than other regimes. The Rawalpindi experiments tear away that mask. They prove that Britain’s demand for loyalty from its colonial soldiers was one-sided—the empire gave no loyalty in return when it came to their basic human rights.

One commentator summed up the truth in a line that still shocks: “Adolf Hitler never put Indians in gas chambers. The British did.” The intent here is not to diminish Hitler’s crimes, but to expose the illusion that British colonialism was moral or gentle. Indians did not face extermination, but they endured deliberate inhumanity, and Britain has yet to truly confront it.

Looking back, the Rawalpindi trials form a chilling timeline: 1930s – secret gas chambers in India; 1940s – reports of burned and broken soldiers; post-1945 – silence and cover-up; 2000s – revelations with no accountability. At every stage, the empire chose secrecy over truth, denial over justice.

Today, the Indian soldiers who suffered in those chambers are gone, but their story remains. It is a story of bravery betrayed by empire, of humanity trampled beneath the mask of civilization. The world must hear it. Britain must not be allowed to forget it.