Cemeteries

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Inscriptions on gravestones and memorials – ‘Monumental Inscriptions ‘ – often provide valuable information for the family history researcher, and some of the data on the Fibis website comes from this source.

Such information is also to be found on the website of our sister organisation ‘The British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia ‘ (Bacsa) www.bacsa.org.uk, but Bacsa ‘s principal focus is on the preservation of the cemeteries in which the Monumental Inscriptions are to be found. There are thousands of British and other European cemeteries, isolated graves and monuments in India and elsewhere in South Asia. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission ‘s remit extends only to military cemeteries of the two World Wars. There is no official body to look after the graves of the thousands of British soldiers who died at other times in South Asia, nor indeed of the hundreds of thousands of civilians who died there from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Many of these cemeteries have fallen into a sad state of desolation and disrepair. They are frequently overgrown by jungle; tombs are often crumbling and sometimes being used as a source of building material; some cemeteries are vandalised, encroached on, or even used as latrines; some have entirely disappeared under new roads or housing.

Bacsa ‘s mission is to do what it can to preserve at least some of these cemeteries, and where this is impossible, as it so often is, to record the names of those buried in them. Our logo is an image of a chowkidar or ‘watchman ‘, for Bacsa acts as a kind of watchman over those many thousands who lie ‘gone but not forgotten ‘ in India and elsewhere in South Asia.

British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia

Cemeteries Project

FIBIS has hired a photographer who is currently visiting cemeteries in India and taking two photographs of every gravestone: one of the whole and one of the inscription. Mindful that many Indian cemeteries are in a dilapidated condition that is only going to deteriorate further, we are looking for donations to enable us to continue this important project.

In the meantime, the photographer is receiving from FIBIS a modest fee and necessary expenses for travel. Therefore, we are asking for suggested donations of £3 (Three pounds sterling) for one image or £5 (Five Pounds sterling) for two.

Please support our project

Please consider donating to our project using the button below. If you are ordering photographs, from the list of completed cemeteries below, please email the Cemetery and Image Reference that you require to [email protected] after making your donation and we will arrange for e-mail copies of the photographs to be sent to you.

Sample Images

These are only thumbnail samples. Actual images are much higher quality.

Cemeteries Completed

The following cemeteries have been photographed and indexes can be viewed in the FIBIS database website at the following links: