The Indian Army in the World Wars

The Indian Army was the largest single volunteer force in either world war. In 1914–1918, some 1.4 million Indians served, of whom perhaps 60,000 were killed. In 1939–1945, some 2.5 million Indians served, of whom perhaps 90,000 were killed. The Indian soldier fought in France and Belgium, in Gallipoli, in Mesopotamia and Palestine, in East and North Africa, in Italy, and in the long Burma campaign against the Japanese. The Indian contribution was, in the words of David French in Raising Churchill’s Army (2000), “the most important single element in the British imperial war effort.” The argument of this article is that the two Indian war efforts were also the two most important political facts of the late Raj: they were the moments when the political consequences of the Indian military contribution became most visible, and they were the moments when the soldiers themselves began to ask what the war was for.

The Indian Army on the Eve of the First World War

The Indian Army on the eve of the First World War was a substantial and professional force. The regular army numbered some 155,000 men, of whom perhaps 40,000 were deployed overseas at any one time. The army was recruited from specific “martial races” — Sikhs, Gurkhas, Pathans, Punjabis, Rajputs, and Jats — and it was organised into a number of regiments, each with its own distinct identity. The army was commanded by British officers; the Indian officer corps was small but growing, and the King’s Commission Indian Officers, established in 1917, were the first formal recognition of the Indian right to command. The army was, in the words of the military historian T. A. Heathcote in The Military in British India (1977), “the most effective military force in the British Empire.”

The Kitchener reforms of 1903–1909, named for Lord Kitchener, the commander-in-chief, had reorganised the Indian Army into a smaller number of larger regiments. The reforms had produced a more professional and more balanced force, and the army was, by 1914, the principal instrument of British imperial power in Asia. The loyalty of the army to the British Crown was, in the early twentieth century, the foundation of the British position in India, and the loyalty had been built up over the previous half-century by a deliberate policy of recruitment, training, and reward. The Indian soldier, in return for his service, was paid better than the Indian civilian, and the army was, in the early twentieth century, one of the most respected professions in India.

The Indian Army in the First World War

The Indian Army was rapidly expanded at the outbreak of the First World War, from some 155,000 men in 1914 to more than 800,000 men by 1918. The expansion was a major undertaking, and it required the recruitment of large numbers of new soldiers, the training of new officers, and the provision of new equipment. The Indian Army’s contribution to the war effort was substantial: Indian troops served in France, in East Africa, in the Middle East, in Gallipoli, and in China.

The Indian Corps in France in 1914–1915 was the first major Indian contribution to the Western Front. The Indian Corps, which consisted of two infantry divisions and a cavalry brigade, was deployed in the Ypres Salient in the autumn of 1914 and suffered heavy casualties in the fighting around Neuve Chapelle in October 1914 and at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. The Indian Corps was withdrawn from France in 1915 and redeployed in the Middle East, partly in response to the heavy casualties, partly in response to the realisation that the European-style industrial war was not the war the Indian soldier was best equipped to fight.

The Indian contribution to the Middle East was the largest single component of the British imperial war effort. The Indian Army served in Mesopotamia, Palestine, and East Africa, and it was the principal military force in the British campaign against the Ottoman Empire. The British campaign in Mesopotamia, fought largely by Indian troops, was the most ambitious British military commitment of the war after the Western Front. The British capture of Baghdad in March 1917, accomplished by the Indian Expeditionary Force D under General Stanley Maude, was the decisive moment of the campaign, and the fall of Baghdad was the most substantial British military achievement of the war. The Indian casualties in Mesopotamia were substantial — perhaps 11,000 dead, mostly from disease — and the campaign was the most difficult of the British campaigns in the war.

The Indian Army in the Second World War

The Indian Army in the Second World War was the largest single military force in the British Empire. The army numbered some 200,000 men in 1939 and was expanded to more than 2.5 million by 1945. The Indian Army’s most important contribution was in the Burma campaign, where the 14th Army — “the Forgotten Army” of the official history — was largely Indian. The 14th Army fought a long and difficult campaign against the Japanese in some of the most difficult terrain in the world, and the Indian 4th, 5th, 7th, 17th, 19th, 20th, 23rd, 25th, 26th, 36th, and 46th Divisions, and the 50th Indian Parachute Brigade, served in the campaign. The 14th Army suffered perhaps 30,000 dead, mostly from disease, and the Burma campaign was the most difficult and most costly of the British campaigns in the Second World War. The official historian S. W. Kirby, in The War Against Japan (1957), was one of the few British writers of the post-war period to give the Indian contribution its proper weight.

The Indian Army also served in the Middle East, in North Africa, in East Africa, in Italy, and in France. The Indian 4th, 5th, 8th, 10th, and 11th Divisions served in the Middle East; the 4th, 5th, and 10th Divisions served in the North African campaign, and they suffered heavy casualties at the Battle of El Alamein in October–November 1942. The Indian 8th and 10th Divisions served in the Italian campaign, and the 4th and 6th Divisions served in the Far East. The Indian soldier’s contribution to the war effort was, in its scale, the most substantial of any imperial force in the British war effort, and the contribution was the foundation of the post-war British argument for Indian self-government.

The Political Consequences

The Indian Army’s contribution to the two world wars had substantial political consequences. In the First World War, the Indian contribution was the principal argument for the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms of 1919, which introduced dyarchy in the provinces, and for the Government of India Act of 1935, which established provincial self-government. In the Second World War, the Indian contribution was the principal argument for the British decision to grant India independence in 1947. The political consequence was not, however, the only consequence. The Indian soldier, having served in France in 1914 and in Burma in 1945, was a different man from the soldier of 1914. The Indian National Army, the Quit India Movement, the INA trials, the Indian naval mutiny of February 1946 — all were the political consequences of the Indian war effort.

The Indian soldier’s loyalty to the British Crown during the two world wars was a remarkable achievement, and the loyalty was the principal reason the British were able to fight the wars. The loyalty was, however, also a major political liability: the Indian soldiers who had fought for the British in the wars were unwilling to accept the continuation of the British Raj after the wars. The post-war political settlement in India was, in significant part, a consequence of the war experiences of the Indian soldiers. The most careful account of the political consequences is to be found in the work of David French, particularly The British Way in Warfare, 1688–2000 (2011), and in the more recent work of Srinath Raghavan in India’s War (2016).

The Indian National Army

The Indian National Army (INA) was the most consequential exception to the pattern of Indian Army loyalty. Raised by Subhas Chandra Bose from among the Indian prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in Malaya, Burma, and Singapore, the INA fought alongside the Japanese in the Burma campaign. The INA’s existence was a major element in the political changes in India during the war, and the British decision to hold the trials of the INA officers in the Red Fort in Delhi, between November 1945 and May 1946, produced a major political crisis. The British decision to release the INA prisoners in January 1946 was a major reversal, and it was the consequence of the British recognition that the INA’s cause had substantial popular support in India.

The INA trials, and the political crisis they produced, were the moment when the British position in India became untenable. The historian Hugh Toye, in The Springing Tiger (1959), was the first to give the INA’s story its proper weight; Joyce Lebra’s Forgotten Army (1994) and the more recent work of the British military historian Nick Lloyd have produced a more integrated picture. The INA’s story is, in many respects, the story of the Indian Army in the two world wars: the loyalty of the soldiers was the foundation of the British position, and the limits of the loyalty were the foundation of the British withdrawal.

The British Indian Army and the Partition

The partition of the Indian Army in 1947 was one of the most difficult tasks of the British withdrawal. The army, which had numbered some 2.5 million men at the end of the war, was divided roughly in proportion to the Muslim and non-Muslim populations of British India. The predominantly Muslim regiments from the Punjab and the North-West Frontier went to Pakistan; the predominantly Hindu and Sikh regiments went to India. The partition of the army was complicated by the simultaneous partition of the country, and the large-scale communal violence of 1947 made the task even more difficult. Sikh and Rajput soldiers of the former British Indian Army, serving in mixed units, killed each other in some of the worst incidents of the partition violence.

The partition of the army was accomplished with remarkable speed and discipline. The two new armies went on to serve the two new states, and the British withdrawal from India was, in the end, achieved without the disintegration of the military instrument. The Indian Army’s loyalty to the British Crown, which had been a major element of British imperial power, was transferred, in the end, to the two new states of India and Pakistan. The transfer is one of the most remarkable achievements of the British Indian Army, and it is one of the most under-appreciated consequences of the partition.

Historiographical Note

The historiography of the Indian Army in the world wars has been substantially revised since the 1990s. The older tradition, of which T. A. Heathcote’s The Military in British India (1977) is the most distinguished example, treated the Indian Army as a British institution staffed by Indians. The post-independence Indian historiography, of which the work of the Indian military historians and the contributors to the Indian defence journals is representative, insisted on the Indian character of the army. The most recent generation — David French, Roger Beaumont, Srinath Raghavan, Nick Lloyd — has produced a more integrated picture in which the Indian Army is treated as a genuinely imperial institution whose character was shaped by the British, the Indian, and the wider colonial experience. The current debate is over the question of the army’s role in the British decision to withdraw: was the Indian Army’s loyalty the principal reason the British held India for as long as they did, or was the loyalty a constraint that the British recognised and worked around? The most recent work, of which French’s The British Way in Warfare is the most distinguished example, has moved towards the second answer.

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