The Indian Army: Recruitment and Composition

The Indian Army was, for the entire period of the British Raj, the principal military instrument of British rule in India. At its peak in the Second World War, the Indian Army numbered more than 2.5 million men, and it had fought on every front of the global war — in France, in East Africa, in the Middle East, in Italy, and above all in Burma, where it played the central role in the defeat of the Japanese. The army was recruited from specific communities and castes, organised around a system of regimental loyalties, and structured to balance the risks of regional rebellion. The recruitment and composition of the Indian Army was, in other words, a political as well as a military question. The British Raj understood, after 1857, that the army on which British rule in India ultimately rested was an army that had to be carefully constructed.

The Legacy of 1857

The British experience in 1857, when the Bengal Army — the largest of the three Presidency Armies — had mutinied and joined the broader rebellion, was a defining moment in the history of the Indian Army. The mutiny revealed, in the most dramatic possible way, the dangers of an army recruited from a single region, with a single language, and with a single set of religious practices. The post-mutiny reconstruction, under the supervision of the Peel Commission of 1859, was a deliberate effort to address these dangers.

The Peel Commission introduced a series of measures designed to prevent a recurrence. The proportion of European to Indian troops in the Bengal Army was increased, and the army was reorganised into a smaller number of larger regiments, with mixed recruitment. The “martial races” theory — the idea that certain castes and communities were inherently more militarily capable than others — was given a more systematic application. The principal “martial races” identified by the British were the Sikhs of the Punjab, the Gurkhas of Nepal, the Pathans of the North-West Frontier, the Rajputs of central India, and the Jats of the Punjab and the United Provinces. The Madras Army and the Bombay Army, which had not mutinied in 1857, were preserved as separate Presidency Armies, but they were also subject to the principles of the Peel Commission.

The “Martial Races” Theory

The “martial races” theory was a distinctly Victorian piece of social Darwinism. The British believed that the Sikhs, the Gurkhas, the Pathans, and the other “martial races” were naturally warlike, naturally loyal, and naturally suited to military service. The theory was used to justify the recruitment of the Indian Army from a relatively small number of communities, and it was used to justify the exclusion of other communities — including the Bengalis, the Madras Hindus, and many of the upper-caste Hindus of the Gangetic plain — from military service.

The “martial races” theory was, in many respects, a self-fulfilling prophecy. The British recruited heavily from the “martial races” and invested in their training and equipment. The result was that the “martial races” did indeed become the most militarily capable communities in India. The “martial races” theory was also, in the longer term, a politically destabilising force. The Punjabi Sikh soldier, the Gurkha, the Pathan, and the Rajput developed a strong sense of identity and a strong sense of grievance against the British. The loyalty of the Indian Army to the British Crown during the First World War was a remarkable achievement. The loyalty of the army to the new dominions of India and Pakistan in 1947 was less certain.

The Composition of the Army

The Indian Army, as it developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was a complex and highly stratified institution. At the top were the British officers, who held the senior ranks and commanded the regiments. The British officer corps was small, perhaps 4,000 in a pre-First World War army of 160,000, and it was recruited from the upper-middle classes of British society. The British officer’s commission was a mark of social distinction, and the Indian Army was one of the most prestigious institutions of the British Raj.

Below the British officers were the Indian officers, who held the junior commissioned ranks. The Indian officer corps, established in 1858 as the “subordinate medical service” and developed over the following decades, was a small but growing body. The first Indian to be granted a King’s Commission, in the sense of full officer status, was in 1917, when the Indian Army was reorganised to meet the demands of the First World War. The first Indian cadet to attend the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, in the same year, was a Sikh from the 34th Sikh Pioneers. The Indian officer corps grew rapidly in the 1920s and 1930s, and by 1947 it included some 8,000 Indian officers.

Below the Indian officers were the Viceroy’s Commissioned Officers (VCOs), the Indian equivalent of the British NCOs. The VCOs — Jemadars, Subedars, Subedar-Majors — held a position of considerable authority within the Indian Army. The Indian soldier — the sepoy — was at the bottom of the army hierarchy. The sepoy was paid a wage that was, in real terms, modest, and he was subject to a strict military discipline. The army was, in many respects, a society in miniature, with its own internal hierarchy, its own culture, and its own rituals.

The Army and the Empire

The Indian Army was, as David French has argued in The British Way in Warfare, 1688–2000 (the relevant chapter on the Indian Army), one of the most effective military forces in the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Indian Army was the principal instrument of British imperial expansion in Asia: it fought in the Second Afghan War of 1878–1880, in the two Anglo-Boer Wars of 1880–1881 and 1899–1902, in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900–1901, in the conquest of Upper Burma in 1885, in the expedition to Tibet of 1903–1904, and in the long pacification of the North-West Frontier that was the major military undertaking of the British Raj in the first half of the twentieth century.

The Indian Army was also a major instrument of British power projection. Indian troops served in China in 1900, in France in 1914, in East Africa in 1916, in Palestine in 1917, in Mesopotamia in 1917, and in the Russian Civil War in 1918. Indian troops served in every major British campaign of the First World War, and the Indian Army was the largest single component of the British forces in the war. The Indian Army was, in this respect, one of the principal military forces of the Allied side in the war, and the contribution of the Indian Army to the British war effort was a central element in the British decision to grant India dominion status after the war.

The First World War and Its Consequences

The First World War was the moment when the Indian Army was tested on a continental scale, and the moment when the political consequences of the army’s loyalty became apparent. The Indian Army, which numbered some 160,000 men at the outbreak of war, was expanded to more than 800,000 by the end of the war, and Indian troops served in France, in East Africa, in Egypt, in Palestine, in Mesopotamia, and in the Ottoman Empire. The casualties of the Indian Army in the war were substantial — perhaps 60,000 dead, more than 100,000 wounded — and the contribution of the Indian Army to the British war effort was an important part of the British decision to participate in the post-war settlement.

The post-war settlement, embodied in the Government of India Act of 1919, was a major step in the direction of Indian self-government, and it was, in part, a recognition of the Indian contribution to the British war effort. The Indian Army continued to be the principal military instrument of British rule in India, but the political context of the army was changing. The Indian National Congress, the All-India Muslim League, and the other political organisations that had grown up during the war were increasingly demanding a greater Indian role in the army. The Indianisation of the army, begun in the 1920s, was a slow but steady process, and by 1947 the Indian Army was a substantially Indian-officered force.

The Second World War and Partition

The Indian Army was the largest volunteer force in history during the Second World War, with more than 2.5 million men under arms by the end of the war. The army fought in every theatre of the war, and the role of the Indian Army in the Burma campaign, in particular, was central to the British victory. The Indian Army was, in the words of the historian of the Burma campaign, “the largest single component of the Allied forces in South-East Asia.” The 14th Army, the principal British force in Burma, was predominantly Indian.

The partition of the army in 1947, with the division of British India into India and Pakistan, was one of the most difficult tasks of the transfer of power. The army was divided roughly in proportion to the Muslim and non-Muslim populations of British India, with the predominantly Muslim regiments from the Punjab and the North-West Frontier going to Pakistan and the predominantly Hindu and Sikh regiments going to India. The partition of the army was complicated by the simultaneous partition of the country and by the large-scale communal violence of 1947, and the task was made more difficult by the murder of many Sikh soldiers and officers in the early months of partition. The partition of the army was, in the end, accomplished with remarkable speed and discipline, and the two new armies went on to serve the two new states.

Historiographical Note

The historiography of the Indian Army has been transformed since the 1990s. The older British tradition, of which the work of T. A. Heathcote and the official histories of the various campaigns is representative, treated the Indian Army as a fundamentally British institution that happened to be staffed by Indians. The post-independence Indian historiography, of which the work of the Indian military historians and the contributors to the Indian Journal of History of Science is representative, has insisted on the Indian character of the army. The current generation of historians, of whom the work of David French, Roger Beaumont, and the contributors to the Oxford History of the British Empire are representative, has produced a more nuanced picture. The Indian Army was, on this more recent view, a genuinely imperial institution: it was British-led but Indian-manned, and it served both British and Indian interests at different times. The “martial races” theory, in particular, has been the subject of substantial revisionist work: the categories were not as rigid as the British believed, and the recruitment of the army was, in practice, more flexible than the official doctrine suggested.

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