In 1600 Elizabeth I granted a charter to ‘The Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies’, the origin of what was to become the Honourable East India Company (EIC) and enjoy a monopoly of British trade with the area between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn. This arrangement meant that the government could profit from mercantile activities while maintaining a useful distance from its merchant adventurers. The Portuguese and the Dutch were already established but it was the French, also aggressive interlopers in an area which till then had a low level of European penetration, that most seriously challenged the EIC. Beginning with the achievements of Clive, a policy of divide and rule accompanied by military action that was sharp in both senses of the word gradually won territorial dominance in the pursuit of trade. Much policy did indeed find itself in orbit between Mars and Mammon, as Douglas Peers's account of army and the state in India 1819-35 suggests. The separation of company and government was more apparent than real throughout this period, but if the empire was not won in a fit of absence of mind, it certainly did not grow according to any grand design. Like the later French experience in Algeria, or the conquests of Caesar in Gaul, it was the work of adventurers at the periphery who tended to present the metropolitan capital with faits accomplis.
The EIC consolidated its position until, by Victoria's coronation in 1837, it ruled directly, or through alliances with local potentates, an area of 1.6 million square miles (4.1 million sq km), which stretched from the Indus in the west to Burma in the east. It encompassed high mountain ranges, sweltering lowland plains, and humid jungles and a population of some 400 million people as diverse as the geography. As the EIC's writ spread across the subcontinent, it gradually became more akin to an agent of imperial rule than a commercial enterprise. Nonetheless, its military requirements plus its desire for independence from political oversight meant that it had to recruit, train, and equip its own armed forces, and in the process the Indian army was born, eventually to outnumber its British equivalent two to one.
As V. G. Kiernan has observed, ‘on the whole the slowly evolved European military pattern proved strikingly adaptable’ to India, and what emerged was a cultural composite. On the one hand it embodied traditions that pre-dated British arrival (most notably that of mercenary service), and sanctified practices that the occupier had little real chance of changing. These were most obvious in matters like uniform and rank titles, but went deeper. Regimental durbars, semi-formal councils, enabled men to air complaints outside the usual hierarchy, and in WW I Indian soldiers on the western front were issued with the narcotic hemp they were accustomed to chew. The mercenary tradition meant that discussions over pay and allowances sometimes induced what the British might ill-advisedly regard as mutinies, but were often closer to labour disputes. On the other it showed how ‘Entry into a powerful army, or respected regiment, even in the service of foreigners, could satisfy a craving, by conferring a share in a common purpose and spirit, heightened by martial music, banners, uniforms.’ Generations of British officers were transformed by their own experience of the Indian army, and the relationship between officers and men, when it worked well, as it so often did, embodied close familial links. When Roberts was C-in-C he retired to his quarters after an inspection, only to be waited on by senior Indian officers, who wished ‘as private persons to have a confab with the War Lord’. Told that this was impossible, they replied: ‘But we know him privately. Know him well and he knows us; even our families he knows.’ They felt that he was their bhaiband, their brother in arms. The system had its darker side, and George Orwell, serving in the Burma police, complained that he was ‘a creature of the despotism, a pukka sahib, tied tighter than a monk or a savage by an unbreakable system of tabus’.
EIC authority was indirectly subject to the British government and it ruled India through the three presidencies of Bombay, Madras, and Bengal, each of which maintained forces for internal and external defence. The backbone of the EIC military system was the Indian regular soldier or sepoy (from the Persian sipahi), serving under mainly British officers and mainly Indian NCOs. British officers, trained at the EIC's ‘military seminary’ at Addiscombe, held their commissions from the EIC's court of directors and enjoyed the right of command over British troops, though only as long as they were east of Suez. Indian officers were commissioned from the ranks, and the most senior Indian officer ranked below the most junior British. The symbiosis of British and EIC government was illustrated by the fact that regular British army units were required to serve in India, at the EIC's expense, and were distinguished from EIC troops by being known as king's or queen's regiments. This system meant that greater numbers of regular units could be employed than London was prepared to pay for, and in time Indian army troops became the backbone of Britain's imperial military and sustained the empire, serving throughout the globe, though their use against enemies of European stock was often contentious. It was the issue of overseas service that contributed to the pivotal challenge faced by the British in India.
The proximate cause of the Indian Mutiny was a cartridge used in the Enfield rifle supposedly coated in pig and cow grease, offensive to both Muslims and Hindus. In fact the celebrated cartridge was just the tip of the iceberg as far as discontent was concerned. The matter of caste-threatening service overseas was also important, exacerbated by the religious proselytism that accompanied a new generation of self-conscious imperialists, combined with concerns over service conditions, growing racism among whites, and fury among local princes at their loss of power to the EIC. The mutiny was confined to the Bengal army and was largely suppressed by units from the others, particularly from the quite recently conquered ‘martial races’ like the Sikhs (see Sikh wars).
After the mutiny Britain assumed direct rule over the subcontinent through a governor-general, often (though without constitutional foundation) termed the viceroy. EIC native regiments transferred their allegiance to the crown, the EIC's European troops were re-formed as British regiments, and the regular army was posted to India with greater frequency to diminish over-reliance on native troops. This resulted in many British soldiers serving a proportion of their enlistment in India even with the introduction of the short-service system in 1870: service in India was to leave an enduring mark on the British army's slang. The Indian regiments were also reorganized, and the number of men under arms reduced. The old Bengali army in particular saw attempts to mix different castes together in regiments in order to prevent high-caste men from a particular locality dominating units. Company artillery was quietly subsumed by the Royal Artillery, most Indian army artillery units were disbanded, and for the remainder of the 19th century the infantry was generally equipped with a firearm only after the British army had discarded it for an improved weapon. The separate presidency armies were combined in 1895, and regiments were renumbered to produce a unified list.
By this time recruitment had been modified to conform with the ‘martial races’ theory, popular with Roberts, which suggested that men from central, northern, and western India were by nature liable to make the best soldiers. There was abundant evidence to the contrary. One experienced officer protested: ‘I cannot admit for one moment that anything has occurred to disclose the fact that the Madras sepoy is inferior as a fighting man. The facts of history warrant us in assuming the contrary.’ Gradually regiments and companies recruited from classes which Roberts did not approve of were replaced by those he did, and men like Pathans, Sikhs, Jats, Dogras, and Rajputs filled the army's ranks. Even if the theory which underpinned the recruitment of ‘martial races’ was false, there is abundant evidence, even in letters written by Indian soldiers serving in the unfamiliar misery of the western front in WW I, of the importance of class or family military traditions in promoting cohesion.
The Indian army was regularly engaged in combat and was a source of operational feedback to the less tested British, for example in the introduction of khaki uniforms. It was routinely preoccupied with the suspected Russian threat to India, long a defining feature of sometimes disastrous policy towards Afghanistan and the North-West frontier. The Indian army formed the bulk of Britain's imperial troops and fought in Egypt (see Egyptian and Sudanese campaigns), and in the Burma and Opium wars. However, despite reforms introduced by Kitchener in the early 20th century the Indian army was not well suited for use in major war. During WW I an Indian corps served in France in 1914-15 and a cavalry corps remained there throughout the war. The campaign in Mesopotamia involved a majority of Indian troops, and in all nearly 1 million Indians served outside their own country. Their performance was patchy, often first-rate, but sometimes less so, partly because of the unfamiliar terrain and climate in France and the problem of producing sufficient officer reinforcements who could speak the language of their men. Discipline sometimes wavered, most seriously when a battalion mutinied at Singapore in February 1915: 47 of its members were shot.
Following the end of WW I the Indian army returned to peacetime garrison duties and intermittent fighting on the frontier, and began to show some of the strains resulting from the Congress Party's demands for Indian independence. Ironically the Amritsar massacre was largely carried out by Indian troops. The years 1923-32 witnessed a spate of political assassinations and terrorist activity, while Gandhi began his second campaign of civil disobedience, all of which put pressure upon an army often called upon to assist the civil power. The slow process of ‘Indianizing’ the officer corps had already begun when, in 1917, ten places at the Royal Military College Sandhurst were set aside for Indian cadets. In 1923 it was decided to concentrate Indian officers into eight units, a policy which was eventually abandoned in favour of granting Indians commissions more widely.
The outbreak of WW II saw the army again called on to deploy outside India. Indian divisions were committed to Eritrea against the Italian army in the East African campaign, and served as part of the Eighth Army in the Western Desert and later in the Italian campaign, where they played a gallant part in the bitter fighting at Cassino. With the Japanese entry into the war in December 1941 the land defence of the subcontinent became the priority, and there was an early setback in Malaya with the surrender of Singapore (see Malaya and Singapore campaign) and capture of many Indian troops, most of them from units whose quality reflected the demands which had already been placed on the Indian army.
On the grounds that my enemy's enemy is my friend, the Bengali politician Subhas Chandra Bose recruited the Indian National Army (INA) from Indian army POWs in Japanese hands, having first helped form the Indian legion for the Germans in Europe from those captured in North Africa. During the war, a famine with one of the largest death tolls in history was permitted to devastate Bengal, an event that is seldom given the attention it deserves by British historians. If the aim was to ensure that the civilian population would not have the energy to rebel, it certainly succeeded, although there is little evidence that Bose's appeals reached a mass audience. It also greatly complicated morale and logistical problems for the Indian army on the eastern frontier, since food convoys had to be escorted through the afflicted area. Yet the defection of some Indian soldiers to the INA was only part of the story. The captured 3rd Cavalry held together in captivity largely because of the influence of two of its Indian officers. Capt Hari Badwhar was confined in an iron cage in which he could neither stand up nor stretch out. Captive Gurkhas were so impressed that they asked that he should be made an honorary officer in their regiment.
The Burma campaign was fought under the most difficult of environmental conditions, and the Indian army played a major part in it. Despite considerable early difficulties the Indian army rose to the occasion, and by 1944-5 its fighting achievements were consistently impressive. Indeed, many saw the Mandalay/Meiktila attack as its apotheosis, and John Masters, regular officer turned accomplished novelist, who movingly described this collection of races and religions going down to the assault through the choking dust, paid tribute to ‘the largest volunteer army the world had ever known’.
After the Japanese capitulation in September 1945 there was no real hope of returning to business as before in India. The dramatic events of the preceding six years and the blow that these had inflicted on British prestige, coupled with the near-bankruptcy of the metropolitan power, meant that the best that could be achieved was graceful withdrawal, a difficult task performed controversially under Mountbatten. With independence on 14 August 1947 the Indian army ceased to be an adjunct to the British empire and provided large, experienced, and well-equipped forces for both India and Pakistan. However, the process of partition was agonizing, not least for British officers witnessing the division of the force they had spent their careers in, and which often represented a long tradition of family service. Perhaps a million and a half lives were lost, and the scars inflicted on the subcontinent by partition and subsequent armed clashes have yet to heal.
As India moved out of Britain's orbit in the following decades her army began to form a separate identity and structure, particularly in the formation of paramilitary and heavily armed police units for internal security purposes. Increasing use was made of Soviet weaponry such as T-55 and T-72 tanks and BMPs and BRDMs (APCs) although western European weaponry in the form of Carl Gustav and Abbot self-propelled (SP) artillery was also deployed. The army's use of equipment from both blocs during the Cold War reflected India's position as a leader of the non-aligned nations.
Conflict with Pakistan and China has been a long running feature of Indian politics since independence and has occasionally spilled over into armed confrontation in the Sino-Indian and India-Pakistan wars. The invasion of East Pakistan to set up the independent client state of Bangladesh in 1971 was even in its own way imperialist. Continuous low- to medium-level conflict in Kashmir has meant that the independent Indian army has been involved in fighting for much of its lifetime and has developed awesome expertise in arctic and mountain warfare. India is also one of the few admitted nuclear powers, with short- and medium-range missiles. Pakistan has developed a similar capability and as of writing if the world is ever to see the use of tactical nuclear weapons in war, it is most likely to occur in the subcontinent. With the sharp shrinkage of the Russian army, the all-volunteer Indian army, at 980, 000 strong, is now the world's second largest, after China, with five regional commands, four field armies, and eleven corps and a martial tradition equalled by few.
Bibliography
- Heathcote, T. A., The Indian Army (Newton Abbot, 1974).
- Kiernan, V. G., Colonial Empires and Armies 1815-1960 (London, 1982).
- Mason, Philip, A Matter of Honour (London, 1974).
- Omissi, David, The Sepoy and the Raj (London, 1995).
- Peers, Douglas M., Between Mars and Mammon (London, 1995).
- Yapp, M. E., Strategies of British India (Oxford, 1980)
— Jon Robb-Webb/Richard Holmes
