Clockwise from top left; British India: 15th Ludhiana Sikhs, Sepoy 1888; 27th Light Cavalry, Native 1906 officer; Dutch East Indies: Colonial Army. Infantryman 1900; French Indo-China: Annamite Sharpshooters. Lance-corporal, 1889.
Portrait of Lakshmibai, the Ranee of Jhansi, (c. 1850s).
European penetration of India, which had far-reaching military consequences, began in the 1600s, with the appearance of European trading companies on India’s shores. Initially, the armed forces of the main contenders —the English and the French East India Companies— were not a serious threat. But by the 1720s, the French, balking at the high cost and low survivability of European soldiery in Asia, were recruiting Indian musketeers, whom they called sepoys, after the Persian word spahi, meaning soldier, and training them in the latest European tactical doctrine of close-order drill and volley firing. Battles such as Adyar River in 1746 and Buxar in 1764 proved that small sepoy detachments could defeat much larger Indian hosts. The British copied the French, and both countries took advantage of the political flux resulting from the Mughal empire’s decline to become players in South Asian geopolitics.
The English proved more successful at this, defeating the French twice (1744–1748 and 1749–1754). They then turned their attention to defeating the Indian polities, winning wars against Mysore (1767–1769, 1780– 1784, 1790–1792, 1799), the Marathas (1775–1782, 1803–1805, 1817–1818), the Gurkhas (1814–1816), and the Sikhs (1845–1846, 1848–1849). Each of these wars resulted in the widening of the English East India Company’s (EIC’s) territory. The Marathas and the Sikhs were formidable foes who adopted Western tactics and weaponry. To fight them, the EIC tapped into the military labor market to vastly increase the size of their land forces. By 1796 these numbered 57,000 sepoys, bolstered by an additional 13,000 British troops; by 1856 there were 226,352 sepoys and 38,502 British troops. These were distributed amongst the three “presidency” armies, of Bengal, Bombay (now Mumbai), and Madras. These armies only cooperated during wartime; otherwise they were fairly autonomous. This autonomy extended to recruitment. While the Bombay and Madras armies recruited Indians of many communities and castes, the Bengal army, which was also the largest, increasingly recruited Brahmans (that is, people of the highest-status varna) of the Gangetic heartland. The EIC ensured that sepoy wages were regularly paid, in contrast to the rather haphazard arrangements obtained in the Indian polities. This increased the incentive for Indians to become EIC sepoys. The EIC state financed its land forces by resorting to military fiscalism: It used its army to accrue territory, the revenue from which was used to finance its army.
The Uprising of 1857–1858
By the mid-nineteenth century, sepoy units were commanded by British officers, with a subordinate Indian officer class acting as a crucial liaison between the British officer and the Indian private soldiers, but effectively barred from higher command. In 1857 the Bengal Army’s Hindu and Muslim sepoys rose up against their British officers. The mutiny was sparked by the fears of the sepoys that the British were conspiring to make them transgress their religion through the introduction of new weaponry lubricated with animal fat forbidden by religious law to both Hindus and Muslims. But the military mutiny quickly became a generalized revolt against the EIC. Cantonment (garrison) towns such as Lucknow and Kanpur became centers of revolt, as did the old imperial city of Delhi, where sepoys gathered with vague ideas of restoring the Mughal Empire. The heavily outnumbered British were caught completely off guard. Had the mutinous sepoys attacked Calcutta, the capital of British India, they might have won. As it was, the British were able to rally, relying on Punjabi sepoys and on reinforcements that arrived by sea. That quelling the uprising took a full two years speaks to its seriousness and to the military prowess of the Indian leaders such as Rani (Queen) Lakshmi Bai (1835–1858) of Jhansi, and Tantia Topi (c. 1819–1859).
After the “Mutiny,” as the British termed it, the British Crown took over the Indian empire and its army. Measures were undertaken to prevent another mutiny. The ratio of British to Indian troops was set at one to three, and recruitment, even in the Bombay and Madras armies, was focused more towards the northwest. The Indian military was thus separated from Indian society. British authorities justified this on the basis of the “martial races” ideology, a mixture of practical concerns and Victorian ethnography, which held that in India, “only certain clans and classes . . . [had] . . . the physical courage necessary for the warrior” (MacMunn 1911, 129). These “martial races” included Sikhs, “Punjabi Musalmans” and Nepali Gurkhas. To further ensure against mutinies, the ethnic composition of Army units was strictly monitored.
South Asian Forces Abroad
During the late nineteenth century, South Asian warfare centered on the Indo-Afghan frontier, the scene of the “Great Game,” a rivalry between the Russian and British empires. Over twenty campaigns and the Second Afghan War (1878–1880) were fought in largely fruitless attempts to control the area’s tribes. During this time the cost of the Indian army, which amounted to about 30 percent of the Indian budget, was entirely borne by Indians. Indian forces also participated in military efforts in many parts of the British Empire, mainly in Africa and Asia.
This overseas deployment was greatly increased during World War I (1914–1918), in which India, as a British imperial possession, was committed to the Allies. The unified Indian army’s Meerut and Lahore divisions, as Britain’s strategic reserve, were deployed on the Western Front (France) in 1914–1915. Sepoys also saw action in the disastrous Mesopotamian campaign (1915–1916), in East Africa (1915–1918), and in Palestine (1917– 1918). The prospect of fighting their Ottoman coreligionists caused Muslim sepoys at Singapore to mutiny in 1915. Sepoy recruitment skyrocketed, reaching 10,000 men a month by 1915. By 1918 India had recruited 1.4 million men for the Allied war effort, many from classes previously deemed “unmartial.” In 1917 Indians were allowed into the Indian Army’s officer corps, which had, until then, been “. . . properly reserved for the governing race.” (Sundaram 2002, 75).
After World War I, the army reverted to its frontier warfare role. It was also used to disperse Indian nationalist disturbances, most notoriously at Amritsar in 1919. Some sepoys’ refusal to fire on nationalist demonstrators at Meerut in 1930 indicates that they were becoming nationalist themselves. This period also witnessed the setting up of officer training for Indians in India itself. The British strongly preferred “martial-race” Indians (such as Sikhs and Punjabi Muslims) as officers, and posted them to only 7.5 percent of the army.
During World War II the Indian army again ballooned, to 2.2 million men, and men from non-martial groups were recruited in increasing numbers, though Indian nationalists resented being once again dragged into war without being consulted. Though the Indian army fought in the North African and Italian campaigns, its most significant deployments were in Malaya in 1941–1942 and in Burma (now Myanmar) in 1941–1945. Malaya was a harsh battleground for the Indian army, which was ill-trained and ill-equipped for jungle warfare; 45,000 Indian jawans (soldiers) were captured by the Japanese. Out of this group was formed the Indian National Army (INA), a force allied to the Japanese, whose aim was to gain Indian independence from Britain. Though not a significant military threat, the very existence of such a force was further proof of the upwelling of nationalist feelings in the military and of the fact that, once the war was over, jawans would not stand for continued British rule. After shattering defeats, the Indian army overhauled itself in 1943–1944, and met and defeated the Japanese invasion of northeastern India in 1944.Whereas in 1939 there were only eleven Indian majors, by 1945 40 percent of the Army’s officers were Indian, and there were Indian brigadiers.
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A Woman Warrior Fights the British
Lakshmi Bai stands as a heroine of India for her stirring leadership against the British in the late 1850s. Raised by her widowed father, Lakshmi Bai learned sword-fighting and shooting as a youth. She married the Maharaja of Jhansi (a principality in northern India), but was widowed at age eighteen. Although Lakshmi Bai and an adopted son were the Maharaja’s rightful heirs according to Hindu law (meaning the child could take the throne with Lakshmi Bai ruling in his stead), the British refused to accept them as such and ordered Lakshmi Bai to leave Jhansi. Resisting the British dictum, Lakshmi Bai gathered a volunteer army, training women as well as men for warfare. When the British attacked in 1858, Lakshmi Bai and her army fought back for two weeks. Just before her army’s defeat, Lakshmi Bai donned men’s clothing and strapped her son to her back to go into battle. Holding the reins of her horse between her teeth, she used both her hands for sword-fighting. Although Lakshmi Bai and her forces had to leave Jhansi in defeat, she met up with other rebel forces at a fortress some one hundred miles away. After several more days of fighting, however, Lakshmi Bai died in battle. She continues to be remembered—through story, song, and even a commemorative stamp—as a symbol of Indian resistance to British rule.
