Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1994 Bookmatter TheSepoyAndTheRaj
1994 Bookmatter TheSepoyAndTheRaj
Peter Bell
CHAMBERLAIN, GERMANY AND JAPAN, 1933-34
G. H. Bennett
BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY DURING THE CURZON PERIOD,
1919-24
David Clayton
IMPERIALISM REVISITED: Political and Economic Relations
between Britain and China, 1950-54
John P. S. Gearson
HAROLD MACMILLAN AND THE BERLIN WALL CRISIS,
1958-62
Kendrick Oliver
KENNEDY, MACMILLAN AND THE NUCLEAR TEST-BAN
DEBATE, 1961-63
Simon Trew
BRITAIN, MIHAILOVIC AND THE CHETNIKS, 1941-42
Steven Weiss
ALLIES IN CONFLICT: Anglo-American Strategic Negotiations,
1938-44
David Omissi
Department of History and
Centre for Indian Studies
University of Hull
~
~ in association with
~ PALGRAVEMACMILLAN
©David Omissi 1994
Published by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98
In Memory
of
My Parents
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1 Recruiting Strategy 1
Mutiny and Manpower 3
In Search of the Martial Races 10
Colonial Doctrine and Colonial Strategy 23
Criticism and Consolidation 35
Conclusion 43
2 Enlisting Strategies 47
Leaving the Land 48
The Tangible Rewards 54
Incentive Structures 66
Conclusion 74
3 Fighting Spirit 76
Honour and Shame 77
Identities 84
Sahib, Sirdar, King 103
Conclusion 111
4 Dissent 113
From Depression to Desertion 114
Mutiny 131
Conclusion 150
ix
List of Abbreviations
AD Army Department
ADC Aide-de-Camp
AG(I) Adjutant-General (India)
ANZAC Australian and New Zealand Army Corps
BEF British Expeditionary Force
CAB Cabinet Office and Records, Public Record Office
CIGS Chief of the Imperial General Staff
CGSI Chief of the General Staff, India
CID Committee of Imperial Defence
CIH Central India Horse
C-in-C Commander-in-Chief
Cmd. Parliamentary Command Paper
CNS Chief of the Naval Staff (First Sea Lord)
co Commanding Officer
DAAG Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General
DAG Deputy Adjutant-General
DCIGS Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff
DCNS Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff
DMOI Director of Military Operations and Intelligence
PO Foreign Office and Records, Public Record Office
FPD Foreign and Political Department, Government of India
GI Government of India
GOC General Officer Commanding
GS General Staff
HD Home Department, Government of India
ICO Indian Commissioned Officer
ICS Indian Civil Service
IDC Imperial Defence College
IMA Indian Military Academy
IMR Indian Military Requirements Committee and Papers
10 India Office and Records
KCO King's Commissioned Officer
KGO King George's Own
L/MIL Military Department and Records, India Office
L/P&J Political and Judicial Department and Records, India
Office
X
List of Abbreviations xi
MD Military Department
NCO Non-Commissioned Officer
NWFP North West Frontier Province
oc Officer Commanding
OTC Officer Training Corps
PRO Public Record Office
QMG Quarter-Master General
RA Royal Artillery
RAF Royal Air Force
SSI Secretary of State for India
UP United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh)
uss Under-Secretary of State
UTC University Training Corps
VCIGS Vice-Chief of the Imperial General Staff
vco Viceroy's Commissioned Officer
wo War Office and Records, Public Record Office
Glossary of Indian and
Military Terms
xii
Glossary of Indian and Military Terms xiii
When I started this book, I feared it was too ambitious a project for a
young historian with no background in South Asian studies; having
completed it, I can see that my fears were justified. Without the help
of many people, it would not have come even to this imperfect
fruition. Its defects are all my own.
My first acknowledgement goes to Michael Dockrill, the general
editor of the series in which this book appears - it is thanks to his
goodwill and support that it has eventually seen the light of day.
Peter Marshall and John MacKenzie offered timely advice at the
outset of my project, and made constructive comments as it ran its
course. David Arnold suggested many fruitful questions, encour-
aged me when I feared I would never find the answers, and offered
perceptive criticism when I thought I had. I learned a great deal
from exchanging ideas with Jan-Georg Deutsch, Douglas Peers and
Heike Schmidt, and I was happy to borrow many of their insights. I
might have missed some useful sources had not Sandra Gregory,
Lawrence James, David Killingray, Mahesh Rangarajan, Charlie
Smith and Megan Vaughan drawn my attention to them.
Apurba Kundu and Katherine Turner read the entire typescript
and pointed out countless ways in which it could be improved.
Marcus Ackroyd, Judith Brown, Bob Currie, David Edgerton,
Barbara English, Joshua Getzler, Ramchandra Guha, Tony Hen-
derson, Thea Happen, Tony Kirk-Green, Dirk Kolff, Dominic
Omissi, Nicholas Owen, Douglas Reid, Pritam Singh, Andrew
Thompson and Brian Wilkinson each read one or more chapters and
between them suggested many changes for the better.
My undergraduate students at Oxford and Hull made many
robust comments on my work. I am particularly grateful to Reena
Dhanda and Richard Hesp for reading the earlier chapters, and to
Fiona Thomson for providing what she described - unforgettably -
as 'the view from the pond'.
I learned much when I presented my work for discussion at sem-
inars, workshops and conferences. This forced me to clarify my
ideas, to defend them in hot debate, and to modify them upon
cooler reflection. For this I am grateful to the Commonwealth and
South Asian History Seminars at the University of Oxford; the
xvi
Acknowledgements xvii
This book is a social and political history of the Indian army during
the apogee of colonial rule.
The Indian Army is of especial interest to historians of empire
because of its central yet deeply ambiguous place within the
colonial order. With the army absorbing up to half of all central gov-
ernment revenue, military policy expressed, with especial clarity,
the priorities and concerns of the colonial state. Armed force was
always a mainstay of imperial rule. British domination in India was
largely the product of military conquest, a process to which armies
were clearly central. Colonial rule retained much of its military and
coercive character even after annexation had given way to settled
control; armed force remained the last - and often the first- resort of
the colonial power when faced with domestic unrest.
But the Indian Army was itself an example as well as an instrument
of colonial control. Although the army was created to serve colonial
ends, and led by a white elite, the men in its ranks were always
drawn from local Indian communities. The relationship between
British officers and Indian sepoys was a microcosm of the wider
colonial order. Drilled, uniformed and quartered in exclusively mili-
tary spaces, Indian soldiers were the indigenous group perhaps
most closely subjected to colonial discipline, regulation and surveil-
lance. Lastly, and most paradoxically of all, the Indian Army was a
major potential threat to the Raj which it defended. In 1857, the Brit-
ish were almost driven from the subcontinent by the rebellion of
their Indian troops, and the spectre of another mutiny haunted colo-
nial rulers until the end of the Raj.
Because Indian soldiers were essential yet potentially dangerous,
their activities were more closely scrutinized and more carefully
recorded than those of most other elements of the indigenous popu-
lation. The written evidence about the Indian Army is accordingly
very rich. There are many thousand relevant files in the India Office
Library alone (besides other British and Indian archives). Between
them, they contain millions of documents, the very quantity of
material bearing witness to the central place of the army in colonial
concerns. A lack of evidence produced by subordinate groups often
hampers enquiry into indigenous perceptions and mentalities
xviii
Preface xix