British Indian Army

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Indian Army
Ensign of the Indian Army
Active1895–1947
Country India
Allegiance British Empire
TypeArmy
SizeFirst World War: c. 1,750,000
Sir Edward Quinan
Sir William Lockhart
Insignia
War flag
Badge

The Indian Army during British rule, also referred to as the British Indian Army, was the main military force of the

Second World War
.

The term Indian Army appears to have been first used informally, as a collective description of the

Army of India (1903–1947) which was the Indian Army plus the British Army in India (British units sent to India), which was later split into the Indian Army and the Pakistan Army
.

History

6th Madras Light Cavalry
, c. 1845

The Indian Army has its origins in the years after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, often called the Indian Mutiny in British histories, when in 1858 the Crown took over direct rule of British India from the East India Company. Before 1858, the precursor units of the Indian Army were units controlled by the Company and were paid for by their profits. These operated alongside units of the British Army, funded by the British government in London.[3]

The three Presidency armies remained separate forces, each with its own

Supply and Transport, and Pay branches were by then unified.[6]

The Punjab Frontier Force was under the direct control of the

Punjab during peacetime until 1886, when it came under the Commander-in-Chief, India.[6] The Hyderabad Contingent and other local corps remained under direct governmental control.[7] Standing higher formations – divisions and brigades – were abandoned in 1889.[8] No divisional staffs were maintained in peacetime, and troops were dispersed throughout the sub-continent, with internal security as their main function. In 1891 the three staff corps were merged into one Indian Staff Corps.[7]

Two years later the

lieutenant general, who answered directly to the C-in-C, India.[9]

The Presidency armies were abolished with effect from 1 April 1895 by a notification of the Government of India through Army Department Order Number 981 dated 26 October 1894, unifying the three Presidency armies into a single Indian Army.[10] The armies were amalgamated into four commands, Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western. The Indian Army, like the Presidency armies, continued to provide armed support to the civil authorities, both in combating banditry and in case of riots and rebellion. One of the first external operations the new unified army faced was the Boxer Rebellion in China from 1899 to 1901.

Kitchener reforms

The Kitchener reforms began in 1903 when

Punjab Frontier Force, the Hyderabad Contingent
and other local forces, into one Indian Army.

The principles underlying the reforms were that the defence of the

North-West Frontier against foreign aggression was the army's primary role and that all units were to have training and experience in that role on that frontier. Furthermore, the army's organisation should be the same in peace as in war, and maintaining internal security was for the army a secondary role, in support of the police.[11]

Lord Kitchener found the army scattered across the country in stations at brigade or regimental strength, and in effect, providing garrisons for most of the major cities.[8] The reformed Indian Army was to be stationed in operational

Bombay – MhowQuetta axis.[12] However, the cost of abandoning some thirty-four stations and building new ones in the proposed corps areas was considered prohibitive, and that aspect of the plan had to be modified.[13]

Under the compromise adopted in 1905, the four existing commands were reduced to three, and together with Army

Headquarters, arranged in ten standing divisions and four independent brigades. The commands comprised: Northern Command, which consisted of the 1st (Peshawar) Division, the 2nd (Rawalpindi) Division, the 3rd (Lahore) Division, the Kohat Brigade, the Bannu Brigade, and the Derajat Brigade; Western Command, which consisted of the 4th (Quetta) Division, the 5th (Mhow) Division, the 6th (Poona) Division, and the Aden Brigade, located in Aden in the Arabian Peninsula; and Eastern Command, which consisted of the 7th (Meerut) Division and the 8th (Lucknow) Division
.

Army Headquarters retained the

infantry division, a cavalry brigade, and a number of troops for internal security or local frontier defence. Permanent divisional commands were formed with an establishment of staff officers under a major general.[13]

117th Mahrattas at a fort in the North West Frontier, India, 1909

After the reforms ended in 1909, the Indian Army was organised along British lines, although it was always behind in terms of equipment. An Indian Army division consisted of three brigades each of four battalions. Three of these battalions were of the Indian Army, and one British. The Indian battalions were often segregated, with companies of different tribes, castes or religions. One and a half million volunteers came forward from the estimated population of 315 million in the Indian subcontinent.

Regimental battalions were not permanently allocated to particular divisions or brigades, but instead spent some years in one formation, and were then posted to another elsewhere. This rotating arrangement was intended both to provide all units with experience of

active service on the Frontier, and to prevent them becoming 'localised' in static regimental stations.[13]
In contrast, the divisional locations remained constant

regimental colours
in 1905

Redesignating the regiments

To emphasise that there was now only one Indian Army, and that all units were to be trained and deployed without regard for their regional origins, the regiments were renumbered into single sequences of cavalry,

infantry of the line, and Gurkha Rifles.[13] Regimental designations were altered to remove all references to the former Presidential Armies.[9] Where appropriate subsidiary titles recalling other identifying details were adopted. Thus the 2nd Bengal Lancers became the 2nd Lancers (Gardner's Horse)
.

The new order began with the Bengal regiments, followed by the Punjab Frontier Force, then the regiments of Madras, the Hyderabad Contingent, and Bombay. Wherever possible a significant digit was retained in the new number.

51st Sikhs, the 1st Madras Pioneers became the 61st Pioneers, and the 1st Bombay Grenadiers became the 101st Grenadiers
.

The Gurkha Regiments had developed into their own Line of

rifle regiments since 1861. They were five of these until they were joined by the former 42nd, 43rd, & 44th Gurkha Regiments of the Bengal Army, who became the 6th, 7th, & 8th Gurkha Rifles. The numbers 42, 43, & 44 were allocated respectively to the Deoli and Erinpura Irregular Forces and the Mhairwara Battalion from Rajputana.[15]

The

mountain artillery), and Royal Indian Artillery batteries were attached to the divisions. The Indian Army Corps of Engineers was formed by the Group of Madras, Bengal and Bombay Sappers
in their respective presidencies.

The Queen's Own Corps of Guides, Punjab Frontier Force, composed of cavalry

Queen's Own Corps of Guides (Lumsden's) but stayed numberless. The new regimental numbering and namings were notified in India Army Order 181, dated 2 October 1903.[17]

In 1903 the title of the

Indian Staff College was established in 1905, and permanently based at Quetta from 1907.[20]

With no intermediate

First World War, and lead to further reorganisation.[21]

The Indian Army Act 1911 legislated the replacement of the Indian Articles of War 1869. It was passed by the

Indian National Army Trials
in 1945. It was replaced by the "Indian Army Act, 1950" after partition and independence.

First World War

Punjabi Muslim soldiers, France, WW1
Le Cateau
, 2 December 1918
The 15th Sikh Regiment arrive in Marseille, France, on their way to fight the Germans during the First World War. The post card reads, "Gentlemen of India marching to chasten German hooligans"
First World War, the strength of the British Indian Army was 215,000. Either in 1914 or before, a ninth division had been formed, the 9th (Secunderabad) Division.[23] By November 1918, the Indian Army rose in size to 573,000 men.[24]

Before the war, the Indian government had decided that India could afford to provide two infantry divisions and a cavalry brigade in the event of a European war. Some 140,000 soldiers saw active service on the

Indian Corps and the Indian Cavalry Corps that arrived on the Western Front in 1914. The high number of officer casualties the corps suffered early on had an effect on its later performance. British officers that understood the language, customs, and psychology of their men could not be quickly replaced, and the alien environment of the Western Front had some effect on the soldiers. However, the feared unrest in India never happened, and while the Indian Corps was transferred to the Middle East in 1915 India provided many more divisions for active service during the course of the war.[26] Indians' first engagement was on the Western Front within a month of the start of the war, at the First Battle of Ypres. In October/November 1914, the Baluchis of the 129th Duke of Connaught's Own, the first Indian contingent to be in contact with Germans at Hollebeke (and the only to inscribe 'Ypres 1914'), the sepoy Khudadad Khan maintaining the position until gravely wounded became the first Indian to win a Victoria Cross (Indians were eligible from 1911). In November, after a retreat, a scout section of the 1st Battalion 39th Garhwal Rifles under the leadership of Naik Darwan Singh Negi, then badly injured, reinvested lost trenches. For his gallantry he received the second VC.[27]

Nearly 700,000 troops then served in the Middle East, fighting against the Turks in the Mesopotamian campaign.[28] There they were short of transportation for resupply and operated in extremely hot and dusty conditions. Led by Major General Sir Charles Townshend, they pushed on to capture Baghdad but they were repulsed by Ottoman forces.

In the First World War the Indian Army saw extensive active service, including on the

Mesopotamian Campaign, and campaigned in East Africa, including the Battle of Tanga
.

Participants from the Indian subcontinent won 13,000 medals, including 12 Victoria Crosses. By the end of the war a total of 47,746 Indians had been reported dead or missing; 65,126 were wounded.[28]

Also serving in the First World War were so-called "

Sinai and Palestine Campaign
.

Interbellum (1918–1939)

Elements of the Army operated around

Territorial Army. The European parallel to the ITF was the Auxiliary Force (India)
.

After the First World War the British started the process of Indianisation, by which Indians were promoted into higher officer ranks. Indian cadets were sent to study in Great Britain at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and were given full commissions as King's Commissioned Indian Officers. The KCIOs were equivalent in every way to British commissioned officers and had full authority over British troops (unlike VCOs). Some KCIOs were attached to British Army units for a part of their careers.

In 1922, after wartime experience had shown that the maintenance of 130 separate single-battalion infantry regiments was unwieldy, a number of large (four to five battalion) regiments were created,[30] and numerous cavalry regiments amalgamated. The List of regiments of the Indian Army (1922) shows the reduced number of larger regiments. Until 1932 most Indian Army officers, both British and Indian, were trained at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, after that date the Indian officers increasingly received their training at the Indian Military Academy in Dehradun which was established that year.

Second World War