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British Indian Army: Role of Punjab in the World War I

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British Indian Army: Role of Punjab in the World War I 201 B. Singh & B. Singh: British Indian Army British Indian Army: Role of Punjab in the World War I Bhupinder Singh and Bawa Singh Central University of Punjab, Bathinda ________________________________________________________________ The British Indian Army evolved out of the three presidencies of Bengal, Madras and Bombay, which had come under the control of the East India Company in the second-half of the eighteenth century. With the outbreak of the Sepoy mutiny 1857, both the administration and the Indian army were radically restructured. The Punjab’s strategic location, the onset of the ‘Great Game,’ and what was believed to be the martial character of local people played an important role in placing this region in the center of British planning. This paper examines the role of Punjab in providing soldiers as well as generous politico-economic support to the British Empire during the World War I. ___________________________________________________________________________________ The origins of the British Indian Army were modest. It began in the 17th century as the East India Company’s irregular force guarding a group of four factories with a few hundred men. A pioneer scholar of military history, Roy (2009), claims that with the passage of time, the colonial army became one of the largest employers in India. In the beginning, the presidencies of Bengal, Bombay and Madras contributed significantly to the building of the colonial army. This first phase was popularly known as Bengalization of the British Indian Army, owing to Bengalʹs substantial contribution. The prominence of Punjab and Punjabis in this Army began with the annexation of Punjab in 1849 and was reinforced by onset of the Great Game in general and World War I in particular. Heath (2005) has pointed _____________________________ Bhupinder Singh, Research Scholar, Central University of Punjab, Bathinda. Bawa Singh teaches in the Department of South & Central Asian Studies, Central University of Punjab, Bathinda. JSPS 25:2 202 out that the British fought two wars with Sikhs (1845-46; 1848-49) to annex Punjab in the Empire. The fearless fighting role of Punjabi people in the Anglo-Sikhs Wars and in the 1857 mutiny drew attention to their martial character, tall and sturdy physical build, and commitment and dedication to duty. These features induced the British to reconsider their recruitment policies in India generally and in Punjab, in particular. Punjab thus gained an important role in the British Army recruitment. At the same time, Punjab had turned into a militarized and garrison state. Disproportionate representation of Punjabi recruits in the Indian British army played an important role not only in keeping the British Empire intact but in allowing for its expansion as well. In the aftermath of mutiny, the British Indian Army was largely recruited from Punjab, in a well-known phase sometimes termed “Punjabization.” However, the role of Punjabi people in World War I has been remained overlooked and thus, the main focus of this paper is to examine this later stage of Punjab’s contribution to the British military. The British Indian Army Robert Clive (1725-1774) played a pivotal role in the establishment of the East India Company Army. In 1757, he proposed the idea of sepoy battalions for the Bengal Presidency, commanded by British officers. The same model was followed for the Madras Army with six battalions, in 1759, and the Bombay Army, in 1767. Recruits for these battalions were engaged from local communities. The British Indian Army thus began with the employment of Indian troops by the East India Company in the three presidencies to protect its trading interests and stations. It is widely believed that the British Indian Army was one of the strongest armed forces during the colonial period. The British Indian Army originated from the consolidation of three presidencies of the Bengal, Madras and Bombay. The British East India Company recruited local people to serve in its European regiments to protect its trade interests against local powers. Initially officers of these regiments, as well as their troops, were all Europeans. However, effective military force proved impossible without "native" troops, so local people were soon integrated into the regiments. In order to reinforce the Company’s army, the Crown had started dispatching regiments of the regular British Army to India from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. 203 B. Singh & B. Singh: British Indian Army In 1748, the armies of the presidencies were placed under the stewardship of Commander-in-Chief, Major-General Stringer Lawrence (1697-1775), who came to be regarded as the "Father of the British Indian Army". In 1895 the three presidency armies were merged into an British Indian Army. In aftermath of the Sepoy mutiny 1857, the three armies of former presidencies of the East India Company had been taken over by the British Crown. After the mutiny, the British government reoriented its recruitment policy by giving priority to the “martial races." The presidency armies were abolished on 1 April 1895, under the notification of the Army Department Order Number 981 dated 26 October 1894. This initiative led to the unification of the three former presidency armies into a single Indian army, divided into four commands: Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western. The British Indian Army fought many battles with local Indian kings to control them. Moreover, it challenged imperial powers, such as Russia. Garrison State of the British Indian Army: Why Punjab? Owing to various internal and external dynamics, Punjab emerged as a garrison and more militarized state of British Empire in India. With the annexation of Punjab in 1849, the British Empire had started sharing boundaries with the Tzarist Russian Empire, in Afghanistan. Talbot (1988 ) has pointed out that after the annexation, Punjab had become part of the ‘Great Game,ʹ 1 as threats of Russian expansion through Central Asia alarmed the British. In context of the threat of invasion from expansion of the Russian empire towards the Indian subcontinent, the British established a strong military infrastructure in Punjab in the mid of 19th century, in order to annex and guard its Afghan border to foil the Russia’ s eastward and southward expansion through Central Asia. During the 19th century, The Russian Empire emerged to rival the British as a major international power. Russia had been moving toward the British Indian Empire, and vice versa, leading to the fierce competition 1The ‘ Great Game’ refers to strategic rivalry between the British Empire and the Russian Empire (Khawaja, 2012 Empire). The period is generally regarded as between 1813 and 1907 for supremacy over Central Asia. JSPS 25:2 204 that is often called the ‘Great Game.’ The start of this conflict is generally considered to have taken place on 12 January 1830, when Edward Law, Earl of Ellenborough (1790-1871), President of the Board of Control for India, asked Governor-General Lord William Bentinck (1774- 1839) to establish a new trade route to the Emirate of Bukhara, in Central Asia. Britain sought by this move to protect both India and their maritime trade routes and ports. The objective was to secure control of Afghanistan and to use the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Empire, the Khanate of Khiva, and the Emirate of Bukhara as buffer states to block Russia from gaining a port on the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean. Russia was suspicious of these commercial and strategic maneuvers toward the Central Asia, while Britain was apprehensive of Russia’s plays to incorporate India- Britain’s “Crown Jewel”- into its vast empire. The mutual suspicious resulted in an atmosphere of distrust and the constant threat of war between the two empires, which in turn affected the British Indian Army. Yong (2005) has argued that the geostrategic location amidst fear of Russian attack had made Punjab one of the most militarized provinces of British India, to the extent of becoming the headquarters of the British Indian Army and its most significant and fertile recruitment ground. Punjab thus emerged as a strategic frontier of the British Empire to contain the Russian expansion towards the Indian subcontinent. These were the strategic concerns that compelled the British Indian Empire to restructure its recruitment policies towards Punjab. Verma (2008) noted that this status of Punjab led to the rather cynical name of “Arms-Pile of the Raj.” During the 1857 mutiny in the Central India, Punjab has fought for the British side. The British Empire appreciated Punjabis for their fearless fighting to suppress the mutiny. Cohen (1995:71) noted the outcome that the British punished the rebels and rewarded the loyalists. Khawaja (2012 ) argued that the British Indian army accorded Punjabi fighters priority in their recruitment policy owing to the perception of their superior adaptation to the harsh conditions of the turbulent frontiers. Soherwordi (2010) has argued that the 1857 mutiny compelled the British Indian government to restructure its recruitment policy towards Punjab. According to his view, the 1857 mutiny shifted the recruitment ground of the British Indian Army from Bengal to Punjab and NWFP (North-West Frontier Province) of the Subcontinent. Moreover, In the aftermath of the Sepoy mutiny, discontent had spread among people and soldiers alike, in 205 B. Singh & B. Singh: British Indian Army other states such as Bihar, Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and part of Madhya Pradesh, so that they were no longer regarded as fit for recruitment. This shift is the reason that the period from 1857 to 1914 often referred to as ‘the Punjabization of the Indian Army.’ One study, entitled “Migration, Mobility and Multiple Affiliations,” by Rajan, Varghese, and Nanda (2016), points out that the British had divided Indian ethnic groups into two categories: Martial and Non- Martial. Jats, Awans, Gujjars, Balochs, Gurkhas, Pashtuns/Pathans and Rajputs were identified in the first category, with Punjabi people were regarded as the most martial among them.
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