Imperial Influence on the Postcolonial Indian Army, 1945-1973
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University of Vermont ScholarWorks @ UVM Graduate College Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses 2017 Imperial Influence On The oP stcolonial Indian Army, 1945-1973 Robin James Fitch-McCullough University of Vermont Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis Part of the Military History Commons Recommended Citation Fitch-McCullough, Robin James, "Imperial Influence On The osP tcolonial Indian Army, 1945-1973" (2017). Graduate College Dissertations and Theses. 763. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/763 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks @ UVM. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate College Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ UVM. For more information, please contact [email protected]. IMPERIAL INFLUENCE ON THE POSTCOLONIAL INDIAN ARMY, 1945-1973 A Thesis Presented by Robin Fitch-McCullough to The Faculty of the Graduate College of The University of Vermont In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Specializing in History October, 2017 Defense Date: May 4th, 2016 Thesis Examination Committee: Abigail McGowan, Ph.D, Advisor Paul Deslandes, Ph.D, Chairperson Pablo Bose, Ph.D. Cynthia J. Forehand, Ph.D., Dean of the Graduate College ABSTRACT The British Indian Army, formed from the old presidency armies of the East India Company in 1895, was one of the pillars upon which Britain’s world empire rested. While much has been written on the colonial and global campaigns fought by the Indian Army as a tool of imperial power, comparatively little has been written about the transition of the army from British to Indian control after the end of the Second World War. While independence meant the transition of the force from imperial rule to that of civilian oversight by India’s new national leadership, the Dominion of India inherited thousands of former colonial soldiers, including two generations of British and Indian officers indoctrinated in military and cultural practices developed in the United Kingdom, in colonial India and across the British Empire. The goal of this paper is to examine the legacy of the British Empire on the narrative, ethos, culture, tactics and strategies employed by the Indian Army after 1945, when the army began to transition from British to Indian rule, up to 1973 when the government of India reinstituted the imperial rank of Field Marshal. While other former imperial officers would continue to serve in the army up to the end of the 20th century, the first thirty years after independence were a formative period in the history of the Indian Army, that saw it fight four major wars and see the final departure of white British officers from its ranks. While it became during this time a truly national army, the years after independence were one in which its legacy as an arm of imperial power was debated, and eventually transformed into a key component of military identity in the post-colonial era. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: The End of the Indian Empire .................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: The Imperial Legacy: The Indian Army to 1945 ......................................... 43 Chapter 2: An Imperial Army in Transition, 1946 to 1953 ........................................ 126 Chapter 3: The Indian Army After Empire, 1953 to 1973 ........................................... 213 Conclusion: The Imperial Legacy of the Modern Indian Army .................................. 312 Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 312 ii INTRODUCTION The End of the Indian Empire As August 14th, 1947, dawned, the final stage of the “cyclonic revolution”1 that had overcome Britain’s South Asian colonies appeared to be at hand. At the end of the First World War what was formally known as the Indian Empire had stretched from the Arab port cities of the Red Sea in the West to the mountain hamlets of the Burmese frontier in the East. After decades of imperial reform and the six tumultuous years of the Second World War, much of what had been part of the British Raj had been parceled off, forming a loose collection of protectorates and colonies where once had stood the unified might of Britain’s eastern empire. Now, as plenipotentiaries gathered in Delhi and Karachi, the largest, most populous and most prestigious portion of the global British Empire, the Indian subcontinent itself, was to be divided into the new independent dominions of India and Pakistan. As the bureaucrats of the colonial government continued the task of tallying and dividing the assets, down to typewriters and pieces of office furniture,2 the official ceremonies began. Lord Mountbatten of Burma, great-grandson of the Queen-Empress Victoria, recent designate for the office of the Governor General of India and the last imperial viceroy, met his Pakistani soon to be counterpart on August 13th in Karachi. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League and the appointee for Governor 1 “The Pakistan Assembly: Mr.Jinnah Elected President,” The Times of London, August 12, 1947, 4. 2 Partition Proceedings. Expert Committee Number 1 (New Delhi: Government of India, 1947),102. 1 General of Pakistan, hosted Mountbatten and senior military officers and attaches of the British Empire. Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck, Commander in Chief of the Indian Army and General Frank Messervy, head of India’s Northern Command - what would become the core of the new Pakistan Army – had arrived for the final lowering of the Union Flag over Karachi and the flag raising that would herald in the newly independent country of Pakistan. Though the official flag raising ceremony was to occur at Government House in Karachi, the British delegation was driven through the heart of the city, over whose streets already hung the green and white banners of the star and crescent, already raised by Jinnah’s supporters. Even on government buildings across Pakistan still ostensibly property of the British Raj, the new national colours had already taken the place of the Union Jack in honor of Jinnah’s unanimous election by the new Muslim-dominated assembly.3 The morning after a final farewell dinner, through half empty streets “festooned”4 with the symbols of the Muslim League, Mountbatten and his staff drove to the steps of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, where stood a guard of honor from the Royal Indian Navy and the Royal Scots Regiment, the last rearguard of the British Army that had garrisoned India for more than two hundred years. Inside, Mountbatten, dressed in the white summer uniform of a British admiral, stood in front of the throne representing the King-Emperor George VI and praised Jinnah as the personification of the “best 3 “Viceroy in Karachi: Ceremonial Drive to Day,” The Times of London, August 13, 1947, 4. 4 “Mountbatten’s Address at the Inauguration of Pakistan,” The Hindu, August 15th, 1947, 2. 2 omens for future good relations.”5 The resounding support given to Mountbatten and Jinnah by members of the assembly and of representatives and supporters pressed in as celebrators by the Muslim League, was not answered by the public. Leaving Karachi through streets devoid of celebrating onlookers but lined with 3,000 British and Indian sentries, Mountbatten rushed to the airfield, and the British contingent flew to New Delhi. The “apathy”6 that characterized the public ceremonies in Pakistan was in sharp contrast to the momentous reception received by Lord Mountbatten in India as the nation officially transitioned from empire to independence. As morning came on the 15th, the Viceroy ceremoniously cleared his desk and Mountbatten was sworn in as Governor General, ending the imperial executive that had existed in India since the end of the Great Rebellion of 1857. Driving with official party to the Council House in Delhi, British reporters remarked that “Indians, no less than Britons, love dignified pageantry,”7 the pageantry of empire that British proconsuls had carefully orchestrated for more than a century in emulation of their Mughal predecessors. Near the India Gate, a crowd of more than 100,000 thronged to see Mountbatten arrive by carriage to meet Jawaharlal Nehru, who at midnight had become the first Prime Minister of the new Indian Union. Throngs of cheering citizens overwhelmed police and swarmed the delegation and as the sun fell, Mountbatten and Nehru gazed upwards along the King’s Way. Under the shadow of the India Gate, the colossal monument to the dead of the wars of 1914-1922, the Indian tricolor rose into the sky for the first time over a country that was independent from the 5 Ibid. 6 “Power Handed Over in India. Birth of Two New Dominions”, The Times of London, August 15th, 1947. 4. 7 India's First Day of Independence. The Times of London. Page 4. August 15th, 1947. 3 British Empire that had been ensconced on the subcontinent for more than three centuries. For those who witnessed it, and wrote about it, the events of August 1947 stand as a clear and decisive point of transition in the histories of modern India and of the British Empire. The symbolism surrounding the public spectacle of India’s formal transition from colony to independent state only served to amplify the historical importance of August 14th and 15th. The imperial power of the Raj, with the British Empire and the house of Windsor embodied by the noble, aristocratic and military minded Mountbatten, passed into the hands of the first generation of socialist and republican Indian nationalist leaders to rule the nation free from British influence, represented by Nehru. Nehru himself remarked on August 14th that the date was the realization of the Indian people’s “unending quest” of “striving” towards nationhood, even as the united India forged by the British imperial project was being divided.8 It was a joyous and dramatic sentiment shared by Indians from Calcutta to the Punjab, and in immigrant communities from Durban on the Natal Coast to San Francisco and New York in the United States.