Search Results

This chapter examines casualty disposal (the evacuation and treatment of casualties) from the beginning of the war through to mid-1916. Beginning with an analysis of planning for a continental deployment, it moves on to show how these plans soon had to be abandoned once the war began. It shows how an enormous and complex medical machine was assembled in France and Belgium by examining arrangements for the sick and wounded from the front line to the base and to hospitals in Britain. The chapter also examines surgery and wound infection; relations between medical officers, nurses and patients; and medical care for the Indian army. Throughout, comparisons are made with medical procedures in the French and German armies.

Early British rule in India was built on Indian foundations. In Bengal the British were able to build on the foundations of a well-established state and a flourishing economy. Above all, the new East India Company rulers could tap Bengal's wealth through a system of taxation collected from the countryside. The essential task of early British administration was to enforce taxation. This enabled the Company to maintain a large army in Bengal, both to protect their interests there and to safeguard their other major Indian settlements, Madras and Bombay, which had only limited resources of taxation and were drawn into largely unsuccessful conflicts with strong neighbouring Indian states. British aspirations to empire in India in the later eighteenth century depended on Bengal.

The rapid growth of British territorial power in India thrust responsibility for ruling millions of people on the East India Company, a trading body seemingly quite unfit for such tasks. Yet to place India under the immediate control of the British state rather than the Company was a proposition repugnant to most eighteenth century opinion. It was feared that a state takeover of India's supposed wealth would upset the balance of the British constitution. State intervention and periodic legislation to attempt to regulate the Company and make it more fit for its responsibilities were, however, inescapable. At home the national government established its power to supervise Indian affairs, while a Company civil service evolved in Bengal capable of engaging with the problems of Indian administration. At the same time the Company developed a large army comparable to that of the crown. It was becoming an instrument of empire subordinate to the British state.

This chapter looks at the period from the landings of the predominantly Indian force in November 1914 through to the wholesale changes of early 1916, which saw the replacement of commanders and the switch of operational control from Delhi to London. After an encouraging start, with comparatively few British and Indian casualties, high levels of disease began to hinder the expeditionary force and the lightly-equipped and under-staffed medical services were unable to cope. Commanders had not given much thought to medical arrangements or logistics and there were great delays in the disposal of casualties down the line to the base in Basra. The chapter examines the reasons for these failures and their consequences for morale and military operations.

From 1916 the very dismal medical situation in Mesopotamia began to improve due to a massive injection of manpower and resources and a wholesale change of command. The headquarters staff in Mesopotamia now took medicine seriously and integrated disease prevention and casualty disposal more effectively into operational planning. After years of censorship, there was also greater openness and the theatre was opened to voluntary organizations such as the Red Cross, which played a major role in the evacuation of casualties. Sanitary work was placed on a more systematic footing, too, with much greater attention to hygiene among front line troops. All this had a remarkable effect upon health and morale in the theatre but, at the end of 1916, one serious problem remained: high rates of scurvy among Indian troops. This problem was not resolved until transport and logistics were improved. The chapter concludes by examining the Mesopotamia Commission and its verdict upon the medical aspects of the operation.

This chapter focuses on the Indian experience from the period immediately before the advent of World War II in the East to mid-1943—just before the arrival of Subhas Chandra Bose to Singapore. Following a study of how Indians responded to the outbreak of hostilities, the chapter goes on to focus on two key elements: Firstly, the formation and early development of the Indian National Army and the Indian Independence League in Singapore; and secondly how Indian inhabitants were affected by Japanese rule and the wider socio-economic conditions prevalent during the first half of the Occupation. The chapter concludes with a study of the transformations evident in the Indian Independence Movement in East Asia in early 1943.

This lecture discusses the remarkable recovery of British India and the Indian army that made the reconquest of Burma and Malaya possible. The Indian army is shown to have displayed a number of strengths during its final years, such as its reorganisation and provision with new equipment. It was also given a higher political profile, and Indian soldiers were given new initiatives by their commanders. The lecture determines that the final campaign of the Indian army helped create the social order of the new nations of the Subcontinent.

The very absence of large-scale mutinies in the Indian armed forces between 1939 and 1945 indicates that Indian soldiery was quite content with British military service. Moreover, there were no overt hostile communal feelings among different religious communities within the Indian Army despite the rise of Hindu–Muslim animosity in the ‘greater’ society. How, in the absence of a nationalist ideology, the Indian soldiers were motivated to fight and die in the age of total war is a puzzle which this chapter attempts to resolve. The British could separate the soldiery from the host society by providing tangible and non-tangible incentives to the jawans. Military discipline further converted the agricultural labourers in the ranks into automatons of sorts, while racial/ethnic pride partly enabled the Indian soldiery to encounter the brutal ‘face of battle’.

This chapter examines two important operations waged by Indian security forces to counter Sikh insurgents operating in India's northern state of Punjab, from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. The first operation was a military as well as a public-relations debacle. The Indian Army had inadequate and flawed intelligence about the strength and capabilities of the insurgents who had entered and occupied the Golden Temple, and they failed to forge a viable public-relations strategy and ultimately used excessive force to prevail. Fortunately, the Indian state was capable of learning from its initial errors. When Sikh militants again attempted to use the temple as a sanctuary, the Indian security forces launched a second assault, which involved a prolonged siege, but one marked by careful attention to the sentiments of religious authorities and by a deft public-relations strategy. The two contrasting episodes underscore how the same regime, under different circumstances, can cope with and respond to the requirements of a counterinsurgency operation in a sacred site.

This chapter provides a description on colonial wars and Imperial instability of the British Empire from the late 16th century to the late 17th century. It deals with the use of force overseas. The priorities of the 18th-century British army were at home or in Europe. Colonial wars were at first limited to ones largely waged by colonial forces, British Americans and such Indian allies as they could secure, or the troops of the East India Company. It was after the wars that began in 1793 that the British army and the new Indian army were able effectively to join with the navy in imposing ‘an extra-European Fax Britannica’. The unintended consequences of the Glorious Revolution are shown. The rising importance of colonial theatres of war and an Imperial war and its frustrations are also described. In addition, a discussion on the Seven Years War is given. This War ended with spectacular British gains in India and a total British triumph in North America. Britain’s apparent world-wide supremacy after the Seven Years War had been vulnerable and insecure.

This chapter analyses the course and consequences of combatant and non-combatant manpower mobilization for the Indian Army during the First World War. The quantum of manpower mobilization by British India has been put in a proper context, by comparing it with other colonies and metropolitan powers. Recruitment of the combatants and the non-combatants is studied within the overall political, social, and military contexts. The pre-combat and in-combat motivations of the recruits have also been taken into consideration. This chapter is a fusion of both social history (which communities were recruited and why) and organizational aspects (changing mechanisms of military recruitment). At times, this chapter also takes on the colour of an exercise in the history of ideas, as the ideological roots of British recruitment policy are analysed.

The Indian Army defeated the Italians in Abyssinia and played a crucial role in containing Erwin Rommel’s Panzerarmee Afrika in Egypt–Libya in 1941–2. The Indian troops proved themselves masters of mountain warfare in the rolling hills of Abyssinia, in Tunisia, and also in Italy (1944). The pre-1939 Indian Army had a template of war which was geared for conducting Small War along the mountainous tracts of the North-West Frontier. Some of its elements were useful for the Indian units while fighting in the mountainous regions of Ethiopia, Tunisia, and Italy. However, in the course of the various campaigns, the Indian Army also absorbed certain new elements (such as cooperation with aircraft, anti-tank guns and tanks, use of concentrated artillery fire in fluid battlefield scenarios, etc.) for conducting conventional warfare. For instance, use of superior artillery and close air support in a quick and efficient manner at Second Alamein, Tunisia, and in Italy were some of the tactical techniques which functioned as force multipliers.

The fall of Singapore in February 1942 witnessed the surrender of some 130,000 British, Imperial and Commonwealth soldiers. The event was a disaster for the British Empire in the Far East and constituted the largest surrender in British military history. At the time, it created a crisis of confidence in the fighting quality of the ordinary British soldier. Since 1945 historians have explored the reasons behind the collapse highlighting inefficient command structures, confused strategic thinking, poor training regimes and deficient equipment compounded by a sense of racial superiority. These macro-views have tended to support the idea that British, Imperial and Commonwealth troops lacked the essential fighting spirit required to counter the highly aggressive Japanese assault. This chapter argues that surrender does not necessarily reflect a lack of morale or fighting spirit. By looking in detail at the experiences of individual units a more complex picture is created which challenges the assertion that the disaster can be attributed to this simple root cause. Most men viewed surrender as shameful and as a last resort to be contemplated only once all other viable military options had been exhausted.

This chapter describes the approach of the Second World War; the offer of forming an Indian constitution; the Cripps proposals; the plan to end British rule in India through a ‘Quit India Resolution’, the 1942 Revolt; Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army; and the Wavell Plan and the Simla Conference. As the Indian people grew conscious of their nationhood, India began to take its place in the comity of nations. After the failure of the Cripps mission, Gandhiji’s attitude towards the British underwent a fundamental change. The All-India Congress Committee endorsed the ‘Quit India Resolution’ on 8 August 1942. It authorized ‘the starting of a mass struggle on non-violent lines on the widest possible scale’.

This chapter grapples with the question whether the defeat of the British Indian Army at Kut was inevitable or not? And India’s responsibility for the disaster at Kut is also considered. This chapter is divided into four sections. The first two sections show that certain innovations occurred as regards tactics and operation in Major General Charles Townshend’s force. While the first section details the initial advance from Basra, the second section shows how the lure of Baghdad gradually pulled IEFD towards its nemesis at Kut. The third section portrays the Siege of Kut. The fourth section shows that the relief column failed to relieve Townshend’s besieged force at Kut, because of logistical cum tactical failure. The failure at Kut was caused due to a mix of organizational–logistical–personal failures and also due to certain shortcomings in the field of tactics–operation.

This chapter views World War II in the perspective of the Sikhs. It talks about Indian politics during the ‘Phony War’, and highlights the crisis of conscience experienced by the Sikh leaders. It moves on to discuss the attitude of the Sikhs towards the war in Asia. This includes a study of the Indian National Army (INA), which was part of the force used by the Japanese, and Rash Bihari Bose, Mohan Singh, and Subhas Bose, three notable leaders of the INA. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the Cripps Mission and the end of the war on 7 May 1945, when Nazi Germany finally surrendered, the Japanese troops retreated and the Indian government attempted to win the Indian politicians to its side.

This chapter discusses conflict and violence in Lakhipathar, over a period of two decades, drawing on oral histories from the people of Lakhipathar. Listening to the narratives of past sufferings here has worked not merely a tool to know what happened to the narrators in the past but it also gives a key to analyse why and how they live in the present. Apart from offering evidence towards the larger argument of the work, this part of the book has also aimed towards opening a conversation on some buried and forgotten moments in the history of the Indian state that resemble what could be called an Agambenian ‘state of exception’. The dense narratives give a picture of the collaboration and deceit, revenge and violence, suspicion and fear in war-torn Lakhipathar and how the common people negotiated their ways through these.

This chapter examines how the everyday social life of contemporary Lakhipathar is shaped and influenced by its extraordinary past of violence. Examining the place of the army in the present, it analyses what ‘peace’ and ‘normalcy’ mean in contemporary Lakhipathar and how notions of community and belongingness, right and wrong are conceptualized in the shadow of an armed force. The chapter brings up parallels between the period when ULFA was uncontested and was seen as the authority in Lakhipathar, and the contemporary period, when the army’s existence in Lakhipathar has come to be accepted as part of the regular, and as contributory to the civic life the people, by using examples from sport, culture and community life. The chapter draws on ethnographic field material, both in the form of narratives and field observations.