Kaushik Roy
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199463534
- eISBN:
- 9780199087181
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199463534.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Military History
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 ...
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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’.Less
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’.
