The British Indian Army

A short history of each regiment, including 22 Cavalry, 21 Infantry & 10 Gurkhas Regiments.

This book covers the century during which a force of seventy-five thousand British soldiers and a hundred and fifty thousand Indian troops under British officers held India for the British.

During the first four decades of the twentieth century, the British Indian Army projected an illusion of racial and religious inclusivity. The army recruited diverse soldiers, called 'Martial Races,' including British Christians, Punjabi Sikhs, Hindu Rajputs, Muslims from northwestern India and Afghanistan, and 'Gurkhas' from Nepal. They incorporated some of these soldiers' traditions into the army to keep them disciplined and loyal. This included allowing Muslims to fast during Ramzan, mandating purification ceremonies for Nepali Hindus, and enabling Sikhs to carry religious swords. Military officials hoped that bringing these practices into the army would undermine criticisms of imperial military service within communities where anti-colonial sentiment grew stronger. Instead, as Faithful Fighters shows, it created unintended dialogues between soldiers and civilians while hardening differences between and among communities. Though the illusion of soldiers' detachment from anticolonialism crumbled during World War II, Kate Imy argues that the army militarized racial and religious difference, creating lasting legacies for the violent partition and independence of India, and the endemic violence of the postcolonial world. Faithful Fightersreceived the NACBS Stansky prize and the Pacific Coast Branch Book Award of the American Historical Association.

This book provides a glimpse into the complex, multi-layered and evolving institution and offers an introduction to the uniforms, arms and services of the Indian Army at the height of the Raj.

T.A. Heathcotes study of the conflicts that established British rule in South Asia, and of the militarys position in the constitution of British India, is a classic work in the field. By placing these conflicts clearly in their local context, his account moves away from the Euro-centric approach of many writers on British imperial military history. It provides a greater understanding not only of the history of the British Indian Army but also of the Indian experience, which had such a formative an effect on the British Army itself. This new edition has been fully revised and given appropriate illustrations.

A unique examination of the role of the Indian army in post-World War II India in the run-up to Partition. Daniel Marston draws upon extensive archival research and interviews with veterans of the events of 1947 to provide fresh insight into the final days of the British Raj.

Barkawi re-imagines the study of war with imperial and multinational armies that fought in Asia in the Second World War.

The book gives account of 20 important battles fought by the Indian Army under British Rule from 1898 till 1945 and presenting them in this Book as short stories. The book starts with the North Western Frontiers of India where an incomparable battle was fought. Then it takes the readers through Western Europe, Ottoman Empire and Persia during The Great War in the second decade of the twentieth century and to the Indo-Afghan Border once again.