India's War

by Srinath Raghavan

  In August 1940, New Delhi offered to prepare four infantry divisions and one armoured division for overseas deployment – if the British government agreed to equip these forces. On 26 September, London accepted the offer and agreed to deploy one of these divisions in Malaya and three in Iraq. However, instead of an armoured division, India was asked to send out an armoured cavalry brigade and an additional infantry division. In the event, it was agreed that India would raise four new infantry divisions by December 1941 and a fifth by mid-1942.6

  Although the Soviet threat to Afghanistan had ebbed by the end of 1940, the general staff continued to plan for the defence of India’s north-west frontier. The Japanese encroachment in French Indo-China also stoked their concerns about the security of eastern India, though, as before, the threat perceived was of air strikes on the Indian coast. Towards the end of March 1941, the general staff came up with the ‘1941 Defence of India Plan’. The plan was divided into two phases. The first would entail purely defensive operations along the north-west frontier, and the second an advance into Afghanistan, including the reinforcement of Kabul. The general staff were clear that the second phase could be undertaken only if there were considerable additional support from Britain. In short, the plan mainly envisaged only defensive operations on the Indo-Afghan frontier. Even this was projected to require five infantry divisions, two armoured divisions and a heavy armoured brigade.7

  Beyond this, new units were needed for guard duties and lines of communication in India and abroad. For instance, fourteen garrison battalions were required simply for guarding Italian prisoners of war. Besides, there was the large requirement of troops for internal security: no fewer than twenty-nine infantry battalions and thirty-five garrison companies. In 1941, the general staff calculated, India would need to raise fifty new infantry battalions and an armoured division – apart from other arms and services.8

  Between April 1940 and December 1941, the Indian army swelled to almost 900,000 troops. At its peak, monthly recruitment exceeded 50,000. Recruitment of technical personnel, which was non-existent before the war, touched 9,000 a month. Forces from princely Indian states were also pressed into service. They were not only used to release units of the regular army for overseas duties but were themselves deployed abroad. By August 1941, seventeen units of princely state forces were serving in Egypt and East Africa, Iraq and Malaya. The maharaja of Nepal also loaned eight battalions of his army for duties in India.9

  Meanwhile, the changing course of the war necessitated further commitments. On 22 June 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. With Russia now on the Allied side, the spectre of a Soviet threat to Afghanistan was finally exorcised, though New Delhi and London remained concerned about German and Italian subversive activity in and around Kabul.10 The German drive towards the Caucasus would draw India deeply into Iraq and Iran. In early 1942, 264,000 Indian troops were serving overseas, including 91,000 in Iraq, 20,000 in the Middle East, 56,000 in Malaya and 20,000 in Burma.

  Some six weeks before the German attack on Russia, the Indian government had been pondering its expansion plans for 1942. New Delhi informed London that if its demands for equipment and personnel were met, India would be ready by the latter half of 1942 to provide for overseas deployment four more infantry divisions and one armoured division – troops that were currently deployed for India’s own defence. As earlier, these would be made available only if India could plan for their prompt replacement.11 Not until August 1941 did London approve of the expansion plan for 1942. The raising of five divisions, including an armoured division, with the full complement of supporting units entailed the recruitment of another 600,000 men. Japan’s entry into the war in December 1941 threw the plan slightly off-balance and necessitated some improvisation. Nevertheless, at the end of 1942, the Indian army stood at almost 1.55 million. The Indian states forces and British units in India added up to another 170,000 men.12

  By December 1941, New Delhi was already preparing its expansion plans for 1943. The general staff catered for a further infantry division, a parachute division and a heavy armoured brigade. In addition, they aimed to raise five field artillery regiments, seven anti-tank regiments and ten anti-aircraft regiments as well as an array of new administrative and logistics units. All in all, the plan for 1943 proposed increasing the Indian army’s size by 240,000 men. Yet by 1943 it was becoming clear that quality manpower, and especially technical aptitude, was now at a premium in India. Further, the performance of Indian units on the front line underscored various deficiencies in training. In the summer of 1943 two infantry divisions were converted into training divisions – an unprecedented experiment for the Indian army. Although another 280,000 men were recruited in 1943, it was evident to the Indian government that the peak of recruitment had passed.

  The third stage of the wartime enlargement lasted from January 1944 to September 1945. By early 1944, it was obvious that the fortunes of war were turning. Axis forces had been routed in Africa; Italy was under Allied invasion and occupation; the Red Army was steadily grinding down the German forces in eastern Europe; and Allied forces were gearing up for a landing on the French coast. In January 1944, Churchill went so far as to suggest an actual reduction in the size of the Indian army by 500,000 troops. The Indian general staff, however, refused to contemplate any downsizing of allocations for frontier defence or internal security, pointing out that slimming the army at this point would inevitably blunt its combat edge.13 At the same time, though, the general staff sought no further increases than those envisaged for the replacement of combat casualties: the ‘war wastage ratio’ in military jargon. In 1944–45, the focus was on maintaining the Indian army at its ‘maximum strength in maximum efficiency’.14 Training and modernization rather than recruitment were now foremost in the minds of military planners in India.

  Throughout the war, the problem of equipment and modernization dominated the discussions between New Delhi and London. From the outset, India’s offer of troops was coupled with demands for the provision of equipment by Britain. From the British perspective, this was not simply a question of giving equipment that India could not produce, but also of forking out the money. While the chiefs of staff were thrilled at the prospect of Indian troops being earmarked for the Middle East, the Treasury was more circumspect. As one mandarin trenchantly put it, ‘if we pay everything, India’s offer simply means that employment is given to a considerable number of Punjabis entirely at our expense’.15

  Even after a financial settlement had been hammered out, India’s requirement of equipment remained a potentially fatal flaw in its plans for expansion. The exclusive dependence on Britain was particularly problematic. In June 1940, Amery conceded that Indian forces ‘though considerable are extremely weak in artillery, and the infantry and cavalry units would only have 20 and 35 automatic weapons respectively and probably no mortars and anti-tank rifles’.16 Yet in discussing the expansion plan of 1940, he told the Indian government that ‘while everything possible is being done to obtain your equipment, immediate prospects are not good’. New Delhi shot back: ‘our offers of troops are worthless and misleading unless His Majesty’s Government can produce the equipment’. In October 1940, the deputy chief of the general staff, Major General Thomas Hutton, was sent to London to smooth over the problem. Hutton proposed that the war cabinet earmark for India a monthly quota of arms and equipment produced in Britain. After much wrangling at both ends, London agreed to set, in principle, a monthly allocation of 10 per cent of its equipment production. In practice, though, the flow of the pipeline was contingent on several factors, ranging from production levels to the impact of enemy air raids.17

  As a consequence, the forces raised in India and sent abroad were chronically under-equipped and reliant on all manner of patchwork solutions. In particular, there were serious problems with supplies of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, armoured fighting vehicles and artillery guns – all of which were excluded from the monthly equipment quota for India. Thu
s, the 4th and 5th Indian Divisions deployed in the Middle East – tank country par excellence – did not have the requisite complement of anti-tank regiments. In discussions with London over the plans for 1942, India insisted upfront that its monthly allocation be substantially increased as well as enlarged to encompass hitherto excluded items.18 Faced with continued stonewalling by Whitehall, New Delhi sternly wrote in September 1941: ‘We are not justified in sending Indian divisions to theatres of war where they may meet tanks unless they can be provided with anti-tank regiments.’19

  The commander-in-chief of India, General Archibald Wavell, sent a stern note on ‘Indian Military Problems’ to the chiefs of staff. While India was making a ‘very large contribution to the Imperial war effort’, he observed, it was ‘receiving an extremely small supply of essential equipment for her own defence’. Wavell listed a devastating catalogue of deficiencies:

  There is not a single fighter aircraft in India at present capable of taking the air against modern German or Japanese machines; India has not at present a single modern tank or armoured car; has only eighteen light and twelve heavy anti-aircraft guns; and only twenty 2-pdr [sic] anti-tank guns … The absolute minimum of anti-aircraft guns required for even a moderate defence in India is approximately 300 heavy and 200 light anti-aircraft guns.20

  Amery, too, informed the cabinet that in preparing under-equipped formations for overseas deployment, India had ‘overcome most serious handicaps and accepted grave risks’.21

  In the event, India’s inclusion in the American Lend-Lease programme threw a lifeline to the general staff. From 1942 onwards, problems with the supply of equipment gradually eased. The bottleneck was no longer the availability of equipment but shipping. The onset of the Battle of the Atlantic exacerbated the problems for India. In September 1942, for instance, New Delhi wrote to London that ‘Diversion of tanks to Mideast, heavy losses at sea, the delays in shipping tanks from U.S.A., now aggravated by proposed cut in shipping, have seriously affected rate at which Armoured Formations in India can be trained and equipped.’22

  Indeed, the raising of tank units was very much a seat-of-the-pants undertaking. Consider the case of the 8th Light Cavalry Regiment. In October 1940, the regiment received orders for conversion from horsed cavalry into an armoured car regiment. In September 1941, the regiment got some Chevrolet armoured cars and Vickers Mk VII light tanks. These were insufficient even for training, which was consequently carried out in borrowed civilian trucks. Eighteen months later, the regiment was issued some armoured cars from South Africa and a few Mk IV Humbers. And finally in December 1943, the regiment took over Daimler tanks from another regiment.23

  In the last two years of the war, however, the situation changed considerably. In early 1943, it was decided that India would be given 125,000 tons of stores every month. Despite some fluctuations this target held and the results were striking. In September 1943 India had 1,040 2-pounder anti-tank guns – up from twenty two years earlier – and by April 1944 their number had increased to 2,149. Similarly, in early 1943 the light divisions – the 7th, 25th and 34th Indian Divisions – had only one artillery regiment apiece. By mid-1944, each had the full complement of three artillery regiments. As a general staff memorandum observed, the Indian army could now be ‘compared not unfavourably with other well found and up to date forces’.24

  More striking by the end of the war was the altered composition of the Indian army. Wartime expansion wrought important changes to traditional recruitment policies and patterns. The magnitude of these changes, however, tends to mask both the reluctance with which they were undertaken and the continuity with older trends in some key areas. That said, the changing complexion of the Indian army did pose several challenges to the conservative military and political establishments.

  The cornerstone of the Indian army’s composition had been the idea of ‘martial races’. This was at once ideological and instrumental. To be sure, the notion that certain groups were more warlike than others was neither exclusive to colonial India nor indeed to the British Empire. Yet the idea of martial races acquired an impressive grip on the imagination of the Raj by the late nineteenth century. It was part of a larger ideological shift – in the aftermath of the Rebellion of 1857 – in British views of Indian society.25 The ethnographic literature produced for official use buttressed and perpetuated the ideology of martial races. As late as 1937, Caste Handbooks of the Indian army traded in its tropes. For example, groups like the Jats, Gujars and Ahirs were described as ‘thick headed and manly … yeomen cultivators … eminently adapted to the profession of arms’. Never mind that Gujars were also ‘surly in disposition’.26

  Then too, the recruitment of martial races was seen as imperative to secure the loyalty of the Indian army. From the early 1880s, the army was predominantly recruited from the Muslim and Sikh peasantry of the Punjab, the Pathans of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and the Dogras, Jats and Rajputs, Marathas and Garhwalis. In addition, there was a sizeable number of Gurkhas from Nepal. This resulted in a finely tuned balance of region, religion and caste in the Indian army’s overall make-up. The soldiers were recruited predominantly from north-west India – a region that was supposedly immune to the currents of anti-British feeling that might flow elsewhere. The crucial province of Punjab was specially inoculated by several schemes for soldiering families, including land grants, irrigation and other welfare measures.27 Muslims, although a minority in the population of India, were represented there in slightly larger numbers than the Hindus and Sikhs taken together. And even among the Hindus, only certain sub-castes from the higher castes – excluding the Brahmans – were tapped for recruitment. The ensuing ‘class composition’ – the official euphemism for caste – was deemed crucial to ensuring that the Indian army remained the reliable sword-arm of the Raj.

  This policy had been strained to the point of breaking during the First World War. Regiments that had recruited seventy-five men a year were suddenly called upon to deliver a hundred a month for the devouring front line. The army authorities responded by drawing more intensely on the favoured martial classes through a mix of coercion and inducements. Even so, the army was forced to look elsewhere for volunteers, especially for non-combatant roles. So, the social base of the army did widen during the Great War. However, the magnitude of the change was not large. By November 1918, the Punjab had provided nearly 360,000 men – half of the total combatant recruitment during the war. The post-war retrenchment restored the status quo ante bellum of the Indian army: the non-martial classes being the first to be axed. What is more, the discourse of martial races was revitalized in the inter-war context of racial ideologies. The publication in 1932 of Lieutenant General Sir George MacMunn’s The Martial Races of India underscored the continuing pull of the idea.28

  Prior to the outbreak of war in 1939, the Punjab accounted for 43.72 per cent of the army and the NWFP for 4.67 per cent, although together they accounted for just about 7 per cent of India’s total population. Muslims from the Punjab, the NWFP and other parts of north India made up 34.06 per cent of the army, while Muslims as a whole were 23.5 per cent of India’s population; Sikhs provided 17.51 per cent of the army, though they numbered less than 1.4 per cent of the population. And all the non-martial Hindu castes cumulatively amounted to a miniscule 3.7 per cent of the army.29

  During the Second World War the social mosaic of the army was transformed. Of the little over 2.5 million soldiers recruited during the war, Punjab provided 18.33 per cent and the NWFP another 2.7 per cent. By contrast southern India, which accounted for just 3 per cent of the pre-war army, provided 17.87 per cent of the total recruits during the war. The geographic base of recruitment stretched to include eastern and central India as well. Bengal, for instance, had had no representation in the army prior to 1939. But during the war it provided 3.7 per cent of new recruits. In terms of religion, Muslim recruits accounted for 25.5 per cent of total recruitment and Sikhs for 4.57 per cent, while Hindus (excluding N
epalese Gurkhas) catered for 28.8 per cent. Equally interesting was the rise in the recruitment of Christians and of the ‘miscellaneous classes’ that were located at or beyond the edges of the Indian caste system.30

  These seemingly dramatic changes, however, have to be read more closely. For example, while recruitment from south India saw a whopping increase, the martial-class provinces of Punjab and NWFP proportionately continued to supply more soldiers. This becomes clear when we consider total recruitment from these provinces as a proportion of the total recruitable males identified by the army. During the war, recruits from Punjab and NWFP were 32.82 and 53.51 per cent respectively of the total recruitable men from these provinces. By contrast, recruits from south India were only 15.94 per cent of the total recruitable male population in these parts. In short, the traditional bastion of the north-west continued to be mined intensively for military manpower.

  Similarly, while the absolute numbers of Hindu recruits did rise, proportionately the Muslims of India continued to supply more soldiers. Thus Hindu recruits were 12.43 per cent of the total recruitable Hindu males, while Muslim recruits made up 21.16 per cent of recruitable Muslim males. Further, the overall numbers of Hindu recruits mask the fact that the rise in proportional contribution was due to the larger presence of the depressed classes: the Mahars and Chamars, the Kumhars and Kabirpanthis, the Lodhis and Minas, among others. These castes amounted to nearly 60 per cent of the Hindu recruits. Two factors accounted for this. Some of these groups, such as the Mahars, had served in the Great War and had been stripped of their uniforms afterwards. As such, they remained keenly aware of the benefits of military service. Secondly, the so-called untouchable castes had no truck with the Congress party and its qualms about supporting the war. Their stalwart leader, Ambedkar, had from the outset spoken out in favour of the war. In 1942, he was appointed as labour member in the viceroy’s Executive Council; thereafter, he was instrumental in galvanizing the depressed classes into the war effort.