ties that bind - sep 11

However, the unrelenting demands of the Great War soon made the ‘martial
races’ policy unsustainable and the social base of recruits was consequently
expanded to include Kumaonis, Coorgs, Hill Brahmins, Gaurs and Mahars – the
Kumaonis and Mahars gaining themselves an esteemed place in the Indian Army
after 1918, having been previously rather overlooked by ‘martial races’
recruitment policies. Groups previously considered ‘incapable’ of being good
soldiers were now drafted in to support the war effort. ‘Those classes who
formerly never entered the Army are now being hustled into doing so’, a Muslim
from Lyallpur wrote to a sepoy in the trenches. 30 This shift in recruitment policy
also lightened the burden placed upon those rural communities from which
‘martial fighters’ were traditionally drawn. Coming from only a small number of
villages and tribes, it was not unheard of for all the men of a particular village to
supply almost all the recruits for a single regiment. 31
This was acknowledged by the Indian mail censor’s office, which suggested
maintaining morale on the home front by distributing newspapers there about
events in France. Writing to the India Office in London, a Captain Howell reported:
It is well known that certain regiments are almost entirely recruited from certain districts. In
fact, the majority of regiments are more or less closely connected with one or two particular
districts. I do not see that there would be any great difficulty about supplying the newspapers
in those districts with the casualty lists of the local regiments and other news about the share
of those regiments in the war. 32
Territorially biased recruitment of this kind, reminiscent of the formation of ‘Pals’
regiments, furthered the risk of entire generations being collectively lost and
devastating specific communities. Yet, despite the rules being relaxed to allow for
the recruitment of ‘non-martial races’, the first half of the war effort continued to
be furnished principally by men from traditional sources, as illustrated in Table 2
(see p.14). Indeed, by the end of the war the Punjab had supplied around
360,000 men alone, of which just under half were Muslim. 33
The scale of the conflict was unprecedented. Peacetime recruitment only
required around 15,000 men annually – about 75 per regiment. But the
remorseless toll of the killing fields in Flanders and Mesopotamia ensured those
annual figures were now insufficient to meet even the monthly demand for men.
To sustain the scale of numbers needed for the Indian Expeditionary Forces in
France and Mesopotamia, changes to the recruitment procedure were also needed
to ensure a fresh and constant supply of recruits. The demands of the Great War
meant that a more centralised recruitment strategy became unavoidable and the
Indian Army was forced to abandon its existing policy of allowing individual
regiments to recruit sepoys directly in accordance with their own needs. This had
been a long favoured approach because it ensured that recruits felt a particular
sense of attachment to their regiment, something reflected in the two oaths of
allegiance they swore: the first to the King, and the second to their regiment. The
regimental oath was often the most meaningful part of a soldier’s pledge because,
although notions of loyalty to the King ran deep, he remained a distant figure to
many Indians with whom they could not easily identify. 34 Their regiment was, by
contrast, comprised of their own countrymen and formed an integral part of their
daily routine.
Muslims in the World Wars
30 Ibid, p.38
31 Indian Mail Censor’s Office,
Boulogne, 27th November 1915,
Censor of Indian Mails, 1914-
1918, L/MIL/5/828/64, IOR, BL,
London
32 Indian Mail Censor’s Office,
Boulogne, 27th November 1915,
Censor of Indian Mails, 1914-
1918, L/MIL/5/828/64, IOR, BL
London
33 Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj
p.39
34 T. A. Heathcote, The Indian
Army: The Garrison of British
Imperial India 1822-1922
(London, 1974)
policyexchange.org.uk | 15