Author: Lt General S L Menezes
Publisher: Penguin/Viking
Year: 1993
Language: English
Pages: 625
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0670839957
Description
This book is a dispassionate and well-researched account of the Indian Army from its inception to the present day.
For a variety of reasons there has never been an effort to analyze in their entirety the different factors that went into the Indian Army's evolution, and the Army's gradual developments, over the years, into the magnificent organization it is today. This book fills that vacuum admirably.
This work traces evolution of Indian Army in chronological sequence, from the time the East India Company commanded forces in seventeenth-century India, to further its territorial and economic designs, to its twenty-first century status as the third largest army in the world. The chapter on the 1857 Uprising, which has attracted considerable debate and scholarly dissertations from historians and academicians alike, is covered in much detail by the author as also the unification in 1895 of the three Presidency Armies, of Bengal, Bombay and Madras, into the Indian Army.
The year 1905, according to the author, was very significant in regard to the Indian Army for that was the year the Viceroy, Lord George Curson, resigned after a bitter policy dispute with the Commander-in-Chief in India, Lord Horatio Kitchner. Thereafter, the long overdue Indianization of the commissioned ranks took place mainly in response to nationalist demands. With the second World War, further sequential Indianization occurred. In the section on Independent India, the author takes a detailed look at the accession of the Indian States; the partition disturbances; conflicts with Pakistan and China; the aid to civil operations including Operation Bluestar, and various peace-keeping operations including in Sri Lanka.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Prologue
List of Abbreviations
Early Beginnings
The Presidency Armies in War Before 1857
Some Alleged Mutinies In The Three Presidency Armies Before 1857
Civil Disturbances And The Use Of Troops In Aid Of The Civil Power
Before 1857
The 1857 Uprising And Its Prelude
The Presidency Armies Under The Crown And Their Unification (1858-1895)
The Kitchener Era And the Kitchener-Curzon Dispute
The Indian Army In the First World War
Political Movements And The Indian Army In The First World War
The Myth Of The Martial Race Dogma
Indianization and The Indian Army Between The World Wars
The War Years (1939-1945)
The Indian National Army (INA) Or The Azad Hind Fauj
Partition, Independence And The Accession Of States
Post-Independence - The Nehru Years
The Post-Nehru Years
Epilogue
Appendices
Notes And References
Select Bibliography
Index