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Military history of India

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The predecessors to the contemporary Army of India were many: the sepoy regiments, native cavalry, irregular horse and Indian sapper and miner companies raised by the three British presidencies during Company rule in India. The Army of India was raised under the British Raj in the 19th century by taking the erstwhile presidency armies, merging them, and bringing them under the Crown. The British Indian Army fought in both World Wars.

Quotes

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  • In war the Indians were by far the bravest of all the races inhabiting Asia at that time.
    • Arrian, Anabasis, V, 4. quoted in Will Durant Our Oriental Heritage.
  • While the Greek and Roman historians have not failed to point to Alexander's weaknesses and the difficulties encountered by him, Vincent Smith has extolled him as a hero. Out of the 501 pages of his 'Early Hiostory of India', 70 pages are devoted to Alexander's campaign. ... Basham admits... that 'at least in his approach to Alexander's Indian campaigns, Mookerji is a more impartial historian than the hero-worshipping Smiths and Tarns, who had never been able to view history from the angle for the East.
    • About the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great. BN Puri, , quoted in Devahuti, D., & Indian History and Culture Society. (1980). Bias in Indian historiography. Delhi: D.K. Publications. p. 88-89
  • Its water is dark; its fruit is bitter and poisonous; its land is stony, and its earth is saltish. A small army will soon be annihilated there...
    • Hakim's report about Hind and Sindh to Caliph Uthman who thought about invading North-western India. The Chachnama. Quoted in Misra, R. G. (2005). Indian resistance to early Muslim invaders up to 1206 A.D. p.17
  • At most periods of her history India, though a cultural unit, has been torn by internecine war. In statecraft, her rulers were cunning and unscrupulous. Famine, flood and plague visited her from time to time, and killed millions of her people. Inequality of birth was given religious sanction, and the lot of the humble was generally hard. Yet our overall impression is that in no other part of the ancient world were the relations of man and man, and of man and the state, so fair and humane. In no other early civilisation were slaves so few in number, and in no other ancient lawbook are their rights so well protected as in the Arthasastra. No other ancient lawgiver proclaimed such noble ideals of fair play in battle as did Manu. In all her history of warfare Hindu India has few tales to tell of cities put to the sword or of the massacre of non-combatants…There was sporadic cruelty and oppression no doubt, but, in comparison with conditions in other early cultures, it was mild. To us the most striking feature of ancient Indian civilisation is its humanity.
    • A.L.Basham in his “The Wonder That Was India” quoted in [1] [This article is a major extract from the article "Sita Ram Goel, memories and ideas" by S. Talageri, written for the Sita Ram Goel Commemoration Volume, entitled "India's Only Communalist", edited by Koenraad Elst, published in 2005.
  • Hindus could not, even in the wildest stretch of their imagination, conceive of a war that defied description. Until then, the code of war ethics that they had inherited since the Vedic period rested upon a rather tempered, three-tiered categorisation, given, for example, by Kalidasa50, which was later elucidated by the Kashmiri scholar, Vallabhadeva. The first was a Dharmavijayi, which refers to a conqueror who after defeating his enemy, allows him to rule the territory as before but exerts administrative control over him. The second was a Lobhavijayi—a conqueror who, after defeating his enemy, snatches both his territory and his treasury but spares the defeated king’s life. And the third was an Asuravijayi—a conqueror who not only grabs his vanquished enemy’s territory and treasury but puts him to death and takes his entire family, including women and children, as slaves. Needless to say, the Hindu tradition holds the Asuravijayi as the most despicable form of military victory.
    • quoted in Balakrishna, S. Invaders and infidels: From Sindh to Delhi : the 500- year journey of Islamic invasions. New Delhi : BloomsBury, 2021.
  • No military unit in recent years has undertaken a more delicate and demanding peacetime mission than that faced by the Indian forces in Korea. The vast majority of prisoners placed in their charge had from months of imprisonment and uncertainty become highly nervous and volatile. The confidence inspired by the exemplary tact, fairness and firmness shown by the Indian officers and men led by their two able commanders, Lt. General Thimayya and Major General Thorat did much to alleviate the fears and doubts of these prisoners. The performance of these officers and their troops was fully in keeping with the high reputation of the Indian Army. They deserve the highest commendation.
  • The total numbers of men fielded by the various parts of the British Empire [during World War II] were immense. All told, the United Kingdom itself mobilized just under six million men and women. But an additional 5.1 million came from India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Victories like El Alamein and even more so Imphal were victories for imperial forces as much as for British forces; the colonial commitment to the Empire proved every bit as strong as in the First World War. Especially remarkable was the fact that more than two and a half million Indians volunteered to serve in the British Indian Army during the war - more than sixty times the number who fought for the Japanese. The rapid expansion of the Indian officer corps provided a crucial source of loyalty, albeit loyalty that was conditional on post-war independence.
    • Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p. 517
  • When Alexander had asked a Brahmin as to what they taught which inspired Hindu warriors to such high heroism, the Brahmin had replied in one sentence – “We teach our people to live with honour.”
    • Sita Ram Goel, The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1982)
  • The Indian legion is a joke. I believe that if Indians could be used to turn prayer-wheels, they would be the most indefatigable soldiers in the world. But using them in a real life-and-death war is pure madness. They cannot even kill an Englishman.
    • A. Hitler, quoted/attributed in Martin Ros, Jakhalzen van het Derde Rijk, p 59, and in Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". I.524.
  • Today the absurd spectacle of the high-stepping soldiers from India and Pakistan who nightly strut their robotic lowering and folding of flags, with their high kicks, stamps and twirls, at a border crossing on the Old Trunk Road between their two countries, draws increasingly large cheering crowds from each side and is a YouTube favourite. It is surely a bit of harmless fun. Or is it? Both countries have nuclear weapons and a long history of conflict and mutual suspicion. And militarism, whether that means elevating the military to a position as the noblest and best of their societies or the leaching of military values, such as discipline and obedience into the civilian world, can lead to trouble for democratic societies.
  • "Whatever the provocation, the shrine, the Brahman and the cow were sacrosanct.... War being a special privilege of the martial classes, harassment of the civilian population during military operations was considered a serious lapse from the code of honour. The high regard which all Kshatriyas had for the chastity of women, also ruled out abduction as an incident of war."
    • K.M. Munshi, 'End of Ancient India' in Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's Journal, vol. IV, no. II, December 29, 1959, pp. 8, 14. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 1
  • The most curious thing was the code of war of those days; as soon as the battle for the day ceased and evening came, the opposing parties were good friends, even going to each other's tents; however, when the morning came, again they proceeded to fight each other. That was the strange trait that the Hindus carried down to the time of the Mohammedan invasion. Then again, a man on horseback must not strike one on foot; must not poison the weapon; must not vanquish the enemy in any unequal fight, or by dishonesty; and must never take undue advantage of another, and so on. If any deviated from these rules he would be covered with dishonour and shunned. The Kshatriyas were trained in that way. And when the foreign invasion came from Central Asia, the Hindus treated the invaders in the selfsame way. They defeated them several times, and on as many occasions sent them back to their homes with presents etc. The code laid down was that they must not usurp anybody's country; and when a man was beaten, he must be sent back to his country with due regard to his position. The Mohammedan conquerors treated the Hindu kings differently, and when they got them once, they destroyed them without remorse.
    • Vivekananda, CW 4, THE MAHABHARATA (Delivered at the Shakespeare Club, Pasadena, California, February 1, 1900) quoted in in Shourie, Arun (1993). A secular agenda: For saving our country, for welding it. New Delhi, India: Rupa
  • Arthur Schopenhauer (d. 1860), one of the greatest nineteenth-century philosophers, narrates the sordid tale of the Islamic invasion of India as follows: ’…the endless persecutions, the religious wars, that sanguinary frenzy of which the ancients (of India) had no conception! The destruction or disfigurement of the ancient temples and idols, a lamentable, mischievous and barbarous act still bears witness to the monotheistic fury… carried on from Mahmud, the Ghaznevid of cursed memory, down to Aurangzeb… We hear nothing of this kind in the case of the Hindoo.’
    • cdlxxxvii Saunders TB (1997) The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: Book I : Wisdom of Life, De Young Press, p. 42–43 as quoted in M.A. Khan Islamic Jihad: A legacy of forced conversion, imperialism and slavery (2011)
  • Although conquest and conflict are by no means absent from dharmic traditions, these conflicts stemmed from an entirely different psychology and political programme than did the huge colonial endeavours of the West.
    • Malhotra, R., & Infinity Foundation (Princeton, N.J.). (2018). Being different: An Indian challenge to western universalism.
  • When we remember their wonderful military success in other parts of the world, the comparatively insignificant results the Arabs achieved in India certainly stand out in marked contrast. The cause of this, however, does not lie in the religious and social peculiarities of India as old historians like Elphinstone vainly attempted to establish. The cause lies undoubtedly in the superior military strength and state-organisation of the Indians as compared with most other nations of the time. However incredible this might appear in the light of subsequent events, this is the plain verdict of history. page 175
    • Volume 3: The Classical Age [320-750 A.D.]
  • The Indian kings, all of whom accepted, at any rate in theory, the law of the Dharmastras as inalienable, waged wars according to certain humane rules. 'Whatever the provocation, the shrine, the Brahmata and the cow were sacrosanct to them. War being a special privilege of the martial classes, harassment of the civilian population during military operations was considered a serious lapse from the code of honour. The high regard which all the Kshatriyas had for the chastity of women, also ruled out abduction as an incident of war.... The wars in Central Asia, on the other hand, were grim struggles for survival, for the destruction of the enemies and for appropriating their womenfolk. No code circumscribed the destructive zeal of the conqueror; no canon restrained the ruthlessness of their hordes. When, therefore, Mahmud’s armies swept over North India it saw torrents of barbarians sweeping across its rich plains, burning, looting, indulging in indiscriminate massacre; raping women, destroying fair cities, burning down magnificent shrines enriched by centuries of faith; enforcing an alien religion at the point of sword; abducting thousands, forcing them into unwilling marriage or concubinage; capturing hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, to be sold as slaves in the markets of Ghazni and other Central Asian markets... Mahmud annexed the Punjab, thereby opening the way to the hungry men from the steppes of Central Asia to descend upon this rich and fertile land in search of plunder. Nothing would with- stand the Central Asian raiders eager to plunder and destroy. In a few years, Thaneswar, Mathura, Kanauj and Prabhasa Pattana were smoking ruins. ... However, the destruction and the humiliation inflicted by Mahmud’s raids shocked India’s sense of ancient superiority, bringing into play several political, social and psychological factors. With the Yaminis, the successors of Mahmud, firmly established in the Punjab, the ‘Aryavarta-consciousness’ lost whatever significance it had. The belief that Chaturvarnya was a divinely appointed universal order, characteristic of the land, was shaken; for now a ruling race in the country not only stood outside it, but held it in contempt and sought its destruction.
    • Volume 5: The Struggle for Empire [1000-1300 A.D.]
  • " The most curious thing was the code of war of those days; as soon as the battle for the day ceased and evening came, the opposing parties were good friends, even going to each other’s tents; however, when the morning came, again they proceeded to fight each other. That was the strange trait that the Hindus carried down to the time of the Mohammedan invasion. Then again, a man on horseback must not strike one on foot; must not poison the weapon; must not vanquish the enemy in any unequal fight, or by dishonesty; and must never take undue advantage of another and so on. If any deviated from these rules he would be covered with dishonour and shunned. The Kshatriyas were trained in that way. And when the foreign invasion came from Central Asia, the Hindus treated the invaders in the selfsame way. They defeated them several times, and on as many occasions sent them back to their homes with presents etc. The code laid down was that they must not usurp anybody’s country; and when a man was beaten, he must be sent back to his country with due regard to his position. The Mohammedan conquerors treated the Hindu kings differently, and when they got them once, they destroyed them without remorse."
        • Swami Vivekananda(Complete Works (IV. 93-4)
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