Hindustan Times

With India creating the forward-looking office of Chief of Defence Staff, it is a good time to look back at the Indianisation of the military. The Imperial Cadet Corps (ICC) was founded in 1901 by the British Raj to give officer-grade training to the princes and aristocrats of India. Though the ICC failed and wound up in 1917, it established the precedent for admission and training of Indians — in India — as officers. Had it not been for its initiation, India would have been bereft of an able and willing command structure to lead its armed forces post-Independence. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] For nearly half a century preceding the formation of ICC, there raged an Indianisation debate: Were Indians fit for the military command and leadership? Could Indian officers and British officers be integrated as peers in the same army? Would not such an accommodation destroy the very basis of the British Raj? In 1885, General Sir George Tomkyns Chesney, a military member of the Governor General’s council, considered Indianisation as a method of honouring the promise made in the 1858 Royal Proclamation to open up positions in government and administration to Indians. In 1887, the Indian National Congress passed a resolution calling for Indianisation and the establishment of a military college in the country. Military command was not conceived for all Indians, but for the so-called martial races — and the young aristocrats from princely states and British India. A Prussian-style Junker class was considered important for co-option into the Imperial military establishment. Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, an aristocrat and front-ranking British conservative, became the Viceroy and produced a proposal to setup an Imperial Cadet Corps comprising merely 20 to 30 handpicked scions of the Indian princely and feudatory houses to undergo a course of military training. General Viscount Kitchener of Khartoum assumed charge as Commander-in-Chief in 1902 and believed the Russians had plans to invade India. Therefore, the inclusion of native leadership into armed forces became a priority. In 1903, the Indian Staff Corps was renamed the “Indian Army”. The normal training course at the ICC lasted two years. A few cadets who showed promise underwent the third year of specialised military training. Upon successfully completing it, cadets were granted commissions in His Majesty’s Native Indian Land Forces (HMNILF). In November 1904, the Commission for the Imperial Cadet Corps was signed and approved by the secretary of State for India. Major DH Cameroon was made its commandant, and Maharaja Pratap Singh of Idar was made its honorary commandant. The membership in the ICC was by invitation only. The shortlisted men, of 17 to 20 years, were admitted as Imperial Cadets in Dehradun. Between 1901 and 1908, 68 cadets were admitted but merely 11 were granted HMNILF commissions during the Corps’ existence. Only in 1918 did London sanction the eligibility of Indians for regular officer commissions, and the first nine were bestowed on ICC graduates. In the early 1920s, New Delhi decided to open a preparatory Indian feeder school for the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. Christened the “Prince of Wales Royal Indian Military College”, it used the old ICC lines at Dehradun (now called the Rashtriya Indian Military College). Finally, the Royal Indian Military Academy opened in 1932, which is now the Indian Military Academy. Let us not forget the first Indians who rose to command in India even as we welcome the first Indian Chief of Defence Staff. https://epaper.hindustantimes.com/Home/ShareArticle?OrgId=bcda0487

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a deep understanding of India’s history, as seen from the eyes of a common man. At the highly publicised unveiling of Sardar Patel’s statue in Gujarat last year, he commented on the need to also recognise the contribution of the princes, who gave up their respective individual identities for the creation of independent India. When the sun set on August 14, 1947, there were 565 ruling princes in India. They were variously magnificent, enticing, glamorous, haughty, lavish, enchanting, elusive, charismatic, but also eccentric, idiosyncratic, malevolent, cruel and hedonistic. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] They claimed to be descendants of the sun, moon, fire, Ram, Krishna and other mythical and legendary heroes who, according to these Maharajas, founded their dynasties. The largest of the princely states, as they were called, was the size of France or Germany, whereas the smallest was scarcely bigger than a farm holding. Like the Renaissance princes of Italy, most of the Indian rulers were innovators, builders, and patrons of folk culture, music, art, cuisine and civic institutions. Before Cartier, Faberge and Louis Vuitton became known to our newly wealthy elites, they were favoured and liberally patronised by Indian royalty. Rudyard Kipling famously wrote about the maharajas, “Providence created the maharajas to offer mankind a spectacle.” Traditional Indian regal authority was autocratic and paternalistic, but also benign. It rested on feudal kinship that flourished throughout our subcontinent. It is incorrect to see the maharajas through a colonial British lens. The British crown ruled India for less than 90 years. Their narrative cannot be the guide to our past. It is interesting to ponder over the fact that no fewer than 282 princely states out of the 565 were to be found, packed like sardines, in the Kathiawar Peninsula of Gujarat. The same Gujarat gave us unlimited entrepreneurial energy, international diaspora, cultural pride, and political leadership from Gandhi, Patel, and Morarji Desai to Modi. The fact that even when everything was taken away from them, including their titles, their purses and their properties, the persona of the Maharaja has not got erased from the mind of an incredibly young India. The political class in the present era is as decadent in certain avatars as the maharajas, but it lacks the large heartedness and selfless charity of the ruling princes. The positives of that system have become blurred in collective memory, but the negatives are often recalled, thanks to the propagation of stereotypes by Bollywood, regional cinema, popular literature as well as the occasional documentary-style narratives by foreign commentators. A lot of what is great about India even today owes its origins to the princely order and the various states that they ruled. This is true of cricket, art and culture, handicrafts, folk traditions, industry, irrigation,textiles, tourism, and even institutions of learning and science and technology. A covenant of sanctity was broken on the night of December 28, 1970, when the then President of India was woken up to sign an ordinance derecognising the princely order. In the historiography of India, the princes have been marginalised. At a time when India is taking stock of many decisions made in the sunrise hours of Independence, it is only appropriate that we should look at the role of Indian royalty afresh and give them their rightful place in our collective esteem. https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/revisiting-the-role-and-legacy-of-india-s-royalty/story-6glrnk8BV45am8oaY69d3M.html