Indianisation (British India)

Indianisation was a process introduced in the later period of British India (early 20th century) whereby Indian officers were promoted to more senior positions in government services, formerly reserved for Europeans. In the Indian police, the rank of Deputy Superintendent was introduced to prepare Indian officers for promotion to higher rank. In the armed forces, the process referred to the replacement of British officers by Indians. The progress was slow and unsatisfactory to the Indian nationalist politicians, however events, mainly the Second World War and the partition and independence which followed it, overtook the programme.

First mooted by Sir Henry Lawrence in 1844 as way to retain Indian sepoys (soldiers) in the British-Indian military service, thereby preventing them from peddling their martial expertise to Indian rulers, the Indianisation of the Indian Army's officer corps was seriously discussed by the higher echelons of the Raj as well as by Indian nationalist politicians and activists since the 1880s. The debate revolved around two inter-related questions. First, did Indians have the same aptitude for military command as did Britishers? Second, if it was determined that they did, how would they be integrated into the Indian Army's command structure in a way that did not endanger the continuance of Britain's rule over India? The second question was especially important to the British, as the "sepoy mutiny" of 1857-8 was still fresh in their minds. Indeed, some British officers remarked that giving Indians officer training would render them too efficient and therefore dangerous, while others thought the demand was not legitimate because it was advanced by "false" urban middle-class Indians, and not by the "real" Indians of the rural "martial races" who by this time provided most of the Army's manpower and who "wisely realized" that the King's Commission was "properly reserved for the governing [ie British] race." Still others thought that the sanctioning of Indian King's Commissioned officers would negatively affect the Indian Army's efficiency. Indian nationalists, however thought that, by not allowing Indians King's Commissions, the British were not honouring the promise in the Queen's Proclamation of 1858 to open employment to Indians in all branches of British-India's government.

In 1901, Lord Curzon, one of the most controversial British Viceroys of India, sought to solve the vexing Indianisation question once and for all by founding the Imperial Cadet Corps (ICC), which was intended to provide military education and special officer commissions to Indian princes and aristocrats. The ICC failed, for two reasons. First, the special officer commissions awarded to ICC graduates were "extra-regimental" and did not bestow the holder with powers of command over anyone - British or Indian. Second, the ICC's purpose was unclear: was it to be a military training institution or a finishing school for a tiny minority of Indian princes? In 1915, the ICC was disbanded.

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