The Indian Army and the End of the Raj

The Partition of British India in 1947 resulted in the establishment of the independent states of India and Pakistan and the end of the British Raj. The decision to divide British India along religious lines led to widespread upheaval and communal violence in the period leading up to and following the official day of independence, 15 August 1947. In this book, Daniel Marston provides a unique examination of the role of the Indian army in post-World War II India. He draws upon extensive research into primary source documents and interviews with veterans of the events of 1947 to provide fresh insight into the vital part that the Indian Army played in preserving law and order in the region. This rigorous book fills a significant gap in the historiography of the British in India and will be invaluable to those studying the British Empire and South Asia more generally.

Introduction; 1. The bedrock of the Raj: the Indian Army before 1939; 2. The performance of the Indian army in the Second World War; 3. Question of loyalty? The Indian National Army and the Royal Indian Navy mutiny; 4. The Indian Army in French Indo-China and the Netherlands East Indies 1945–6; 5. 1946, the year of difficulty: internal security and the rise of communal violence; 6. Demobilisation, nationalisation and division of the army in the midst of chaos; 7. 1947: the year of reckoning and the end of the Raj; Conclusion: the end of the British Indian Army; Bibliography; Index.

Daniel Marston is Professor of Military Studies in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, Canberra. He is also the Principal of the Military and Defence Studies Program at the Australian Command and Staff College in Canberra, Australia. He has also been a Visiting Fellow with the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War. His first book Phoenix from the Ashes, an in-depth assessment of how the British/Indian Army turned defeat into victory in the Burma campaign of the Second World War, won the Field Marshal Templer Medal Book Prize in 2003. He completed his doctorate in the history of war at Balliol College, Oxford, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.