British Indian army, revolt of 1857 and Punjab: shifting the recruitment grounds

Bhupinder Singh

British Indian army, revolt of 1857 and Punjab: shifting the recruitment grounds

Authors
Bhupinder Singh

Abstract
The East India Company (EIC) came to the Indian subcontinent for commercial purposes. Slowly but steadily, it made strong their footprints in the region and acquired the political hegemony. In which, army played significant role in sustaining & expanding the British interests. In his study, Streets (2004: 26) had pointed out that after the 1857 revolt, the British brought a lot of structural changes in its framework and changed the recruitment grounds of its armed forces in the Indian subcontinent. In such a typical case, Punjab had emerged as an extremely fertile ground. In addition, the geographical location of Punjab allied with other certain compulsions obligated the British to go for recruitment from this region. As a result, Punjab benefitted enormously from the recruitment in the British Indian Army. In this backdrop, the present paper is attempted to map the building of British Indian Army in general and Punjab’s role in particularly.

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