India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey.

  • John Strachey
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in 1857 a regiment took three or four months to march from the seaboard to Lahore, it can now move from Calcutta to Lahore in a week. Reinforcements from England, which then occupied three months on a voyage round the Cape, now land in Bombay within thirty days of leaving England. Again, the power of British troops has been indefinitely increased by their armament with breech-loading rifles, and by the substitution of rifled field- pieces of higher power for the smooth-bore six-pounder, nine- pounder, and mountain guns of the mutiny era. In any contest within the borders, or on the frontiers of India, these improved armaments would tell heavily ; for the troops of Afghanistan, Burma, Nepal, Gwalior, Hyderabad, and the Cis-Sutlej States, are for the most part still armed with smooth-bore muzzle-loading weapons.” Before the mutinies of 1857, the infantry of the Bengal army was, as I have already said, mainly re- cruited from the Brahmans and Rajputs of Oudli and the North-Western Provinces. Although men of fine physique, they were not remarkable for fighting effi- ciency, and the former reputation of the Native army of Bengal was certainly exaggerated. Most of its triumphs were mainly due to the British troops who were associated with it. The ruinous consequences of drawing the larger proportion of our soldiers from a single class, under the influence of the same feelings and interests, and holding more than any other people in India the strictest prejudices of caste, were shown by the events of 1857. The old system was abandoned, and I quote from the Report of the Indian Army Com- mission a description of that which took its place :— “ The systems of recruiting for the several armies are diverse. Regiments of the Madras and tBonibayhirmies draw their recruits from many tribes and castes over the several recruiting grounds of those presidencies, and the Bombay regiments have an admixture of Sikhs and Hindustanis from Northern India in their ranks. These armies are thus composed of what are called
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