In discussing the question of the Indian armies, we have carefully to distinguish between the theory and the practice. The Indian official theory says that not only is the native army a valuable auxiliary to the English army in India, but that its moral effect on the people is of great benefit to us, inasmuch as it raises their self-respect, and offers a career to men who would otherwise be formidable enemies. The practice proclaims that the native troops are either dangerous or useless by arming them with weapons as antiquated as the bow and arrow, destroys the moral effect which might possibly be produced by a Hindoo force by filling the native ranks with Sikh and Goorkha aliens and heretics, and makes us enemies without number by denying to natives that promotion which the theory holds out to them. The existing system is officially defended by the most contradictory arguments, and on the most shifting of grounds. Those who ask why we should not trust the natives, at all events to the extent of allowing Bengal and Bombay men to serve, and to serve with arms that they can use, in bodies which profess to be the Bengal and Bombay armies, but which in fact are Sikh regiments which we are afraid to arm, are told that the native army has mutinied times without end, that it has never fought well except where, from the number of British present, it had no choice but to fight, and that it is dangerous and inefficient. Those who ask why this shadow of a native army should be retained are told that its records of distinguished service in old times are numerous and splendid. The huge British force maintained in India, and the still huger native army, are each of them made an excuse for the retention of the other at the existing standard. If you say that it is evident that 70,000 British troops cannot be needed in India, you are told that they are required to keep the 120,000 native troops in check. If you ask, Of what use, then, are the latter? you hear that in the case of a serious imperial war the English troops would be withdrawn, and the defense of India confided to these very natives who in time of peace require to be thus severely held in check. Such shallow arguments would be instantly exposed were not English statesmen bribed by the knowledge that their acceptance as good logic allows us to maintain at India‘s cost 70,000 British soldiers, who in time of danger would be available for our defense at home.
That the English force of 70,000 men maintained in India in time of peace can be needed there in peace or war is not to be supposed by those who remember that 10,000 men were all that were really needed to suppress the wide-spread mutiny of 1857, and that Russia—our only possible enemy from without—never succeeded during a two years’ war in her own territory in placing a disposable army of 60,000 men in the Crimea. Another mutiny such as that of 1857 is, indeed, impossible, now that we retain both forts and artillery exclusively in British hands; and Russia, having to bring her supplies and men across almost boundless deserts, or through hostile Afghanistan, would be met at the Khyber by our whole Indian army, concentrated from the most distant stations at a few days’ notice, fighting in a well-known and friendly country, and supplied from the plains of all India by the railroads. Our English troops in India are sufficiently numerous, were it necessary, to fight both the Russians and our native army; but it is absurd that we should maintain in India, in a time of perfect peace, at a yearly cost to the people of that country of from fourteen to sixteen millions sterling, an army fit to cope with the most tremendous disasters that could overtake the country, and at the same time unspeakably ridiculous that we should in all our calculations be forced to set down the native army as a cause of weakness. The native rulers, moreover, whatever their unpopularity with their people, were always able to array powerful levies against enemies from without; and if our government of India is not a miserable failure, our influence over the lower classes of the people ought, at the least, to be little inferior to that exercised by the Mogul emperors or the Maratta chiefs.
As for local risings, concentration of our troops by means of the railroads that would be constructed in half a dozen years out of our military savings alone, and which American experience shows us cannot be effectually destroyed, would be amply sufficient to deal with them were the force reduced to 30,000 men; and a general rebellion of the people of India we have no reason to expect, and no right to resist should it by any combination of circumstances be brought about.
The taxation required to maintain the present Indian army presses severely upon what is in fact the poorest country in the world; the yearly drain of many thousand men weighs heavily upon us; and our system seems to proclaim to the world the humiliating fact, that under British government, and in times of peace, the most docile of all peoples need an army of 200,000 men, in addition to the military police, to watch them, or keep them down.
Whatever the decision come to with regard to the details of the changes to be made in the Indian army system, it is at least clear that it will be expedient in us to reduce the English army in India if we intend it for India‘s defense, and our duty to abolish it if we intend it for our own. It is also evident that, after allowing for mere police duties—which should in all cases be performed by men equipped as, and called by the name of, police—the native army should, whatever its size, be rendered as effective as possible, by instruction in the use of the best weapons of the age. If local insurrections have unfortunately to be quelled, they must be quelled by English troops; and against European invaders, native troops, to be of the slightest service, must be armed as Europeans. As the possibility of European invasion is remote, it would probably be advisable that the native army should be gradually reduced until brought to the point of merely supplying the body-guards and ceremonial-troops; at all events, the practice of overawing Sikhs with Hindoos, and Hindoos with Sikhs, should be abandoned as inconsistent with the nature of our government in India, and with the first principles of freedom.
There is, however, no reason why we should wholly deprive ourselves of the services of the Indian warrior tribes. If we are to continue to hold such outposts as Gibraltar, the duty of defending them against all comers might not improperly be intrusted wholly or partly to the Sikhs or fiery little Goorkhas, on the ground that, while almost as brave as European troops, they are somewhat cheaper. It is possible, indeed, that, just as we draw our Goorkhas from independent Nepaul, other European nations may draw Sikhs from us. We are not even now the only rulers who employ Sikhs in war; the Khan of Kokand is said to have many in his service: and, tightly ruled at home, the Punjaubees may not improbably become the Swiss of Asia.
Whatever the European force to be maintained in India, it is clear that it should be local. The Queen‘s army system has now had ten years’ trial, and has failed in every point in which failure was prophesied. The officers, hating India, and having no knowledge of native languages or customs, bring our government into contempt among the people; recruits in England dread enlistment for service they know not where; and Indian tax-payers complain that they are forced to support an army over the disposition of which they have not the least control, and which in time of need would probably be withdrawn from India. Even the Dutch, they say, maintain a purely colonial force in Java, and the French have pledged themselves that, when they withdraw the Algerian local troops, they will replace them by regiments of the line. England and Spain alone maintain purely imperial troops at the expense of their dependencies.
Were the European army in India kept separate from the English service, it would be at once less costly and more efficient, while the officers would be acquainted with the habits of the natives and customs of the country, and not, as at present, mere birds of passage, careless of offending native prejudice, indifferent to the feelings of those among whom they have to live, and occupied each day of their idle life in heartily wishing themselves at home again. There are, indeed, to the existing system drawbacks more serious than have been mentioned. Sufficient stress has not hitherto been laid upon the demoralization of our army and danger to our home freedom that must result from the keeping in India of half our regular force. It is hard to believe that men who have periodically to go through such scenes as those of 1857, or who are in daily contact with a cringing dark-skinned race, can in the long run continue to be firm friends to constitutional liberty at home; and it should be remembered that the English troops in India, though under the orders of the Commander-in-Chief, are practically independent of the House of Commons.
It is not only constitutionally that Indian rotation service is bad. The system is destructive to the discipline of our troops, and a separate service is the only remedy.