z:\ ambedkar\vol 08\vol8 03.indd MK SJ+YS 28 9 2013 74
74 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
as there was no attempt to draw upon any but the traditional martial elements of the population. But they all got their recruits mainly from their natural areas of recruitment, viz., the Madras Army from the Tamil and Telugu countries, the Bombay Army from Western India, and the Bengal Army from Bihar and U. P. and to a very limited extent from Bengal. There was no official restriction on the enrolment of men of any particular tribe or caste or region, provided they were otherwise eligible. Leaving aside for the moment the practice of the Bombay and the Madras Armies, the only exception to this general rule in the Bengal Army was that which applied to the Punjabis and Sikhs, who, inspite of their magnificent military traditions, were not given a fair representation in the Army of Northern India. Their recruitment, on the contrary, was placed under severe restrictions by an order of the Government, which laid down that ‘the number of Punjabis in a regiment is never to exceed 200, nor are more than 100 of them to be Sikhs’. It was only the revolt of the Hindustani regiments of the Bengal Army that gave an opportunity to the Punjabis to rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of the British authorities. Till then, they remained suspect and under a ban, and the Bengal Army on the eve of the Mutiny was mainly recruited from Oudh, North and South Bihar, especially the latter, principally Shahabad and Bhojpur, the Doab of the Ganges and Jumna and Rohilkhund. The soldiers recruited from these areas were mostly high-caste men, Brahmins of all denominations, Kshatriyas, Rajputs and Ahirs. The average proportion in which these classes were enrolled in a regiment was:(1) Brahmin 7/24, (2) Rajputs 1/4, (3) Inferior Hindus
1/6, (4) Musalmans 1/6, (5) Punjabis 1/8.
“To this army, the area which now-a-days furnishes the greatest number of soldiers—the Punjab, Nepal, N.-W. F. Province, the hill tracts of Kumaon and Garhwal, Rajputana,—furnished very few recruits or none at all. There was practical exclusion in it of all the famous fighting castes of India,—Sikhs, Gurkhas, Punjabi Musalmans, Dogras, Jats, Pathans, Garhwalis, Rajputana Rajputs, Kumaonis, Gujars, all the tribes and sects, in fact, which are looked upon today as a tower of strength of the Indian Army. A single year and a single rebellion was, however, to change all this. The Mutiny, which broke out in 1857, blew up the old Bengal Army and brought into existence a Punjabized and barbarized army, resembling the Indian Army of today in broad lines and general proportions of its composition.
“The gaps created by the revolt of the Hindustani regiments (of the Bengal Army) were at once filled up by Sikhs and other Punjabis, and hillmen eager for revenge and for the loot of the cities of Hindustan. They had all been conquered and subjugated by the British with the help of the Hindustani soldiers, and in their ignorance, they regarded the Hindustanis, rather the handful of British, as their