Shekhar Gupta: A People and their Army

Gen Rawat-Dyer comparison shows how post-colonial scholars missed out on the finest Army of this era

Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer was British, but was an officer of the Indian Army. The 50 riflemen who opened fire at a peaceful Baisakhi gathering at Amritsar's Jallianwala Bagh, killing 396 and wounding more than a thousand, were Indian soldiers.

Within 25 years, the same Army was fighting on both sides of a small, one-sided but historic war. Subhash Chandra Bose's Indian National Army consisted of Indian prisoners of war with Axis forces. Within three years, in 1947-48 of that fratricide, the Army was at war again, this time to protect its own nation, in Kashmir.

The colonial Army