I do not think that
even this long list is complete.
Ever since the Government of India was taken over by the Crown, India
has been regarded as an Imperial military asset and training ground, a
position from which the jealousy of the East India Company had largely
protected her, by insisting that the army it supported should be used
for the defence and in the interests of India alone. Her value to the
Empire for military purposes would not so seriously have injured at once
her pride and her finances if the natural tendencies of her martial
races had been permitted their previous scope; but the disarming of the
people, 20 years after the assumption of the Government by the Crown,
emasculated the Nation, and the elimination of races supposed to be
unwarlike, or in some cases too warlike to be trusted, threw recruitment
more and more to the north, and lowered the physique of the Bengalis and
Madrasis, on whom the Company had largely depended.
The superiority of the Punjab, on which Sir Michael O'Dwyer so
vehemently insisted the other day, is an artificial superiority, created
by the British system and policy; and the poor recruitment elsewhere, on
which he laid offensive insistence, is due to the same system and
policy, which largely eliminated Bengalis, Madrasis and Mahrattas from
the army.
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