A backward economy: the beneficiaries

The backward and underdeveloped economy of south-east Punjab in the colonial period shaped the dominant forms of masculinity and the attendant ideologies. This region, now known as Haryana, stood in sharp contrast to the rest of Punjab. The British, through repeated territorial rearrangements (especially in the wake of the happenings of 1857 and again in 1911) when the capital was shifted from Calcutta to Delhi, had created in the south-east region of Punjab, the Ambala division with Rohtak, Hissar, Gurgaon, Karnal, Ambala and Shimla. This division, minus its Shimla district, roughly approximated to the present-day Haryana.Footnote ¹ This south-east region (hereafter Haryana) in the colonial period, remained one of the most backward and underdeveloped regions of Punjab. The famine ridden barani region (dependent on rainfall) with its concomitant low yielding crops and chronic crop failures, supplemented by meagre gains from animal husbandry made a living for an overwhelming majority of landowners a hand-to-mouth affair. A large section of the peasants tended to be subsistence or deficit producers, because only a comparatively large holding could be economic. For example, in Rohtak district, a holding of at least 12 acres, was necessary for it to be considered an economic one.Footnote ² This meant that only about 28 per cent of land holdings were in this category.Footnote ³ The same was true, more or less, for the entire Haryana region which made the extremely hard work in self-cultivation necessary to ensure mere survival, a great masculine virtue. Consequently, a ‘peasant/soldier’ representing hegemonic masculinity upheld hard work, sweat and strong physique as his ‘manly ideal’. In this the requirement of the region as well as the colonial masters coincided. For purposes of recruitment the British drew from the ‘yeoman peasant’ of the agriculturist caste groups, declared to be independent, sturdy, upright, honest and reliable.Footnote ⁴ This hardworking peasant/soldier was firmly rooted and moulded by this region's economy.

The hard work, however, was not confined to the male populace; women worked as hard as the men, if not harder.Footnote ⁵ The subsistence level economy in the harsh unyielding geo-economic conditions of this region, with total dependence on family labour for cultivation, made women's work indispensable. However, this ‘hard labour’ of women, essential for both cultivation and animal husbandry, was taken for granted. As a woman was considered to be ‘owned’ by her guardian—always a male, be it her father/brother, her husband or her son, it was part of her ‘duty’ to perform this work to the best of her ability. Unlike a man who was both a producer and a fighter, a woman was only seen and credited as a reproducer. Accordingly, no extra ‘value’ was ever attached to a woman's ‘hard work’ like that of a man. Similarly, unlike the male, her strong physique gave her no extra edge; it was only required in the marriage market.Footnote ⁶ This region's popular saying Dabya ke baah, te rajeya kai kha (the deeper you plough, the greater would be the yield for you to eat) is maintained only in relation to men and not to women.

The needs of imperialism gave low priority to any improvement of agriculture in Haryana. It was seen primarily as suited for the supply of draught animals to the rest of Punjab, as also to certain other parts of India. The determined efforts of the British to retain it as such are reflected in their irrigational policies, emphasis on low value food-cum-fodder crops, and in their attempts to curb the limited efforts made at substitution of fodder crops by other crops, which might adversely affect this region's cattle wealth.Footnote ⁷ Animal husbandry emerged as a necessary supplement to this region's subsistence level economy. The colonial policy's deliberate slant went a long way in determining the character and development of this region's concept of masculinity.

The perpetuation of this backward economy proved to be very helpful to Imperial interests. The impoverished tract became a major recruiting area for the British Indian Army as fewer human resources and labour, especially male, were needed to manage its agricultural operations and animal husbandry. This was particularly so as women were fully involved in these activities, so a large number of men became available for recruitment. Moreover, under conditions of severe economic stagnation, rising population, unemployment and prices, the army in this region provided the only source of employment and sustenance.Footnote ⁸ The British recruitment policies succeeded in providing a powerful outlet to the agriculturist population of this region.

Punjabis with their experience of fighting with regular European style armies gained in the pre-British annexation period came to form the bulk of soldier recruits in the British Indian Army. This region's strategic location which made it prone to frequent invasions in the pre-colonial period imparted to its inhabitants a militarized ethos. Many of the communities singled out by the British for recruitment had long standing military traditions that could be exploited by the British rulers. Having been a witness to their fighting prowess and ‘loyalty’ in suppressing the Indian rebellion after the 1857 uprising, the British embarked upon a calculated policy of recruiting soldiers from the Punjab peasantry. Also in the background of growing national consciousness elsewhere in the country, it was acknowledged that in this region ‘a crude political consciousness so liable to create hostility towards the government could be aroused, especially among the 50 to 60 per cent of such “martial castes” with marked “martial instincts” needed to be firmly checked’.Footnote ⁹ Since, geographically this area encircled the capital, the political danger was also evident.

Recruitment however was confined to certain caste groups only who were designated as ‘martial races’. This concept was based upon the idea that some people were inherently more warlike than others and hence better suited than others to military service. Based upon pre-colonial military cultures which had employed military identities to recruit local support and secure legitimacy and loyalty for their political authority,Footnote ¹⁰ this concept drew upon earlier British experience to target a few select communities of ‘natural warriors’ for the colonial army. However, unlike the pre-colonial broad-based recruitment from different social sources, the British concentrated on those caste groups who they designated as ‘martial’, thereby stifling the opportunity for many sections of the rural population which had a decisive fall out effect on caste relations and identities.

Theoretically, the ‘martial race’ or ‘martial caste’ concept (used confusedly and interchangeably by the British) was based not only on the climatic theory of race and the historical theory of Aryan conquest but also in the colonial context identified through the use of the varna system (a four-fold status order system of Hindu society according to the Brahmanical texts) and their descendants who had or claimed to have Kshatriya (warrior) ancestry. The ideology of kshatriyahood was consistent with the world view of colonialism. However, it could not include those who fell outside its orbit. In order to accommodate men with ‘proven fighting ability and loyalty’ like the Jats, kshatriyahood also came to be accepted for those who, in the traditional ritual varna hierarchy, were not identified with the Kshatriyas but with Sudras. This paradoxical situation, in which such caste groups represented the most powerful collaborationist strands within Indian society, will be discussed presently.

The systematic application of the ‘martial race’ theory to the British Indian Army recruitments is credited to Lord Fredreick Sleigh Roberts of Kandhar who served as the commander-in-chief of the Indian Army from 1885 to 1893. According to him it was not ‘a question of efficiency but of courage and physique’; in those two essentials the sepoys of lower India were seen to be ‘wanting’.Footnote ¹¹ Those from the south were dismissed as ‘effeminate’. This concept created ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ castes/classes of Indians. The application of the idealized concept of martial race to select ‘superior’ caste groups in colonial India emerged at a tandem with its opposite–the concept of the ‘effeminate’ Indians as symbolized by the Bengali Babu Footnote ¹².

These so-called martial ‘castes’ or ‘classes’ could be best distinguished by their occupation. In the agrarian milieu of Punjab, these were commonly known and identified as ‘zamindars’, in general and by the land owning classes in particular. The socio-cultural ethos was coloured and determined by them. The word ‘zamindar’ in Punjab, unlike in most other Indian provinces, where it is used for owners of very large estates, was and still is applied to any landowner, however small. British administrators provided a constitutional basis for this usage, and enlarged the scope of its definition in 1900 by the enactment of the Punjab Alienation of Land Act which created ‘statutory casteism’ by designating certain castes as ‘zamindar or agricultural tribes’, with the result that the word ‘zamindar’ also came to stand for a member of any statutory agricultural caste.Footnote ¹³ The rationale of this act lay in the concessions being made to the peasantry of Punjab. The widespread alienations of land taking place from the heavily indebted small land owning peasantry to the moneylenders (from amongst the non-cultivating, trading classes especially) needed to be stopped as this strata, providing the major recruits to the British Army, could well prove to be volatile and destabilize the British government.Footnote ¹⁴

In this region the agricultural castes were identified as: Jat, Rajput, Pathan, Sayyed, Gujjar, Ahir, Biloch, Ror, Moghal, and Mali. By subsequent notifications, Taga, Saini, Chauhan, Arain, Gaud Brahmin, and Quereshi were also notified as opposed to the non-agriculturist groups which included among others the high caste Brahmins, Khatris, Banias and the Scheduled caste groups among the low castes. Among the agriculturists the Jats formed a category of their own. They were variously defined and categorized by the colonial rulers. Defined as a ‘tribe’ in the nineteenth century, the Jats were recognized as a caste group only in 1931.Footnote ¹⁵ Under the Punjab Alienation of Land Act, 1900, they were declared an ‘agricultural tribe’ for all administrative, political and economic purposes, but in the judicial category, as stated above, they were clubbed with other menial caste groups under the varna category of Sudras.Footnote ¹⁶ However, as they also overlapped the ‘martial caste’ category from which the British drew their recruits for the British Indian Army, they were considered by the British to have entered the Hindu hierarchy as high caste men and being warriors belonged to the Kshatriya category. This contradiction in essence meant that the administrative and political view of caste as understood and adopted by British officials was very different from the judicial view enforced by the law courts. This inconsistency was never resolved. It was strange indeed to have the same caste as menial (Sudra) for legal purposes but Kshatriya for recruitment purposes, and be grouped with ‘twice born’ like the Brahmins and the Banias. Clearly, there was not one dominant classifying procedure or principle that was used for the system as a whole.

The British defined caste categories as it suited their requirements. The same caste came to be defined in so many ways.Footnote ¹⁷ For example, the Jats’ dual identity of Kshatriya and Sudra was important for colonial rulers. As Kshatriya they could be recruited under the martial race theory and as Sudra they were able legally to hold on to some of their traditional customary practices, like the widow remarriage, which were not allowed by the higher caste followers amongst the twice born, and had also been rendered judicially invalid for those caste groups. Such customs, though greatly despised and looked down upon by the British, as explained later, were considered essential to maintain the socio-political stability of this province.

The caste groups designated as martial caste became more and more status conscious. Consequently, in the first two decades of the twentieth century extensive mobilization of different caste groups with differing results took place. This was done by using both, the help of newly found caste associations and by strengthening the traditional caste panchayats and Mahasabhas. Both these modern and traditional forms of caste associations hinged upon claiming and maintaining a separate identity, with its separate history and culture for its caste followers. In this region for instance, the Hindu Jats were mobilized and knitted into a strong social and political force and successfully laid claims to all spheres ranging form political to appointments in the administrative and educational services.Footnote ¹⁸ In the days of high competition for jobs and other favours from the colonial government the claimants, drawing their strength from their caste status, attempted to guard it from encroachments. This was specially so, as ‘Jat’ along with ‘Rajput’ had emerged as ‘a status term with widespread occurrence’ embracing not just a locality but also the whole province.Footnote ¹⁹ Since ‘Jat’ had assumed almost a ‘generic’ form, used by different caste groups to designate themselves, it is not difficult to see how they, along with other peasant castes groups like Ror, Gujjar and Ahirs, closed their caste boundaries and accelerated the move towards reforms to get rid of what they considered to be social and caste anomalies. This upward mobility drive of the designated caste groups was greatly encouraged by a recruitment policy adopted by the British.

With the martial and agriculturist castes emerging as overlapping categories in Punjab, this region started to be flooded with thousands of ‘civil recruiters’ who, the British officials admitted, used fair and foul means to ‘procure’ military recruits.Footnote ²⁰ British wooing of the ‘martial castes’ at economic, political and social levels, proved highly successful. At the outbreak of World War One, Punjab was supplying about half the Indian soldiers to the army and this proportion increased during the next two years.Footnote ²¹ The Haryana region of Punjab initially contributed only a small share via this recruiting system. But the requirements of war made the British look afresh at this ‘little known area’ (which so far had been looked down upon as being ‘comparatively unimportant’Footnote ²²), and so much so that, in certain areas agriculture became a second string in the armies’ bow. Recruitment during the colonial period established a historical and family tradition of army service which has continued to this day, especially amongst the still persisting dry zone areas where the demand for recruitment has remained high.

During World War One, this region contributed one-fifth of the total recruitment from Punjab.Footnote ²³ A large number of villages in Haryana contributed 50 per cent of their total male population to the army.Footnote ²⁴ In village Kalanaur, a Muslim Rajput village in Rohtak district, 90 per cent of the males of military age had enlisted by 1939.Footnote ²⁵ This region as a whole showed an astounding increase of recruits between the First and Second World Wars, as can be ascertained from the number of pensioners in one of its districts; in Rohtak district, for example, the number of pensioners in 1910 was 866 which rose to 6,238 in 1936—an increase of 620 per cent.Footnote ²⁶ A large number of families in Rohtak district boasted of each having provided more than three recruits to the army during the two World Wars. The recruitment pattern adopted had a lot to do with the overwhelming representation of certain families, villages and regions. Apart from flooding the region with civil recruits, as mentioned above, a British Commander was allowed to recruit by sending his Indian Non-Commissioned Officers (known as Haveldar or Haveldar Major) to their villages with instructions to get ‘more of the same’, who could easily bond by speech, religion, caste and blood to their immediate superiors.Footnote ²⁷ This resulted in close identification of the new recruit with his fellow members in the unit.

There were, however, certain districts which supplied the bulk of the recruits. These mostly belonged to the un-irrigated villages of Jhajjar tehsil, Rohtak district, where living conditions were most insecure.Footnote ²⁸ The other important recruiting grounds, apart from the arid plains of Haryana, were: Jhelum, Rawalpindi and Attock in the north west and Kangra in the north-east. All these were arid areas with highly deficient irrigation and prone to recurrent famines.Footnote ²⁹ In fact the official reports acknowledged that the economically insecure and backward tracts of Punjab provided the best and maximum number of recruits to the British Indian Army, and not the irrigated and comparatively more prosperous ones.Footnote ³⁰ The response of the canal colonies had been most disappointing to the British war efforts.Footnote ³¹ Even in the irrigated tracks of the otherwise backward region of Haryana, the Punjab officials had realized quite early that the ‘canal irrigation was a distinct obstacle in the way of recruitment and the response of the irrigated villages was extremely disappointing as compared to the unirrigated ones’.Footnote ³²

Over the years certain other factors also affected recruitment to the army, as it came to face competition from other vocations. Work opportunities in the Far East, construction of railways, public works and opening out of certain industrial vocations, apart from agricultural prosperity in certain areas, eroded the recruitment drive of the British officers, especially as the British government failed to offer better pay scales or sufficient inducements to possible recruits.Footnote ³³ Along with this came the attraction of the educated youth for government employment in the three branches of administration—executive, judicial and revenue—giving them steady incomes, security and even ‘prestige’.Footnote ³⁴ However, because of continuing industrial and commercial backwardness, the educated depended almost entirely on government service. More importantly, unlike in the army, a ‘good’ physique was not required for government service. Physicality did not matter, nor was there a ‘particular need for efficiency’.Footnote ³⁵ Clearly, masculinities other than the dominant militarized masculinity were surfacing, strengthening and gaining some space in popular recognition, especially in the evolving and changing socio-political arena. This trend was to strengthen infinitely in the post-colonial period.

The Army: creating and reinforcing masculine attributes

Because of the complex interplay of imperial expansionism and jingoism in the Victorian and Edwardian British Empire, imperial masculinities that valorized military service became dominant.Footnote ³⁶ This had a decisive fallout effect in British colonies. For example, army recruitment extended to the peasant strata in Punjab helped popularize the militaristic definitions of masculinity valorizing a trained and powerful body and invoking high ideals of courage, and sacrifice. Being declared a martial race denoted masculine qualities, honour and respectability. However, the army recruitment was vital in sharpening and even creating in certain instances inter-caste and intra-community differences. These differences marked out the divergence not only between different castes (between the chosen or designated caste groups and the others especially the surpassed castes), but also amongst the chosen caste groups it created a hierarchy of men between those who were recruited and those who were passed over.

Recruitment among the ‘chosen castes’ depended on the physical attributes of the recruits; height and chest measurement were an important consideration for recruitment to the British Indian Army which, according to Peers, was fulfilled by the Punjabis who tended to be taller and larger framed than males elsewhere in India.Footnote ³⁷ Even at the start of World War One, when there was a dire need for recruitment, the ‘strong physicality of the recruits‘ was a matter of great concern for the British. A communiqué issued by the Government of India in 1918 stated: ‘The stress of modern warfare is so severe that it can only be undergone by men of strong natural physique and no useful purpose will be served by recruiting those who do not fulfill this test’.Footnote ³⁸ Despite the care taken for recruitment to the army, no less than 45 per cent were rejected for physical reasons during the period immediately preceding (1911–1912) and following the war (1924–1925).Footnote ³⁹ Those who were retained by the army were marked out as distinct and naturally rose enormously in the estimation of their own communities and in the villages. Integration into the army made these able bodied men a part of, or associates of, those who governed/ruled India—superior beings.Footnote ⁴⁰ What set them apart from other able bodied men was their integration into the British Indian Army which brought them honour, prestige and status in the eyes of others. Martial status given to some men helped evoke a ‘martial spirit’ in them.

The conflation of males of certain caste groups only, with military service increasingly virilized masculinity, differentiating it even more emphatically from the non-martial castes. Martial status tended to reiterate the worst stereotypical caste characteristic of the non-martial castes marking them as cowards and effeminate. With the ‘inferior castes’ barred from recruitment, which was only open to the higher social strata of the region, the military service came to be firmly associated with general izzat Footnote ⁴¹—denoting masculine qualities.

The increasing monopoly over military service was resented by those communities who were excluded from military service. Notably absent from this list were the urban dwellers and the menial castes, dismissed for ‘a want of warlike instinct and manliness’. The British Indian Army hardly recruited any men from the towns and cities. They saw them as ‘mixed, degenerate and potentially threatening’.Footnote ⁴² It was therefore not surprising that many groups petitioned the government to be reclassified as martial races and therefore be entitled to join the Indian Army. Some even went further and took to the courts to secure those rights. This inclusion was particularly sought by low caste groups eager to rise up the socio-economic ladder, whose ‘low position’ had been officially stamped upon by this classification. Their inclusion was to come much later in the wake of World Wars. Footnote ⁴³

For the martial castes, along with recruitment came material gains. Apart from the possibility of promotion and gifts, the economic incentive of military service was enormous. It was an addition to those working marginal lands, with holdings too small, soil too poor and periodic failure of crops, that income remitted by soldiers was considered life giving. It greatly aided their extended family networks by stimulating the economy of the recruiting ground. Sepoys and officers returned from the army not only with money accumulated over the years but also in most cases with claims to monthly pensions.Footnote ⁴⁴ As early as 1909, the annual income of Rohtak district made up of the pay and pensions of government servants, most of whom had served in the army, was estimated at Rs. 16.5 lakhs.Footnote ⁴⁵ Interestingly the same amount of money was collected as land revenue in Rohtak district in 1927–1928.Footnote ⁴⁶ It is estimated that around 50 per cent of ex-army men turned into moneylenders, petty or big, after their return from the army.Footnote ⁴⁷ The figures of mortgage and sale of land between 1926–1927 and 1939–1940 in Rohtak district vouch for the enormous gains made by the martial caste groups, especially the Jats.Footnote ⁴⁸ Military service helped to provide the recruits with income as well as status and education.

The army service also came to be known for offering attractive conditions of work, like provision of the much admired khaki uniform worn with socks and boots. It set the recruits apart from civilians. Many members of the older generation nostalgically remember their childhood in colonial times when their elders admiringly spoke of ‘the majestic march of the manly men’ in uniform; and the sense of awe and wonder they experienced whilst listening to the ex-army men recounting stories of their ‘heroic exploits’ while sitting in the village chaupals (the sitting platform). Indian soldiers, who were required to wear pantaloons, shirts and combination suits, as compared with the rough village khaddar clothes of the peasantry, were noticed, looked up to, and commented upon: one peasant remarked to Malcolm Darling that a soldier wore fine clothes and boots, whereas ‘our clothes are dirty, our shoes are split, our pugarees [head wear] torn’.Footnote ⁴⁹ The contrast was most noticeable.

Significantly, even the police had a uniform but it was far less striking. Moreover, in the visual scale of masculinity, whereas an army man had a rifle the policeman just had a danda (wooden staff). The nature of their duties also made the army men superior; army men served abroad and faced ‘real danger’; they also took over from the police at home, whenever the police were not effective in handling domestic situations. The policeman on the other hand did not face ‘real danger’—which was an implicit ingredient of masculinity.Footnote ⁵⁰

A region marked out for its simple attire and equally simple food intake remembered in the saying sada pehaniyo sada khaiyo (wear and eat simply), made the army recruits stand out in their mill-made finer cotton, silk and woollen clothes, all of which enhanced their physicality. The stories of plentiful food and how well these men were fed in the army also abounded. Much was made of the ‘better conditions of nourishment’ and ‘higher standard of feeding’ offered to the Indian troops and other followers in the field.Footnote ⁵¹ Despite a marked difference in pay scales and living conditions of the British and the Indian soldiers, recruitment was also reportedly perceived to result in a higher standard of living and improvement in economic status of the Indian peasant. This was specially so as the Indian soldier became used to the ‘ideas of comfort’ and ‘acquired certain tastes to which he was previously a stranger’.Footnote ⁵²

One ‘taste’ which was deliberately encouraged in the army was that of alcohol intake, which came to be firmly associated with masculinity and masculine behaviour. Drinking alcohol has always been an intrinsic part of rural society. But the British Indian Army's influence on alcohol consumption has been a very decisive one, as alcohol had always been plentiful in the army. Many times the easy availability of ‘cheap’ or subsidized liquor led to heavy drinking. It was related to the desire and need to suppress soldier's fears, reward their efforts, overcome their social inhibitions regarding aggression and violence and help them numb the pain of combat.Footnote ⁵³ The army recruits on visits to their villages always brought back bottles of rum and whisky, relatively high in potency compared with the home-brewed liquor to be shared with their fellow males.Footnote ⁵⁴ This also meant an increase in drinking places in the rural areas which acted to cement the power and legitimacy of a masculine collective by bringing them together. At these drinking places mens’ community and power came to be displayed; a dominant understanding of legitimate masculine behaviour came to be defended and continually refurbished.Footnote ⁵⁵ This public place, reserved exclusively for certain men, promoted the absence or invisibility of others, not only women, but also notably other men (lower caste) who could not be accommodated. Alcohol drinking, also gained significance as it came to be associated with the martial heritage of not only the Rajputs, as described by Jon Peter Dorschver, but generally of the ‘martial castes’, as well as with the overriding concern with masculinity.Footnote ⁵⁶ Interestingly, the two reasons advocated for the popularity of alcohol amongst lower castes and classes in direct opposition to higher castes and classes, is economic deprivation and low self-esteem.

The British, despite holding an abysmally low and contemptuous personal-cum-professional opinion of the Indian soldiers (discussed below), encouraged Indian Army personnel to regard themselves above the rest.Footnote ⁵⁷ The emphasis on race, physique, martial qualities, exclusivity, along with the ‘peasant virtues of fearlessness’ went a long way in strengthening the cult of the virile male. This identity was also built up with the help of the historical theory of Aryan conquest and the ‘Aryan origin’ theory propagated by the Arya Samaj leading to the construction of a virile Hindu male based on valorized heroic deeds, which fitted in neatly with the army profession monopolized in this region by the ‘martial castes’. Interestingly enough, the British emphasis on the ‘martial race’ theory for their own reasons and that of the Arya Samaj on ‘Aryan origin’ and the ‘Aryas’ for their own, coincided in this region to affect the same caste-class cluster of peasantry and together led to the creation of a highly masculinized culture. It was also construed that these vastly virile races naturally preferred the masculine command of their own martial caste leaders and that of the British rather than non-martial, non–agriculturist men.

The army recruits entered a close relationship with the British, who themselves claimed to belong to the ‘martial race’. The Indian Army was, as a correspondent of The Times wrote: ‘one of the most valuable links between the ruling and the subject races’.Footnote ⁵⁸ An aggressive maleness was hinged to the ideology of duty, discipline, loyal service, sacrifice, authority and fighting, all of which were considered vital aspects of soldiering. They were given arms by the state to fight with. Possession of a gun and uniform came to be hailed as representative of male power and social status. The service was construed as an act of faith which kept them loyal and honest. Long-service sepoys were entitled to land grants in reward for their loyalty. Clearly, this loyalty had a material basis. It was based upon real tangible gains provided by the colonial government which bolstered their economic capacity and close interaction with the British raised their social standing. In return the recruited peasantry of Punjab saw it as their ‘duty’ to reciprocate their benefactors by being loyal to them. Consequently, despite grievances of soldiers and their resentment to their service conditions, the deep and widespread support for the colonial state is clear from the voluminous censored correspondence available in 27 volumes.Footnote ⁵⁹

Ideologically, masculinity came to be firmly associated with ‘loyalty’ of the militarized groups who were fighting for the sake of ‘honour’—an ancient, well recognized ‘masculine’ social value which permeated every aspect of the region's life and behaviour. This honour could be for the sake of the family, clan, caste, community, as also for the unit in which the army men served. A close identification with ‘regimental honour’ was encouraged with the development of a unique internal structure of ‘class company’ regiments—units made up entirely of the same caste. Special care was taken to make the soldiers feel that their regiment was their home and the British Commander was their mai-bap (mother and father); and unitedly they could overcome all problems. Altogether, the British successfully replaced Indian soldiers’ lack of patriotism to fight, with bonds of loyalty between a man and his unit, which was tied to the very definition of his existence.Footnote ⁶⁰ In this, the British, conscious of the importance of honour, did their best to take advantage of it. For example, for recruitment purposes the British officers in Punjab made the strongest appeal on the basis of ‘izzat’,Footnote ⁶¹ which they knew was likely to go down well with the populace. This was followed by incorporating the significance of maintaining honour in the basic training programme imparted to the recruits.Footnote ⁶²

Furthermore, this ‘honourable’ behaviour, which depended on their military performance, was well rewarded with titles, land grants, several concessions, and other favoured status. Titles of honour were bestowed on prominent personalities who helped in recruitment. Titles like ‘Raja’, ‘Nawab’, Rai Sahib’, ‘Khan Sahib’ were given along with robes of honour, guns, revolvers, complementary sanads (certificates of honour and merit) inscribed with names and services of the recipient, cash awards, grants of government land, of revenue free lands to individuals and to communities and remission of taxation. The rewards acted as incentives for greater loyalty which in return came to be equated with ‘true manhood’. Also importantly, future generations were virtually guaranteed military careers. In rural north India it is still maintained that upholding of honour is the highest priority of all men, ‘worth their salt’. Indeed, certain rural values enjoined them to be ‘namak halal’ (literally, to be true to the salt giver). Chosen to defend the empire, honour or izzat, lay in loyally fulfilling this expectation as an obligation. The British, on their side zealously encouraged loyalty to themselves by granting their ‘loyal’ adherents not only economic and political advantage but also social recognition.

Those who did not fulfill this expectation or who were disloyal, were denounced as cowardly and their behaviour as shameful. Indeed the concept of shame was very much a part of the concept of honour. Since soldiering was a gendered activity, disloyal men were hardly considered manly or honourable. A label of failed manhood was enough to shame such proclivities. Commenting on those who were trying to ‘make men desert’, one soldier commented in 1915 ‘I think this is a very shameful matter and not a man's work’.Footnote ⁶³ Yet others felt that disloyal soldiers behaved ‘like women’, as deception was considered to be ‘conduct fit for women’ only. One Haveldar identified betrayal as an ‘especially female vice’; ‘treachery’ of those who deserted was not considered ‘the conduct of a man’ but declared to be ‘that of a woman.’Footnote ⁶⁴

Clearly, loyalty, as symbolized by the militarized groups, had come to be firmly associated with masculinity in this region and disloyalty as feminine and effeminate. This wide-spread perception also meant that the nationalists could neither denounce the army men as ‘emasculated’ ‘weak’ or ‘cowards’, nor could they lay claim to being ‘masculine’ and ‘courageous’ or ‘brave’ for themselves, till the tables were turned on the ‘loyalists’ in the wake of World War Two.

Popular culture and customs: British concerns

The cultural norms of the region further fed into the concept of manhood upheld for and by the soldiers. This extended from religious observances and cultural practices to the ideological underpinnings of various customs. Despite certain reservations, those customs which acted as fodder to the British requirements of the army were greatly strengthened and even promoted. Religiously, the Punjab peasantry has never been considered ritualistically inclined or orthodox especially in comparison with the high normative Brahmanical religion. In the Haryana region, the expenditure on religious offerings, grants made to places of worship, and alms-giving at religious functions, registers the lowest minimum possible.Footnote ⁶⁵ In fact, the most popular prayer ritual which continues to be observed by rural males (Hindus) on getting up in the morning or when starting to plough is to say: ‘le bhai Ram ka naam’ (brother, let's utter Ram's name). When asked about the brevity of this religious sentiment in their lives, they jocularly reply: ‘jada Ram Ram karen to bhagwan naraz ho jaga’ (The lord would get annoyed if his name is chanted too frequently). The ‘religious observances’, in the general male opinion, are considered ‘feminizing’ and best left to women, who are well known to be firm believers in local matas (minor female deities) and observers of rituals. Indeed, I was told that male children were not encouraged to delve too deeply into religion, because it showed an ‘emotional need’ which could not be allowed as it showed ‘weakness’ which dents the masculine image.Footnote ⁶⁶

For the majority of rural males, the most popular form of worship remains dhok marna (salutation made by joining hands, palm to palm and raising them to the head). A villager may do this whenever he passes the shrine of a village deity. And the most popular shrine, especially for the male populace is that of the monkey god Hanuman. It is in fact this folk god of great power, a devotee of Lord Ram, and not the major deity of Lord Ram himself—the incarnation of Vishnu in Brahmanical religion—who is popularly revered by males in this region. Generally known as ‘Mahabir’ (the great hero), it was Hanuman who made a success of Ram's venture; the latter crucially and repeatedly depended on Hanuman's amazing physical strength. Hanuman's highly muscular warrior figure stands in direct contrast to the compassionate, tender, beautiful and non-muscular, almost effeminate body of Ram. Ram's iconographic depiction in to a warrior figure changed only in the wake of the Ramjanam bhoomi campaign in the 1980s.Footnote ⁶⁷ The cultural centrality of Hanuman in this region helped to shape the local ideas of masculinity to a large extent.

Hanuman, a brahmachari (celibate) god of extraordinary strength, is essentially a god of the male population. Rural women are known to even avoid touching his iconographic representations. His strength is popularly reputed to lie in his celibate status. There is a correlation between sexual restraint and acquisition of power in Indian tradition.Footnote ⁶⁸ Virility is believed to lie in saving the semen rather than in expending it. Embodiment of the virile power of Hanuman is also known in this region as the giver of offspring. Importantly, Hanuman is the patron god of wrestlers—the ultimate in portraying masculinity and physicality par excellence.Footnote ⁶⁹ He is the central figure in the construction of a wrestler's identity. Kushati (wrestling), along with kabadi and lathi ghumana (staff-wielding) are traditional popular sports in this region, which require good physicality. Exhibition and competitive matches of Kushati which are frequently arranged on special occasions like festivals, weddings and melas (local fairs or carnivals), are closely aligned with Hanuman. Kushati, which celebrates body building, weight lifting and physical prowess, cannot begin without invoking Hanuman's name and saluting him with jai bajrang bali or langote wale ki jai (hail the loin-cloth warrior). Every akhara (wrestler's arena) keeps an image of Hanuman as the patron god. The wrestlers’ relationship with Hanuman ranges across veneration of Hanuman's image, singing hymns or reciting poems in his praise and worshipping and serving the guru, whose power is placed at a continuum with that of Hanuman.

There is a deeply felt private identification with Hanuman on a personal level; ultimately these wrestlers worship Hanuman to be like him, to take on his qualities of devotion and strength. Popularly known as the ‘servant of Ram’, this powerful warrior is also hailed as an epitome of trust and loyalty for submitting himself totally to Ram. It is not difficult to understand that at a particular historical juncture in colonial north India, a similar thrust of trust and devotion amongst the worshippers of Hanuman, placed them in a loyal relationship with the ‘king’ or his representatives in India. However, the category of ‘loyalist’ was not fixed, as will be clear later on, but historically constructed and reconstructed in relation to the colonizers. There were contending interests which laid claims to it with a varying degree of success. The ambivalence in attitude towards the ‘loyalists’ can be seen in a popular oft-repeated conversational piece of the time which goes as follows:

Significantly, the physicality of the Jats in Haryana–Punjab was certainly celebrated, but they were and continue to be stereotyped as ‘brainless’ and ‘fools’—to be discussed below.

The British on their side created what Veena Oldenburg defines as ‘masculinization of Punjab society and economy’. This, according to her, was advanced through a variety of legal means which created an individual male owner as the centrepiece of British revenue policy and a dominant legal subject.Footnote ⁷¹ The emphasis on males or masculinization was therefore closely connected with the British concern for their army. This concern influenced their policy decisions in major ways. In Lord Roberts’ opinion the contentment and loyalty of the army was crucial to British existence in the colonial world.Footnote ⁷² For example, despite having severe reservations, even abhorrence, regarding certain prevalent rural customs amongst the peasantry, they actively promoted the same. The troops after all were peasants in uniform and the need was to keep stability in an agrarian society. According to the British such customs ‘belonged to the first stage in development of a savage people after they have emerged from a mere animal condition of promiscuity’.Footnote ⁷³ These were not only given legal recognition but were also actively promoted.

Among the customs so promoted, that of karewa stands out. Karewa, as a rule was/is a levirate marriage in which the widow was accepted as wife by one of the younger brothers of the deceased husband; failing him the husband's older brother; failing him his agnatic first cousin, and so on. Indeed, the ideology of a blood bond shared by all the male members of a family and patrilineal clan had at one time even accommodated the father of the deceased husband as a claimant of his daughter-in-law in sexual partnership and marriage. There are recorded cases of men claiming karewa with the widowed daughter–in-law in the colonial period.Footnote ⁷⁴ For the British such a re-marriage was contemptible; it was no different from the re-marriage of a widow with her brother-in-law. Condemning both as being repugnant to ‘modern notions’, one of the judges observed:

Yet, this ‘low level of civilization’ as signified by karewa, was retained by the British administrators because their concern lay in strengthening the hold of the existing peasant society over land, necessary, among other things, for revenue extraction; its breakup was inevitable if the widow was allowed to claim her limited inheritance or have her way in remarriage.

The official apprehension regarding the dangers of social disequilibrium in Haryana was sharper because, as pointed out earlier, this region with its insecure agricultural conditions was providing the best recruiting ground for the British Indian Army. In this the karewa custom had contributed significantly to the increasing recruitment (despite the insecurity of life and equally heavy rate of mortality). The custom not only sustained the tradition of military service but also fed the ideology of male heroism in which a woman could take pride, as shown in the local proverb:

In the popular rendering of military life, a soldier was idealized through a variety of cultural mediums like the folk song. The folk songs of women especially, urging their men to go forward and fight, notwithstanding the massive casualties of the World Wars, significantly underline the feminine reinforcement of a soldier's masculinity.Footnote ⁷⁷

However, the fallout of this very positive role of women in the recruiting economy had to be controlled. The agricultural interests of the recruits’ families could not be allowed to be jeopardized by the ever growing number of widows’ claims to resist levirate or to get married to a person of their choice. Consequently, karewa, openly recognized by the British officials as a ‘men oriented’ custom,Footnote ⁷⁸ same as many other customs in colonial Punjab, which were well known to strengthen patrilineay and patriarchy, came to be enforced by the British. In fact, British officers went out of their way to compel the widows to observe levirate. One of the more revealing accounts, delineating his own role in such marriages came from George Campbell, a British official serving in Punjab in the 1870s:

The British officers’ intervention in supporting and encouraging levirate strengthened a custom which reinforced male dictates. Levirate encouraged those aspects of masculinity, the roots of which can be located in the control and ownership of land in male hands and lineage alone.

There were other customs that the colonial masters found at odds with their imperialist concerns, especially in relation to the army. These were discouraged. The British intervention had the effect of further accentuating the masculinity of the martial castes, on the one hand, and to downgrading and inferiorizing the masculinity of non-martial castes and of ‘mixed castes’, on the other. One such custom, which was sought to be set aside, was the flexibility observed in this region regarding inter-caste marriages. High caste men from the dominating caste groups were well known to accept women from the lower castes especially in their secondary alliances. This practice of taking wives from lower castes was greatly frowned upon by British officials who declared it ‘a kind of disreputable matrimonial agency’.Footnote ⁸⁰ Given to applauding the ‘magnificent physique’ of the so-called superior agriculturist castes in agrarian and military professions, the British bemoaned its ‘biological deterioration’ because of this practice.Footnote ⁸¹ They saw some of their favoured martial castes, especially those of Punjab and Rajputana as descendents of fair complexioned Aryan invaders.Footnote ⁸² They did not want them to be mixing with the ‘dark skinned race of lower type’. The Aryan element of the martial races theory was closely associated with notions of racial and ritual purity.Footnote ⁸³ In the British world view and vision of imperial India, as mentioned earlier, there was a collapse of the caste and race categories.Footnote ⁸⁴

Consequently, the British deliberately encouraged a hardening of what was essentially a fluid social condition, by allowing inter-caste marriage cases to be challenged in the courts. The court cases show sections of different communities accepting and rejecting such marriages, as well as attempting to challenge them retrospectively. Attempts were made to declare children of low caste women as illegitimate. Acceptance of illegitimacy meant that land/property could be retained in the male hands belonging to ‘pure’ lineage rather than in the hands of a ‘physically impure’, in other words, an ‘effeminate’ male belonging to a mixed and doubtful ‘race’.

Importantly also, as the British considered fighting ability to be hereditary in India, racial or mixing of caste could only produce degeneracy and military weakness. In keeping with this, the British recruiting strategy favoured those groups who followed restrictive marriage practices and were ‘racially pure’; they ignored and discouraged the mixed ones. Economically, the mixed lot of males came to experience double discrimination: not only did they feel insecure about their rights in land and property but also found recruitment difficult and the coveted military career elusive. In social ranking absolute equality with representatives of pure blood was denied to a male of mixed parentage. This inferior being, came to be denied a smoke from a common pipe—the final test of acceptance by the biradari (community). As a result, a hierarchy between males of ‘pure blood’ and ‘mixed blood’ was created in some cases and sharpened in others, thus crystallizing the hierarchies of masculinity.

Due to the British frowning upon mixed caste groups, several court cases followed in which the male collaterals or the son born of a caste endogamous alliance appropriated the property of the son of an inter-caste marriage or denied recognition to the second wife belonging to a different caste group.Footnote ⁸⁵ In other cases the low caste wife moved the court to seek recognition for her son being denied by the male collaterals of her deceased husband. Not all cases brought to the court were successful.Footnote ⁸⁶ However, the fact that such cases came to be disputed and could be challenged legally in the colonial period, not only helped to consolidate certain customs in this region, which were essentially flexible, it also sharpened certain aspects of masculinity which was shaping under colonial dispensation.

Pressure also came to be mounted on the betrothed couples, or on those already married, in which one party was of ambiguous caste status. Such couples were either not allowed to get married or those who were already married were denied conjugal life. The cases that came to be registered under the two newly introduced legal rights in the 1860s (the Breach of Betrothal Right and the Restitution of Conjugal Rights), imported into India by the British through judicial pronouncments, are ample testimony to this. The existing evidence, suggests that children, both male and female, of inter-caste marriages were facing difficulties in getting married in high status ‘pure’ caste families and there were frequent breaches of betrothal contracts of such children.Footnote ⁸⁷ In cases of the Restitution of Conjugal RightsFootnote ⁸⁸ (made available to the husband though not to the wife) where a male of ‘mixed blood’ moved the court for restitution of conjugal rights, the judges declined to give a favourable verdict.Footnote ⁸⁹ Such males were declared illegitimate and of low caste and the marriage of such a male with a higher caste girl was declared ‘pratiloma’ (hypogamy) as laid down in the Brahmanical texts and therefore ‘illegal’.

The British were clearly favouring the martial high caste groups of agriculturists as they provided the recruits for the British Indian Army. Although uncertainty reigned supreme as differing decisions were given by the courts, case studies suggest otherwise, in that status considerations had come to be pegged on to the concept of caste endogamy/purity of the male lineage which determined matters such as marriage, land and material rights. Wives and children born of inter-caste marriages could not expect the same rights as the ‘pure’ ones. Customs and traditions were being redefined. The rights of the ‘impure’ ones had become challengeable in courts.

It is clear that British courts representing higher authority had opened a way to claim certain rights that perhaps could not be claimed through the traditional panchayats. More importantly, the decisions of the panchayat could be challenged in the courts. In several instances the decisions of panchayat were reversed by the high court.Footnote ⁹⁰ Although these were statutory panchayats, it was legally possible to challenge the caste/community panchayats’ decisions as well. The British courts reserved the power to correct the local indigenous adjudication procedures, if and when brought to their notice. There was a possibility that not finding or expecting a favourable decision in the caste panchayat the aggrieved party moved the local court for a different verdict. These panchayats were well known to affect a compromise among different parties and to maintain a status quo. The official attempts emphasized social hierarchy between high and low ranking caste groups and growing resentment against mixed lineage groups. The creeping rigidity in inter-caste marriages in the colonial period, as I have argued at length elsewhere,Footnote ⁹¹ performed with the participation and consent of certain male members of society, and concomitant emphasis upon caste endogamy meant a more dominating and wilful male oriented social pattern being enforced which defined the structures of social difference and ranking among high caste/low caste male/male, male/female and children of different wives, far more sharply and emphatically.

Physical prowess and violence: the ingredients of masculinity

For the Punjabis land alone was not property, this could also be animals, women and ‘other’ fellow men. A common refrain has been: zar, zamin, zan jhagde ki jad hain (money, land and women are the root of all quarrels) and mardangi (masculinity) lay in keeping them safe and under strict control. Any assertion to the contrary would be difficult to believe in a region which advocated:

For this a strong body and physical strength, needed to command/control/possess them, was emphasized; possession of these was associated with izzat. If one needed to inflict violence to safeguard these ‘possessions’ or honour, it was not only accepted, but also valorized. Indeed, one may well agree with the suggestion that it was violence and the ‘need’ for violence in this region that underlay the deep rooted preference for male progeny at the cost of female.Footnote ⁹³ The military further legitimized violence by providing the means for violence. In other words, masculinity and power wielding, firmly associated with physical strength, is essentially pegged to violence. There are innumerable local sayings which illustrate this belief. The justification in all is: ‘might is right’, and ‘might’ is with the strong not the weak. A few selected proverbs regarding this are cited below:

As against the ‘strong’ male, the ‘weak’, or ‘simpleton’ male, as generally known, stands condemned and looked down upon:

An important facet of violence was its use to pre-empt other men's violence and not allow other men to overpower or dominate you. The proverbs in fact underline that ‘others’ (males) should be afraid of you; this entails control and influencing of ‘others’ and disallowing all transgressions.

Considering beating to be intrinsic to their sense of masculinity men opine: woh marad he kya jo maaren na’ (what kind of a man is he who doesn't hit?) The observation equates violence with masculinity suggesting it is masculine to be violent and natural for a man to be violent. An important characteristic of power is the way in which it becomes natural, normally unquestioned and unacknowledged. Clearly, masculinity viewed violence as one of the instruments of power by which hierarchies of all kinds: caste, community, and gender, between males and males, as well as between males and females are perpetuated in society.

Another defining characteristic of masculinity in terms of violence was the concept of revenge. Failure to uphold one's honour was looked down upon; it had to be avenged; use of violence to uphold it was fully justified. In this, the well known British Army code of ‘honour’ to protect ones ‘own’ women against the enemy or the ‘other’ strongly reiterated the existing cultural codes. The wide spread ‘honour killings’ in this regionFootnote ⁹⁴ were in no small way strengthened due to this code of masculinity. The dalits who could not protect their women from the landowning castes such as Jats had ‘no honour’ to speak of, and were not considered ‘men’ at all.Footnote ⁹⁵ Consequently, men who are seen as being recalcitrant in defending their ‘honour’ through violence vis-à-vis those who defile it were/are condemned as effeminate. A popular saying is chudiyan pehni hui hain (he is wearing bangles), therefore such men are women and not ‘men’.

Indeed, violence is accepted as an integral and natural part of masculinity, not only by men but also by women, even when the latter are the most frequent recipients of it. In fact the beating of women was considered such a normal activity for a man that no valid reason or cause was really needed to justify it. It had almost achieved the status of routine.Footnote ⁹⁶ So much so that popular stories abound regarding this practice. An 84-year-old man remembering a story from his childhood narrated the following, leading to a lot of merriment amongst the male onlookers:

Even more importantly, this violence is also accepted by women as ‘natural’.Footnote ⁹⁷ This is especially so in relation to the husband who feels a masculine calling to establish his power and dominance over his wife early in their married life. Any public interference, which is rare indeed, to stop this violence is aggressively dealt with by the wife herself who says; mhara mard sai, kuchh bhi kare, tanne kya (Whatever my man may do is none of your business). Yet others say, Mard hai to marega, yo to een ka kaam sai, sab marad maaren sain’ (If he is a man he will certainly beat).

The British applauded the violence and, in relation to the martial castes, proclaimed it as their ‘fighting nature’. The British specially picked out for official collection and publication those proverbs and local sayings which underlined this ‘manly’ quality of violence and celebrated it in their recruitment policy.Footnote ⁹⁸ In a region where a man's manliness was established by the number of murder cases he faced, the colonial army and the police, with the means to control the violence at their command, legitimized it with state recognition and prestige.

What emerged out of this carefully thought-out exercise has been described by David Omissi as: ‘perfect soldiers, perfect men and perfect subjects’.Footnote ⁹⁹ Within colonial parlance, the martial races served as an example of masculine as well as military excellence. The recruiting handbooks are full of references to the ’manly independence’ of the favoured recruits, usually contrasted with the ‘weakness’ and ‘effeminacy of those who were excluded’. The Indian soldiers also saw themselves in much the same light. In describing the qualities of these ‘war-like rustics’, the colonial masters also hailed them for their ‘obedience’, ‘their natural respect for authority’, and their ‘military fidelity and loyalty’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Interestingly, according to the British, what also stood out in this near perfect soldier was his ‘stupidity’ (dubbed as slow wit and dogged courage), his inability to command, and his lack of intellectual agility. Colonial texts commented extensively on these sturdy agriculturists who were totally ill disposed towards the world of books and learning.Footnote ¹⁰¹ The British greatly publicized these negative traits but also glossed over them, identifying these traits as part and parcel of the simple and unsophisticated recruits, whose qualities must be respected, fruitfully harnessed and commanded. The immensely popular poem ‘Gunga Din’ by Rudyard Kipling (published in 1892 and made into a block-buster Hollywood film in 1939), attributing these characteristics to a ‘loyal Indian soldier’ of Victorian England, symbolizes this understanding perfectly.Footnote ¹⁰²

By depicting the martial castes as ‘brainless’, or unable to command, the British officers picked up certain essentialized characteristics of various caste groups. Although it was admitted that ‘these proverbial personalities are best considered as sallies of wit uttered against each tribe by an adverse jury drawn from all the others’, these were flaunted as truisms.Footnote ¹⁰³ These not only sharpened differences between castes, keeping them from trusting each other but also became stereotypes signifying certain inherent weaknesses. Collected from the field, written about and officially recognized, these came to be accepted as defining characteristics of different caste groups.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ These stereotypes were even accepted by the local populace to a very large extent and went a long way in constructing masculine identities in relation to men of different communities.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ They made a mockery of what had originated at a certain historical juncture of political economy, and perhaps used more for social fun and frolic. The changes made in the colonial period not only eroded the political economy of stereotypes but also made several such sayings redundant. But their popularity has remained unabated as they are still cited to this day. Their popular use has established many of these assumptions in the realm of ‘commonsense’ where they are difficult to dislodge. For example, as mentioned earlier, there are several Punjabi proverbs in which Jats, a major cultivating caste and a major supplier of recruits to the army, attracted the largest number of such proverbs in which they were dubbed as utter fools.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ The local proverbs stated: ‘A Jat is such a fool that only god can take care of him’. Yet others held that ‘Three things are improved by beating: women, wheat and a Jat’; or the saying that ‘Jat and pig are alike’.

Clearly, having created the concept of martial caste and their Aryan origins, having celebrated their superior physicality, famed fighting skills and even violence, the colonial need was not to identify them too closely with themselves but to peg them to an inferior status. This was done by divorcing their brains from their brawn. No Indian community had all the desirable military qualities, so ran the martial-race theory, but the right mix—chosen, ordered and led by the British—would make the perfect army. In other words, a militarized masculinity hailing a capacity for physical violence, among other attributes, was subordinate to and dominated by a masculinity which celebrated organizational command and competence. In this hierarchy of military masculinity, the former alone was open to the Indians; the latter was a close preserve of the British. This dual masculinity reflected and reinforced the sense of superiority that helped run the empire and sustain the morale of its rulers.

Political weightage and power

Other policies of the government also went a long way in strengthening the political position of the ‘martial castes.’ This preferential treatment of soldiers was marked in a variety of ways, including their association with politics. They were given a voice or right to vote in choosing their representatives. At a time when the franchise was extremely limited, all military personnel, retired and pensioned, commissioned or non-commissioned, were enfranchised under the Government of India Act 1919. In post-1919 Punjab, these military personnel formed 40 per cent of the rural electorate otherwise based on very high property qualifications. In the five districts of south-east Punjab, where there were only 89,855 rural voters under the 1919 Act, the military vote, amounted to 36,680 or 40.82 per cent of the total rural electorate.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The 1919 Reforms had clearly given substantial electoral weight to the military vote in this region, as also in the rest of Punjab.

During the period 1921–1937 the leaders of the ‘martial castes’ became the leaders of the ruling National Unionist Party, that dominated Punjab politics for 21 years. The two ministers from this region, Lal Chand and Chhotu Ram, were involved in an extensive recruitment drive for which they were awarded titles, given extensive land grants and bestowed with ministerial positions on the Punjab Council.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ In fact these two, hailed as ‘the representatives of the army men’, went to the extent of demanding from the Indian Statutory Commission in 1927 a separate electorate for all those enjoying soldier's franchise and special constituencies for the officers.

In the 1935 Act the rural electorate was increased manifold: from 89,855 to 403,287.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ However, it is difficult to estimate the percentage that the military personnel came to have in the newly enlarged electorate. But from the fact that in the greatly extended Indian Army during World War Two—from 189,000 to 2.5 million—Punjab contributed a million men, and from the very high percentage of recruitment from the ‘martial castes’ who dominated this region, it can be maintained with certainty that the percentage of military personnel within the enlarged electorate continued to be substantially high. Their predominance amongst the electorate contributed to the resounding success of the Unionist Party in the 1937 elections.

However, the ‘loyalty’ of the military vote could never be taken for granted. Dissent within the army existed almost throughout, and although the British were able to contain it,Footnote ¹¹⁰ over the years several breaches were affected by this loyalty.Footnote ¹¹¹ The nationalists had repeatedly attacked the martial race theory as it tore into Indian nationalism by denying that a ‘national army’ which represented its entire people could ever be created; such an acknowledgement by the British would have conceded that India existed as a united entity. Gandhi challenged the salience given to kshatriyahood and the ideology of biological stratification which provided the legitimacy for political inequality and injustice.Footnote ¹¹² He refused to accept the inherent superiority of a ‘masculinity’ that was increasingly equated with rationality, materialism and physical strength. Congress led the propaganda against the war and actively pursued the anti-recruitment drive.Footnote ¹¹³ All this was to have an effect on the ‘manly ideal’ being posited by the recruits from martial castes, which the other castes wanted to emulate.

The basis of this change lay in the growing disaffection amongst British Army recruits which was coming noticeably to the forefront during World War One. There is evidence to suggest that the Congress propaganda affected the personnel of the Jat Regiment primarily drawn from this region. By the 1930s, this had increased manyfold. By World War Two several factors further contributed to this breach, the most important single event being the rise of the Indian National Army.Footnote ¹¹⁴ One-third of all Indian Army pensioners joined it. There were also 360,000 war-time deserters from British ranks. A large number of those who joined the Indian National Army belonged to Punjab, and the national press turned the issue into a highly emotional one. The impact of the released Indian National Army personnel was profound within the colonial armed forces, which already had a deep-rooted feeling of resentment over their economic grouses, racial discrimination, slow rate of Indianization, discrimination in pay and other facilities.

The loyalty of army personnel, under severe strain, received a further psychological shock when they discovered that Indian National Army personnel were being hero-worshipped. For the first time there was a role-reversal. The popular acceptance of Indian National Army personnel as ‘true patriots’ reversed by implication, the position of the ‘loyal soldiers’ of the British Indian Army. Masculinity of the ‘loyal magnificent soldiers’ was suddenly under a cloud. The nationalist concept and ideology successively breached the masculine bastions of army recruitment which had been erected by the colonial masters on martial race theory and honour by turning this ideology towards nationalism and patriotism. As Sir Claude Auchinleck, the commander-in-chief, was to remark in February 1946, ‘Every Indian officer worth his salt is today a nationalist’.Footnote ¹¹⁵ The local concept of ‘salt’ and its association with loyalty, which had proved so valuable for the British, had shifted ground.

With independence, the political economy of India changed dramatically and severely affected the existing hierarchical scale of masculinities in this region. With the introduction of political democracy, drawing on the concepts of secularism, equality and human rights, opening out of different economic opportunities, employment avenues and the rising importance of education and reservations (to name just a few changes), other masculinities were determinedly surfacing and strengthening, forcing a reformulation of societal views regarding the dominant militarized masculinity in this region.