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England’s first Indian troops
Capt. D.P. Ramachandran’s Empire’s First Soldiers, released recently by the G-o-C-in-C Southern Command, Lt. Gen. Noble Thamburaj, tells the fascinating story of the battles in which the soldiers of the Madras Army and
its descendant units fought from the 18th till the 21st Century. The Madras Army’s descendants today, I had long thought, were only the Madras Regiment and the Madras Sappers (Madras Engineering Group). But Capt. Ramachandran has reminded forgetful persons like me that there always was a cavalry element too. Today, the cavalry units are part of the Armoured Corps, but many still proudly bear regimental names that recall their cavalry origins. One of them is 16 Light Cavalry, better known as 16 Cavalry, and, uniquely, it still maintains an exclusively South Indian composition.
16 Cavalry’s traditions go back to the Madras Native Cavalry which was raised in 1784 when four of the Nawab of the Carnatic’s cavalry regiments were transferred to the East India Company and to which were joined the Governor’s Bodyguard, Madras, raised in 1778, and a couple of other cavalry regiments formed c.1780.
Capt. Ramachandran adds, “The cavalry element of the old Madras Army suffered a temporary extinction (generally parallel to the setbacks the Madras Regiment went through), after the 1903 reorganisations when the troop compositions of their regiments were changed. Consequently the 26th, 27th and the 28th Madras Light Cavalry, redesignated the 8th, 16th and the 7th Light Cavalry respectively by 1922, had no South Indians in their ranks. In 1946, the troop composition of one regiment, the 16th Light Cavalry, was restored to make it a full South Indian unit, the only cavalry regiment of its kind in the Indian Army, and ranked the seniormost in the order of precedence.” With such narrations, Capt. Ramachandran reminds readers of the pioneering contributions the Madras Presidency soldiers made to the growth of the Indian Army. And that is a significant contribution to Indian military history.
S. MUTHIAH
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