I know I might not be liked much after writing this, but I have read the book written by Stanley Wolpert,'The Partition of India'. In that one of the topics he touched on was Martial Races. He said the British named the Punjabi muslims and Sikhs to be martial races and recruited them for the British army BECAUSE after the mutiny of 1857 where a united muslims and hindus rebellion was put down by the British with the help of Punjabi muslims and Sikhs who did not support the rebellion. Infact, before that there was no concept of Martial races and recruitment was done from all the regions of India at the time. But after 1857 the Punjabi muslims and Sikhs were rewarded for their loyalty by naming them martial races.
The fact of the matter is that British always faced toughest opposition from Mysore(Tippu Sultan) who was from South India. these were non-Punjabi muslims and sikhs.
I have an article from a Major in Pakistan army below. Please read:.
You should remember few facts here.
1. Gandhi Ji accepted commission WITH PRIDE in British army, even though his ancestry was Gujrati banya. And he encouraged other Southies to join British army. This shows the Brits were not biased in favor of Punjabis or some particular area of the subcontinent and they were not using their army to do the "divide and rule".
In fact British army was one of the few institutions in the subcontinent that truly "united" Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs and Christians.
----- Ek he suff may kharay ho ga-ay Mahmood o Ayaz
So anyone using the pathetic arguments based on race or ethnicity are off track and do not know $hite about military history.
2. Our subcontinent has 40+ ethnicities and each one of them is like a different flower in the bouquet. One should not be jealous of another flower that someone at sometime said few kind words.
3. Military and police service in Punjab was and has been considered a "service" & "profession" and people wanted to go and join army and police, dreamed about it, and hoped to get in, generations after generation after generation.
It is like guys from Andhra dreaming about going to America to get an advanced degree in IT. So if I say Andhra folks are gurus in IT, is that a bad thing?
huh? Is it a bad thing? heck no!
Similarly people from Punjab hill tract and adjacent lowlands wanted to be soldiers, so if someone says Punjabis are martial. That's a clear reference to "profession".
Then why so many of you are jumping up and down with mirchi in the legs?
Why?
1. Afghan wars
2. WW-1
3. WW-2
showed the military prowess of many parts of the world. Obviously they were trans-country wars. And yet, in the Allied army, non-white soldiers were mainly from Punjab. Few Arabs, fewer Iranian, and very small number of Malay, and Indonesians took part in world wars, even though the wars came to their homes and their farms.
Chinese got raped by Japanese, Malay and other Far Eastern countries got the same treatement from Axis.
But the British Indian troops (mainly Punjabis) defended their own homes and not only that, they went and liberated so many nationalities.
Is that a bad thing?
huh?
Is it something that non-Punjabis should be crying and howling about?
Heck no!
You all should be proud of your sons of soil. very very proud.
peace to you. Peace to all.
ps. In my urdu speaking family, many hold prejudice against Punjabis even when there are a lot of intermarriages. And these Urdu speakers froth at their mouths when it comes to Army, why? because it is dominated by Punjabis.
I am sure in India, states like UP, Bihar and people down south have similar feelings. At least that's what it looks like on PDF.