The Royal directive and Charter of the Honourable East India Company was, ostensibly, to trade with India. Trading interests needed to be protected, so the Company formed protection forces in each of its Presidencies, comprising both British and indigenous troops, although leadership and key assignments were always with the British. The British Crown, saw India as a vast and unending source of fabulous treasures, and encouraged the Company to enlarge and diversify its operations while tightening its stranglehold on a tottering and decadent Mughal Empire.

The Indian Army combat arms strength at the beginning of the First World War was 155,423. It ended the war with 573,484, accepting, like all major combatant nations, an enormous percentage of casualties. It served in some of the most horrendous theatres of war under senior military leadership of questionable competence, with singular resolve and devotion to duty.

When the Second World War broke out, not a single unit of the Indian Army was mechanized to respectable standards. Motorization was selective, and scales of weaponry extremely sparse. But the number of men that India gave to the Allied Cause has never been equalled since. In 1939, the Army had 189,000 in its ranks -rising to 2,644,323 at peak strength in 1945.