Though this relates to Canada, there is much here on India during the Raj era. Snipped from MILITARY DEPENDENCE AND POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE: THE CASE OF CANADA. By Richard A. Preston. Full text at -- http://warandgame.blogspot.com/2008/04/military-dependence-and-political.html ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India Friday, April 11, 2008 QUOTE: Air Marshal and historian of air power, Sir John Slessor, pointed out in an introduction of Gutteridges' Armed Forces in New States that British colonies always depended on external support to meet threats from a major power. [see: William Gutteridge, Armed Forces in New States (London, etc.: Oxford University Press, 1962)] A Viceroy of India in the early 1920's went further still. He states that without out-side help the Indian Army, including native regiments, could not even contain widespread domestic disturbances should they occur. [see: Judith M. Brown, "War and the Colonial Relationship: Britain, India and the War of 1914-1918" in M.R.D. Foot (ed.), War and Society: Historical p. 89] The historian of the Indian Army and of its contribution to development believes that this had a wider connotation. "All colonial relationships have much in common, but perhaps the most fundamental feature they share is a dependent relationship between foreign conqueror and the native... In exchange for a secure place in the new system established for the foreigner, the native will respond not with gratitude but with obedience." [see: Stephen P. Cohen, The Indian Army; Its Contribution to the Development of a Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 49] Relative weakness had created and maintained the colonial relationship of military dependence; and colonial acquiescence was an important element in the imperial-colonial relationship of military dependence. UNQUOTE