Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that the recruitment and employment of Punjabi soldiers and policemen in Britain’s overseas colonies became a source of insecurity and vulnerability that prompted new forms of coercive, legal intervention on the part of the colonial state.

Paper long abstract:

By the late nineteenth century, Punjab was one of the most strategically vital outposts within the entire British Empire. Not only was it the primary recruiting ground for the Indian Army, but it also increasingly furnished vital police and military manpower to British colonies outside of India. Although most historians have emphasized the untold benefits that Punjabi police and military labour provided to the wider empire, this paper examines how this same recruitment and movement of Punjabis overseas also created new challenges and problems for the Government of India. Whether it was fears that the popularity of overseas service was sapping the strength of the Indian Army and weakening its ability to defend against a potential Russian invasion through Afghanistan; rumours that Punjabis were taking up military service with Britain's European imperial rivals; or the panic caused by the return of radicalized ex-servicemen under the banner of the Ghadar Party during the First World War, the use of Punjabi military and police labour actually became a source of chronic colonial anxiety and insecurity. This acute sense of imperial vulnerability, in turn, prompted new forms of coercive political and legal intervention on the part of the colonial state, including the notorious 1915 Defence of India Act. By examining the 'flipside' of imperial security, this paper argues that we can gain new insight into the ways that authoritarian crackdowns by the colonial state were fundamentally driven by its own sense of weakness and precariousness.