The concept of “martial rule” and the associated ideology of the “martial races” occupy a central place in the colonial and post-colonial history of Punjab.
Far from being a mere military recruitment strategy, this theory evolved into a durable socio-political framework that reshaped agrarian relations, state power, and political authority in the region.
Drawing upon the works of scholars such as Mustafa Kamal Pasha, Clive Dewey, Tan Tai Yong, and Rajit Mazumdar, one can trace how martial rule developed as an intellectual and administrative project, how it became deeply embedded in the agrarian economy of Punjab, and how its long-term ramifications elevated the military to a decisive force in contemporary politics.
The theory of martial rule emerged from the broader colonial construct of the “martial races,” formulated by British administrators in the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. As Tan Tai Yong demonstrates, the rebellion marked a decisive rupture in British perceptions of loyalty and governance in India.
Communities that had resisted colonial authority, particularly in Bengal and Awadh, were increasingly viewed as politically unreliable, while populations from the north-western frontier, most notably the Punjab, were re-imagined as inherently loyal, hardy, and martial. This reclassification was not merely descriptive but prescriptive, guiding recruitment policies and administrative priorities in the decades that followed.
Clive Dewey locates the intellectual foundations of this theory in Victorian ethnographic and racial assumptions. Punjabi peasants, especially Jats, Sikhs, and Muslim Rajputs, were portrayed as physically robust, morally disciplined, and socially cohesive, qualities believed to arise from their rural environment and agrarian way of life.
These characteristics were contrasted with what colonial discourse described as the effeminacy and political volatility of urban and eastern Indian populations. Although no single individual can be identified as the sole originator of the martial races theory, British military and administrative figures such as Sir Frederick Roberts (1832-1914) and Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener (1850-1916) played a crucial role in institutionalising it within the recruitment and organisation of the colonial army by the late 19th century.
Mustafa Kamal Pasha advances this argument further by emphasising that martial rule was not simply an ideology of recruitment but a broader mode of governance.
In this framework, military loyalty came to substitute for political participation as the primary basis of state legitimacy. Particularly in strategically sensitive regions like Punjab, the colonial state privileged military-administrative control over representative institutions, thereby embedding coercive authority within everyday governance.
Martial rule thus functioned as a political logic that disciplined society while simultaneously rewarding loyalty through material and symbolic incentives.
The centrality of the Punjab to the colonial military project cannot be understood without reference to its agrarian restructuring. As Rajit Mazumdar argues, British rule deliberately fused landownership, military service, and political authority into a single, mutually reinforcing system.
Through canal colonisation schemes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, vast areas of irrigated land were allocated preferentially to serving soldiers and military pensioners. Access to land became both a reward for service and a mechanism for securing long-term loyalty to the colonial state.
Clive Dewey’s analysis of Punjab land policy reveals how this arrangement produced a military–agrarian complex in which economic stability and political conservatism were closely aligned.
Military service offered regular wages, pensions, and social prestige, while landownership anchored soldiers and veterans within the rural order. The figure of the soldier-peasant emerged as the ideal colonial subject productive in peace, dependable in war, and resistant to political mobilisation. This system also reshaped village hierarchies, privileging military families and reinforcing patriarchal and martial values within rural society.
Tan Tai Yong further observes that this fusion of military recruitment and agrarian economy insulated large parts of rural Punjab from the nationalist movements that gained traction elsewhere in India. The army acted as a social safety valve by absorbing surplus male labour and reducing pressures that might otherwise have produced agrarian unrest. As a result, the military became deeply embedded in everyday village life, influencing patterns of authority, masculinity, and social status in ways that endured beyond the colonial period.
The long-term consequences of this militarised agrarian order were profound and far-reaching. Mustafa Kamal Pasha argues that colonial martial rule laid the structural foundations for post-colonial military dominance, particularly in Pakistan.
At the moment of independence in 1947, Punjab especially West Punjab supplied a disproportionately large share of soldiers, officers, and bureaucratic elites to the new state. This imbalance translated into enduring institutional advantages for the military within the post-colonial political order.
The inherited nexus between land, arms, and authority facilitated the political ascendancy of large landowning families with military backgrounds, who came to dominate provincial and national politics. As Mazumdar notes, the military’s claim to political legitimacy rested not only on its coercive power but also on its deep social roots in rural Punjab, where military service was normalised and valourised across generations. This social embeddedness distinguished the military from other state institutions and enhanced its capacity to intervene in political life.
In contemporary times, this historical legacy has made the military a decisive political actor. The Punjab’s continued over-representation within the armed forces has reinforced the army’s self-image as the guardian of national unity and stability. Civilian political institutions, by contrast, have remained comparatively weak, fragmented, and often reliant on military mediation to resolve crises. The imbalance between civil and military authority cannot be adequately explained without reference to the colonial construction of martial rule and its agrarian foundations.
The theory of martial rule, originating in colonial anxieties after 1857, thus evolved into a durable system that intertwined military service with agrarian economy and political authority in Punjab.
As demonstrated by Pasha, Dewey, Tan Tai Yong, and Mazumdar, this outcome was neither accidental nor incidental but the result of a carefully engineered colonial strategy. Its ramifications extend well beyond the colonial period, continuing to shape patterns of governance, civil–military relations, and political power in contemporary South Asia. The enhanced role of the military in Punjab politics is therefore not merely a response to modern security challenges, but the culmination of a historical process in which land, loyalty, and arms were fused into a single structure of rule whose influence remains deeply embedded in the region’s political landscape.
Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2026
