The Garrison State: The Military, Government and Society in Colonial Punjab, 1849-1947
By Tan Tai Yong,
Sage, Rs 640

Harold Laswell, an American political scientist, introduced the concept of a ?garrison state? in the Sixties to explain the structural mechanics of the Soviet Union and its client states in east Europe during the Cold War. In the Seventies, some scholars used the garrison-state hypothesis to characterize the military dictatorships in African countries in the late twentieth century. As happens often in history-writing, historians rummage other disciplines for concepts to apply to their specific areas of interest. Laswell?s model reached India in 1995, when Douglas Peers in Between Mars and Mammon categorized the pre-1857 colonial government as a garrison state. In this volume, Tan Tai Yong classifies post-1857 British India as a garrison state and examines its evolution.

Besides the garrison-state hypothesis, the other concept currently fashionable in debates about the nature of the colonial state is ?military-fiscal state?. This school, headed by C. Bayly and Randolf Cooper (both influenced by John Brewer), focused on the acquisition of funds for wars. In contrast, the garrison-state model represents a regime run by the military, for the military. Rather than military-finance, the locus of the garrison-state approach lies in the complex interaction between the administration and society.

The British administration and Punjabi society, writes Yong, were geared to maintain the sepoy army. After 1857, the British needed the Sikhs to counter the Biharis who had played a prominent role in the 1857 mutiny. The symbiotic relationship between the two was strengthened in the last decades of the nineteenth century, when the British needed Punjabi soldiers in large numbers to fill the ranks of the army that was preparing to fight czarist Russia. The Punjabis too were eager to join the army because of the pay and the pension. Drawing on Clive Dewey?s work, Yong claims that the government spent a disproportionate share of the budget on Punjab. The building of roads, cantonments and canals had a positive effect on Punjab?s agrarian economy.

The relationship was further strengthened during World War I. The government instructed the civil administration to look after the families of soldiers and mobilize them for the war effort. Many officers were integrated into the district administration in order to sanitize the army?s recruitment base from politics. Sikh peasants made profits selling wheat at a high price. In 1919, the British rewarded those Sikh farmers who had sons in the army with titles and land grants.

Cracks started appearing in the relationship during the inter-war era. The Akali agitation of the Twenties turned the Sikhs against the British. In 1943, the raj was forced to introduce price control in Punjab owing to the Bengal famine. The process of alienation of the Sikhs from the garrison state was complete in 1945, as the raj did not have enough land to satisfy the demobilized Sikh soldiers.

Yong does not mention Rajit Mazumder?s monograph which also offers a somewhat similar argument. Instead, she writes that the garrison state?s dependence on the Punjabi landed elites during the war proves Anand Yang?s theory of a ?limited raj?. That is contradictory because the garrison-state hypothesis demands the presence of a centralized bureaucracy and a maximalist state. In sum, the garrison-state framework worked to the advantage of both the Sikhs and the British.