In 1917, a mere thirty years before India gained independence from Britain, Indians were alIowed into the officer corps of the colonial Indian Army, thus initiating its " Indianization ". Yet, as an issue of British military policy, Indianization had been debated for a hundred years before 1917. This thesis delineates the contours of that debate, the myriad schemes for Indianization that it engendered, the reasons for the faHure of each of these, as weIl as the reasons why the bar on Indians in the Indian Army's officer corps was finally broken. In analysing the debate, attention will be paid to factors that influenced and channelled the discussions. The most important of these were: Anglo-Indian strategies of Imperial politics, such as the need to seek out and collaborate with certain sections of Indian society as a means of holding India to the Empire; British ideological and intellectual formulations, such as the "Gentleman-Ideal" and the Martial Races theory; and Indian political developments, such as the emergence of Indian public opinion and nationalism .

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