Faithful Fighters

Kate Imy is is a historian and screenwriter.

"This astute cultural history of the British Indian Army moves beyond the binary of loyalty and rebellion to track the assemblage of beliefs and bodily practices at stake in war and peace across empire's frontier regions. No other book captures so well the psychic life of war's devotional cultures, whether on the colonial battlefield or off."—Antoinette Burton, Swanlund Endowed Professor of History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign "Faithful Fighters shows that violence and militarization associated with martial identities were widely adopted in Indian nationalist cultures, with profound consequences for the future. The book makes crucial contributions to South Asian, military, and colonial history."—Heather Streets-Salter, Northeastern University "Faithful Fighters is an important addition to the growing body of scholarly work on the colonial Indian army, and the project of global militarization that underwrote modern European imperialism. Through new materials and archives, Imy's major contribution is to the overlooked imbrication of anticolonialism and military culture in these contexts."—Leela Gandhi, John Hawkes Professor of Humanities and English, Brown University "[Imy] paints a compelling picture of...various communities projecting their own ideations onto the colonial state, which in turn forced it to react and adapt....Faithful Fighters should prove to be an engaging and interesting read for anyone interested in Indian military history in the twentieth century."—Thirumalai Achintya, H-War "[An] intelligent and thought-provoking look into the complicated nature of power dynamics and relationship building available to both the British Empire and the indigenous groups of South Asia during the early twentieth century....This book is a must read for those interested in the Indian Army's social history and those iinterested in the construction of race and national identity. Imy's addition to the growing literature on the Indian Army expands on the social and cultural aspect of the military organization, and her analysis is inestimable."—Victor Curiel, The Middle Ground Journal "In Faithful Fighters, Kate Imy undertakes a refreshing investigation into the Indian Army between the 1910s and 1930s to trace the roots and development of religious militarism and racial masculinity in the colonial military institution of British India."—Yi Li, Journal of Asian Studies "There is much to like about Faithful Fighters' rich description of colonial efforts to recruit loyal soldiers in the British Indian army. Imy does an excellent job of highlighting the racial, gender, and class-based assumptions of British military policy, as well as the complex identities and agency of Indian soldiers... This will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the military's role in identity formation and the challenges of building loyalty in multiethnic societies."—Max Z. Margulies, Armed Forces & Society

• 1. Spiritual Swords and Martial Violence2. Borders, Boundaries, and Belonging3. Purifying the Soldier4. The Government's Salt from Fast to Famine5. A Nation at Odds with Nationalism6. Martial Masculinity in the Fascist Utopia