CHAPTER I

 Back to M.L.I. History contents

THE REGIMENT

IN early days each battalion of typical infantry had a “Light” Company composed  of small picked wiry men, able to move swiftly to reinforce or surprise as opportunity offered; these became “crack” companies and, later, the title Light Infantry came to be bestowed as a mark of honour.

In recognition of the gallant conduct of detachments at the siege of Kahun and the defence of Dadar, in Baluch territory, during the First Afghan War of 1841 the present 2nd Battalion was created Light Infantry. Thirty years afterwards the honour of becoming Light Infantry was accorded to the 1st and 3rd Battalions for their gallantry in Sir Robert Napier’s Abyssinian Campaign of 1867-68, where the 3rd Battalion particularly distin­guished itself at the storming of Magdala.

At the grouping of all six Mahratta Battalions, which took place in 1922, the resulting Regiment assumed its present title of the 5th Mahratta Light Infantry.

Being the only Light Infantry Regiment of the pre-war Indian Army, the 5th Mahratta Light Infantry is alone among all Infantry Regiments in that the regimental numeral is not incorporated in the shoulder-title design.

The Regiment performs the form of drill peculiar to Light Infantry and marches past in the characteristic Light Infantry quick time of 140 paces to the minute.

The red and green hackle, green lanyard, green hosetops and stockings, and especially the hunting horn badge and crest, are worn with pride by the Regiment as outward symbols of its Light Infantry status.

The Men of the Regiment

The rank and file of the Regiment, and its Indian officers, are Mahrattas of the Maharashtra; a country which, for the Recruiting Officer of today, comprises the Konkan and Deccan of South-western India, the former being the coastal strip of the Bombay Presidency and the latter the high tableland immediately to the east of the Western Ghats.

Sons of a race of ancient and high martial tradition, the story of how a community of village peasantry was transformed into a nation of formidable warriors, of Shivaji the “Mountain Rat,” of the attempts at a second empire, and of the long series of wars with the British power is one of the romances of Indian History.

1

Small of stature and generally careless of appearance, the Mahratta is no swash­buckler. He has not the martial air of the Rajput, and the military turban which the Sikh or Pathan ties deftly, as if with one fold, falls about the head and down the neck of the Mahratta in the most capricious convolutions. Nonetheless he comes of hard stock, is wiry and of great endurance, and performance rather than appearance is the ultimate test. The wiry men of Maharashtra bore the heat of Upper Sind in the First Afghan War better than the up-country troops, while the same sepoys were not found wanting in the hardships of the Abyssinian War, in the privations of Mesopotamia, or on the long marches of Allenby’s advance through Palestine. More recently, from the bullet-swept heights of Keren to the mountains of Italy and the jungles of Assam and Burma, the Mahratta has won a reputation for gallantry and loyal service unsurpassed in the Indian, or any other, Army.

Such men are the direct descendants of the great Shivaji’s troops who in the storied days of the Mahratta Confederacy, watered their horses in the Indus, harried the borders of Mysore, and set the scared citizens of Calcutta to digging the Mahratta Ditch.

In recognition of their unsullied reputation for loyalty the Mahratta Light Infantry was, in 1930, formed into a completely class Regiment, one of three only in the present Indian Army and a matter of justifiable pride throughout the Regiment today.

 Back to M.L.I. History contents