Essay On Martial Culture

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Amidst Fascinating Diversity of Martial Culture "Halfway between Maddur and Somanathapura lies the village of Malavalli. It has a very large tank, in which breed all kinds of birds, from humdrum herons to the glorious Painted Stork. The village appears fleetingly in the old Gazetteers, as a place near which Tipu Sultan’s men once fought a bloody battle with British forces. But as one passes Malavalli nowadays, viewing with pleasure its lovely landscape, the paddy fields and the ponds and the birds, who would think that a gun was ever fired in anger there?" Ramchandra Guha The Luck of The South The Hindu November 11, 2007 The South has been relatively free from the horrors of war and civil strife.However,since the early Sangam age, there was a warlike culture in South India. The peninsular history is imbued with martial and soldierly spirit. War was regarded as an honorable sacrifice and fallen heroes and kings were worshiped in the form of a Hero stone. Each…show more content…
This ignorance was to a large extent responsible for the exclusion of South Indian races from recruitment into the British Army notwithstanding their antecedents that included a variety of martial arts and a rich history of warfare. The History of the Madras Regiment records: "The Madras soldier, popularly known as ‘Thambi’ hails mainly from the four southern states (Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu), Pondicherry, Coorg and southern Islands of the Bay of Bengal. He has time and again heroically vindicated that in his veins courses the blood of martial ancestors, who, for centuries memorably reigned over or valiantly served the Pallava, Chola, Pandya and Chera kingdom." The Kumaonis, once accepted as a martial race, were themselves to be recruited in the Hyderabad regiment and displace the native troops, ultimately becoming the Kumaon Regiment after the independence of

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