Overview

With India's independence in 1947 and emergence as a fully self-governing republic in 1950, new awards were created to reward Indian citizens for bravery and national service. While these new national awards grew out of the historical heritage of the period of British rule, they also represented the unique values of the new republic. This book presents a systematic overview of the official military, police, and civilian awards of the Republic of India from 1947 though to the present day. In addition to presenting a detailed catalogue of official awards, this work also surveys the development of policy on such awards, considers their changing legal status, and provides a critique of the policies that governed their creation and bestowal. While focusing on official national awards, the book also provides information on Indian provincial awards, on foreign awards given to Indians, and on awards of the pre-1947 Provisional Government of Free India. While much space is necessarily devoted to military awards, attention is also given to civilian awards, to the awards of the police and fire services and to the other official awards of the Indian Republic. This is the first book to focus on this important topic and should be of special interest to those in the defence and other uniformed services, to national policy makers, to students and collectors of decorations and medals, and to those with an interest in the social and political history of India. Members of the general public with an interest in how such national honours are awarded or with a curiosity over the meaning of all those bits of coloured silk that are worn on uniforms, will find this a useful and handy work of reference.

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Edward S. Haynes is a graudate of Duke University and Jawaharlal Nehru Univesity and a specialist in modern South Asian history. His current research deals with the development of the honours system in India from the 1780s to the 1980s. He is a member of the history department faculty at Winthrop University (USA). He is a member of the Orders and Medals Research Society and of the Orders and Medals Society of America. Rana T.S. Chhina served in the Indian Air Force as a helicopter pilot. A qualified flying instructor, he saw active service in operations on the Siachen Glacier, with the IPKF in Sri Lanka, and in counter-insurgency operations in Mizoram and Nagaland. A recipient of the Macgregor Medal for best military reconnaissance in 1986, he is currently secretary and editor of the USI Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research, New Delhi, and vice-president of the Indian Military Historical Society.

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