How are men selected for Indian Army's various Special Forces (Commando) units?

Question

Is it only by voluntary participation of men from within the Army?

Answer 1

No, u ve to be outstanding performer throughout..even if u ll volunteer u wont be taken if u are an average..u ve to be very good in everything..my bro is in NDA(navy) and what he tells bout commandos are that they are outstanding ppl...nobody can b as tough as they are..and to be that tough u ll ve to be good at everything...

Answer 2

Well...firstly u should have spent some time in the Indian army ...which means u would have been located on some hotspot and have had some combat experience. Secondly....u can apply for special forces when there is a requirement and is completely voluntary. Secondly...u have to go through the physical and mental training...which around 60% of the volunteer's fail. so there u have it.

Answer 3

The Jawans in SF battallions are directly recruited. The officers are mostly transfers from the para or other regiments with few direct commissions. All officers and men have to go thru the same set of commando courses.

Answer 4

its only voluntary participation and i think you first gotta be a regular and then if ur good the select you
go to
www.bharat-rakshak.com
it all info about indian special forces

Answer 5

Oh Yeah!
I guess you must have grown up enough to understand what you said back then ;)
Or are you still an American couch potato, looking for a life over Internet?

Answer 6

yes they r voluntary selected but they have to pass some of the exams and physical tests.............

Answer 7

Restricted to those that can read and write.

Answer 8

no it can be done through some exams conducted by the armed forces.........eg. NDA........etc.

Answer 9

I think that they are those rejected bythe USMC for being too intelligent.

Answer 10

EVERYTHING ON INDIAN ARMY

Command, Staff and Organization

In the beginning, local military command was vested in the body of the President himself. At no stage thereafter was military command to reach beyond that of a unified theatre in modern parlance.

By 1748, a Commander-in-Chief was given to the Governors for coordination of military activities. Major Stringer Lawrence, assisted by a Commander Royal Artillery, filled this post with great verve. This was the first (of many) attempts to integrate the military assets of the three Presidencies.


When Warren Hastings as Governor-General got his resplendent bodyguard, he also deserved it. A regulating act that year gave him authority over Madras and Bombay in peace as well as war. In 1784-85 full military


powers were retained by the Board of Control (Directors), which meant the British Government, including the power to appoint the Commander-in-Chief. For the Governor-General, a formal Army Headquarters was created with the Commander-in-Chief as head, two Principal Staff Officers being assigned to assist him, namely the Quartermaster General and the Adjutant General. At this point in time (1790), the total strength of the British-Indian Army was 90,000.

A Military Department was created in 1786, the forerunner to the Ministry of Defence. By 1834, a military member became an advisor to the Governor-General in Council. His nearest equivalent today would be the Raksha Mantri (Minister of Defence).

Reorganizations

After the Great Bengal Army Insurrection, i.e. our First War of Independence in 1857, Her Majesty, Queen Victoria was no longer amused with the Company's loss of control, and India came directly under the Crown along with her Army. In the interim and after, a number of commissions and committees recommended changes and reforms, of which the Peel (1858) and the Eden (1879) commissions are worthy of note. The latter suggested immediate amalgamation of all Presidency Armies.

In 1895, the Army was thoroughly reorganized, burying the Presidency Armies at long last except for traditions that lingered. In line with contemporary military thinking, four regional commands were created, each under a Lieutenant General: Punjab-West of the Yamuna river, commanding the Frontier Force as well; a truncated Bengal command; Madras (with Burma); and Bombay with Sind, Quetta and an extension in Aden.

The Frontier Force and the general North-Western orientation of the Punjab and Bombay Commands was a fallout of European imperial rivalry. As early as 1840, Britain was firmly resolved to check the expansion of Imperial Russia into South-Central Asia.

In 1902-03 Kitchener commenced streamlining every inch of the system, which finally resulted in the reforms of 1908-09. He had also managed to shake off the Military Member interposed between the Commander-in-Chief and the Political Executive on the ground of unity of advice and therefore unity of purpose. What emerged from this decade-long turmoil was an expanded Army Headquarters, with a dedicated General Staff Branch and a Director-General Ordnance Branch being added to the existing Adjutant General and Quartermaster General Branches. Two territorial commands were created - the Northern and Southern, and the Field Army was subdivided into a Field Force and Internal Security Troops totalling 152,000 (nine Divisions and eight Cavalry brigades) and 82,000 respectively.

Immediately after the First World War, a Military Council was formed, with the Secretary of Army Department and the Financial Adviser as members. Once again, four regional Commands were set up with the Field Force getting an additional element - that of covering troops for the North-West Frontier.

The Command system served for both empire building and external imperial policing (Egypt, Burma, China, Mesopotamia). In protracted expeditionary wars it had a tendency to fray, but that was more due to flaws in logistics and, administrative practices.

The Tradition of Arms

Tradition fights. The Indian Army Sepoy (from the Hindustani word sipahi) and now Jawan (young man) or Sawar (rider) and his leaders formed a cohesive collective. They lived to serve the Unit, they were willing to die for it. Nothing must happen which would tarnish its honour, its izzat. The word in Urdu is a distillation hard to explain, encapsulating in itself the code of ethics given by Dharma (faith) and Namak (literally, salt). Unflinching loyalty was to a concept and not to a transient personality or cause. Always and everywhere, the Unit came first. Everything followed from it - the Regiment, the Flag, and the Country. This was the greatest battle-winning factor bequeathed by history to the Indian Army. The men were there, ready and willing to serve a flag, with honour, glory and mutual respect. Quick to appreciate these traits, successive British governments brought in more regional groupings into the Army. A fierce undying loyalty to the Unit was evinced by the British Officer Corps, and the Indian junior leaders and men reciprocated it. The greatest ambition of a British Officer was to command his Regiment.

A 'Regiment' in some armies merely means a robotic military formation the size of a brigade. No sense of the past attaches to the word. In the Indian Army, the word can mean either of two things - battalion-sized units of arms like the Armoured Corps, Artillery, Engineers, and Signals, or a particular combination of Infantry battalions. The Artillery employs the term more comprehensively and calls the complete Artillery mass in the order of battle as the Regiment of Artillery. Others stick to Corps and even groups.

To begin with, the Presidencies recruited their soldiers from their increasing territorial holdings. By 1802, however, recruitment by class or ethnic lines had begun. The British penchant for recruitment in terms of 'martial and non-martial' classes is difficult to explain, but this legacy persisted for sometime even after independence, to be finally buried in the cauldron of 1962.

Certainly, there were some outlying 'tribes" who were not considered for regular employment mainly on the score that they did not take well to rigid military discipline. These bodies were converted into irregular local levies, scouts, and frontier corps and did better in their frontier habitats.
Cavalry

Indian cavaliers had the sweep of a whole subcontinent before them like their equivalents - the Cossacks of Russia or the Light Dragoons of the United States. This arm came up through a mixture of raising methods: directly recruited cavaliers were grouped into 'regular' units; yeomen of means who bought themselves in with mounts and essentials, formed Irregular units, under the silladar system. Very 'irregular' Cavalry raised by gentlemen of fortune and in the employ of local powers were also welcomed to join the growing Cavalry arm.

Local state forces which had demonstrated their prowess on the battlefield were also invited to join the Britishers. Among these were the Arcot Cavalry and some from Hyderabad; Maratha Cavalry raider forces (including the highly irregular Risalas of Gardner and Skinner). The last to join the irregulars were of the Army of the Khalsa, Hodsons Horse being the best 'known among them. This formidable Cavalry arm, largely named after the Presidencies, e.g., the Bengal Cavalry, caught the romance of those times. Units were given to calling themselves 'Horse', 'Cavalry', 'Light Cavalry' or 'Lancers'. Some time after independence, the equine connotation died out and newly raised regiments now call themselves 'Armoured Regiments:

The Gunners

British policy was clear in the matter of handling of artillery by Indian troops. Guns, the main firepower component of a field army, were to be shielded from them. In the waxing and waning of Indian-served artillery, the start was auspicious. Thereafter, by the beginning of the nineteenth century there was much 'retrenchment'. A few mountain battery trains flourished and kept the Indian component alive as part of the Royal artillery. Recently, it has been established that 8 Company Bombay Artillery survived axing and is now 5 (Bombay) Mountain Battery. It was raised on 28 September 182 7, which is now celebrated as the Raising Day of the Regiment of Artillery.

Legends abound about the screwgun-equipped Mountain Batteries of Derajat, Bengal, and Hazara serving in the North West frontier. No flag or pennant is needed by the Artillery as colours for rallying. Without fail, gunners rallied round their guns and defended them to the last.

It was in January 1935 that 'A' Field Brigade (actually a four-battery 'regiment') was raised with Indian troops. As late as that, it was horse-drawn artillery on the lines of the older Royal Horsed Artillery. The tradition of a quick gallop into battle and on deployment serving the gun to the end was strongly established right from the beginning.

The Sappers and Miners

The need for accurate survey arose before combat engineering. Vast holdings had to be carefully delineated and mapped out, to plan the correct form of commercial extraction. By 1780, serious attention began to be given to the art of sapping and mining.

Forts abound in the subcontinent, and to the forts the main defences withdrew for a protracted stand. On being invested, the siege (heavy) artillery including trench mortars or bombards went at it. The real work, not for the faint-hearted, went to the sappers who had to do the 'sapping' or mining. Sapping is the technique of accurately digging trenches, usually covered or zigzag, to cover one's approach to the point of assault.



Mining involves boring through and placing very large demolition charges for making a breach in the walls of the fort and/or placing the charges under key areas in the fort. The sapping technique has been used to great advantage on modern battlefields as well,

Dien Bien Phu (March-April 1954) and Khe-San (1967-68) in Vietnam being notable examples. Of necessity, a sapper must be tough, tenacious, unflappable, and skilled at his job.


They have emerged on today's battlefield as the 'Engineers'. In India, the Engineers were spawned in three groups - the Madras Sappers followed by the Bengal Sappers and finally the Bombay Sappers. They were formed into field companies (a sub-unit organization that exists to this day) grouped into regiments. Till 1911, the Sappers also had the onerous charge of passing battlefield messages. Between 1911 and 1920, they handed this burgeoning task to a batch of their own kinsmen who then formed the Corps of Signals.


The Corps and Services

Logistics back-up to the fighting forces has specialized over the decades and centuries, splitting when expedient to form specialist corps, and merging where necessary. The Supply and Transport departments merged to form the Royal Indian Army Service Corps in 1884; Remount and Veterinary Services merged to form the Remount and Veterinary Corps. The Boards of Ordnance merged and formed the Indian Army Ordnance Corps, out of which emerged the Corps of Indian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in 1943.

Officering

Resistance to providing Indian leadership for the Indian Army persisted for quite a while. Roberts, a long-standing Commander-in-Chief of the Army was of the view that no Indian officer could have serving under him a British officer, or even a British NCO. The most an Indian could aspire for was an Indian commission, with 'Subedar Major' being the highest rank. The first major change came in l919-20, in response to the then Indian political leadership's strident demands for 'Indianization' of the Army, in that ten vacancies were reserved for suitable' Indians at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.

Indian political demands also impelled the British to set up the Indian Military Academy (IMA) at Debra Dun on 1 October 1932. The training was for a period of two and a half years. The IMA was formally inaugurated by the Commander-in-Chief in India, FM Sir Philip Chetwode, on 10 December 1932. In his inaugural address to the trainees, he enunciated three principles which were to guide the future officers of the Indian Army:

The safety, honour, and welfare of your country comes first, always and everytime.

The honour, welfare and comfort of the men you command come next.

Your own ease, comfort and safety come last, always and everytime.

The first batch of Gentleman Cadets who passed out of the IMA were commissioned in December 1934. This batch was to produce India's first Field Marshal, SAM Manekshaw MC of the 8th Gorkha Rifles. On independence, Indian officers, junior in service and experience to their British mentors (the highest rank holders were Brigadiers Cariappa and Thimayya), were able to step into their elevated ranks and responsibilities, with confidence.

The First World War

The Indian Army combat arms strength at the beginning of the First World War was 155,423. It ended the war with 573,484, accepting, like all major combatant nations, an enormous percentage of casualties. It served in some of the most horrendous theatres of war under senior military leadership of questionable competence, with singular resolve and devotion to duty.

Nk Darwan Singh (Garhwal Rifles) leads round a traverse at the point of the bayonet and was awarded the VC : France First World War


Like all other great cavalries, the Indian horsed Cavalry units fought in the quagmires and unending obstacle systems of the Western Front'. Serving as Infantry, they took appalling casualties. Their last hurrah was in Palestine, where in free country, led by the brilliant Allenby, they drove the Turks before them from the Sinai to Lebanon and into Syria, demonstrating once again, their unyielding spirit.



Imperial Germany did complain about the use of 'colonial troops' in the main European theatre. Indian troops were proving to be dogged and unrelenting in resistance. Higher command failed them in the tough conditions of Mons and Flanders, and the Dardanelles. In Mesopotamia, the logistic system repeatedly failed and abysmal reinforcement methods became glaring. Yet through it all, the Indian Army put on a sterling performance, and the many theatre and battle honours that adorn the 'colours' of its regiments bear proud witness to this.

The Second World War

When the Second World War broke out, not a single unit of the Indian Army was mechanized to respectable standards. Motorization was selective, and scales of weaponry extremely sparse. But the number of men that India gave to the Allied Cause has never been equalled since. In 1939, the Army had 189,000 in its ranks -rising to 2,644,323 at peak strength in 1945.

In the Western Desert, in Eritrea and Italy, Indian Divisions engaged the Germans and-ltalians. The 4th, 5th, and 8th Divisions distinguished themselves in a series of hard-fought campaigns. A time came when the British 8th Army depended on the 4th Division to crack up Axis formations in their long (and final) retreat. At Cassino, the best that the German Parachute Regiment had were slowly reduced by equally motivated Indian troops of all shades. German breakthroughs in the Desert saw Indian Gunners standing to their guns, despite being cut off, and fighting heroically. The 3rd (Indian) Motor Brigade badgered the Africa Corps using trucks and machine guns.

In Malaya, Singapore, and Burma the Indian Army initially gave ground to what at first seemed an unstoppable Imperial Japanese drive through South-East Asia to the very gates of India. None was there to stop them - not the Chinese, nor the Americans, nor British or Indian Army formations. 17 Indian Division's agonizing withdrawal in 1942, over vast stretches in Burma, was the longest in British military history. The Division was to subsequently extract terrible retribution from the Japanese Army when Field Marshal 'Bill' Slim's 14th Army went on the counter-offensive, sweeping the Japanese out of Burma and South-East Asia. Out of one million men of the Allied Armies in South-East Asia, 700,000 were Indians.

It was the Indian Army units, who in the words of 'Bill' Slim, were the 'best in the world' that merited recognition as superb fighting machines. Identical sentiments were echoed by Bernard Montgomery (Monty) in the West; Rommel, the 'Desert Fox', had the 'healthiest regard' for the Indians.

The war in Burma sprouted some of our outstanding middle-level and junior leaders such as Brigadier KS Thimayya DSO, Major Srikant Korla DSO, MC, Major NC Rawlley MC and Major Rajwade, to name but a few. The Victoria Cross (VC) - the first award of it's kind to an Indian Commissioned Officer was awarded to Second Lieutenant Premindra Singh Bhagat of the Bombay Sappers for an act of unparalleled bravery and inspiring leadership, on the night of 31 January/1 February 1941, when commanding a detachment of 21 Field company of the Bombay Sappers on the road to Gondar, in Abyssinia.


"Ayo Gorkhali" (The Gorkhas have come)

The Indian Army by the end of the War was thus rated as among the best in the world whose Officers and men displayed the highest levels of motivation and gallantry on the field of battle.