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→Indian volunteer force
After the [[Indian Mutiny]] local volunteer infantry forces began to be set up. Cavalry corps started in the 1860s and the first volunteer artillery brigade was constituted in 1879. [[Railways|Railway]] companies also formed infantry corps from their staff beginning in 1869.
The volunteer corps were open to Europeans and 'Eurasians' and, with the exception of an adjutant, consisted entirely of volunteers. However, in railway employment, it was virtually compulsory for all employees, both European and Eurasian, to enlist in the ‘Auxiliary Force’. One of the most important roles assigned to these men was to crack down on strikes by native employees (endnote 54) Henry Gidney, a campaigner for Eurasian rights, in 1934 wrote<br>‘for economic purposes we are called statutory natives of India, and as such we are expected to work amicably on an equality with our Indian fellow-workmen. Suddenly a railway strike develops, as has so often happened during the past decade, or a riot breaks out. Promptly, the Anglo-Indian [Eurasian] and domiciled European employee on the railways (still classed as “statutory Indian”) has to don his uniform, carry his rifle, and turn out as a member of the Auxiliary Force […] he is suddenly metamorphosed into a European British subject’.(endnote 55) <ref> [http://home.alphalink.com.au/~agilbert/satoshi.html Loyalty, Parity, and Social Control-The Competing Visions on the Creation of an ‘Eurasian’ Military Regiment in late British India] by Satoshi Mizutani ''The International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies'' Volume 10, No. 1, 2010 </ref>
===Indian Defence Force===
