Martial race was a designation which was created by army officials in British India after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, in which they classified each caste as belonging to one of two categories, the 'martial' castes and the 'non-martial' castes. The ostensible reason for this system of classification was the belief that a 'martial race' was typically brave and well-built for fighting, while the 'non-martial races' were those races which the British considered unfit for battle because of their sedentary lifestyles. The British had a policy of recruiting the martial Indians from those who has less access to education as they were easier to control.
According to modern historian Jeffrey Greenhut on military history, "The Martial Race theory had an elegant symmetry. Indians who were intelligent and educated were defined as cowards, while those defined as brave were uneducated and backward". According to Amiya Samanta, the martial race was chosen from people of 'mercenary spirit' (a soldier who fights for any group or country that will pay him), as these groups lacked nationalism as a trait. British-trained Indian soldiers were among those who had rebelled in 1857 and thereafter, the Bengal Army abandoned or diminished its recruitment of soldiers who came from the traditional recruiting areas and enacted a new recruitment policy which favored castes whose members had remained loyal to the British Empire.
