Kumaon Regiment
infantry regiment of the Indian Army
The Kumaon Regiment is one of the oldest infantry regiments of the Indian Army. The regiment traces its origins to the 18th century and has fought in every major campaign of the British Indian Army and the Indian Army, including the two world wars, and is one of the highest decorated regiments of the Indian Army.
Recruitment of troops
The Kumaon Regimental Centre, established at Ranikhet, recruits Kumaoni people from the Kumaon division of Uttarakhand, Himachal and Ahirs from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and other parts.
History
Soldiering has been an important profession of the Kumaonis and the region has a long history of warfare with neighbours, including the Nepal and Garhwal. The Kumaonis were never fully subjugated by the powerful Muslim dynasties of Delhi. They often offered their martial services as mercenaries, and fought on British side in the Anglo-Nepalese War.
The Fierce fighting battalions of the Nizam of Hyderabad made up of Kumaonis and men from this region of the Himalayan foothills.
Well before the split from royal Gurkha rifles, the kumaonis had been enlisted in the five regiments of Gurkhas belonging to the Bengal Infantry and the Punjab Frontier Force. The Third Gorkha Rifles recruited heavily from the then greater kumaon kingdom(which included parts of terai presently in Nepal) the large recruitment of Kumaonis led to this being known the Kemaoon Battalion.
The Kumaonis were recruited in the military of the East India Company from the early 19th century.
“Kumaon Regiment” enters the record as infantry regiment of the Indian Army. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kumaon, Regiment and infantry can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kumaon Regiment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.