Southern Command (India)
Indian Army command
Southern Command is a formation of the Indian Army, active since 1895. It has seen action during the integration of several Princely States into modern India, during the 1961 Indian Annexation of Goa, and during the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pakistani Wars.
Lieutenant General Rajesh Pushkar is the present Southern Army Commander.
History
Early history
The Presidency armies were abolished with effect from 1 April 1895 when the three Presidency armies became the Indian Army. The Indian Army was divided into four Commands (Bengal Command, Bombay Command, Madras Command and Punjab Command) each under a lieutenant general.
In 1908, the four commands were merged into two Armies (Northern Army and Southern Army): this system persisted until 1920 when the arrangement reverted to four commands again (Eastern Command, Northern Command, Southern Command and Western Command). In 1914, the Southern Army consisted of the 4th (Quetta) Division, the 5th (Mhow) Division, the 6th (Poona) Division, the 9th (Secunderabad) Division, and the Aden Brigade.
Second World War
During the Second World War, Southern Command was reformed as Southern Army (equivalent to a corps) in April 1942. The formation reverted to the title Southern Command in November 1945.
Component divisions included:
19th Indian Infantry Division, April 1942 to July 1944
2nd British Infantry Division, June 1942 to April 1943, and then June 1945 to August 1945
70th British Infantry Division, July 1943 to October 1943
81st (West Africa) Division, March 1945 to August 1945
36th Infantry Division (British Army), June 1945 to August 1945
Component brigades included:
7th Armoured Brigade, June 1942 to September 1942
British 6th Infantry Brigade, November 1942 to December 1942
150th Indian Infantry Brigade March 1944 to August 1945
26th Indian Infantry Brigade July 1944 to December 1944
Post war
In August 1947, Southern Command had the Deccan, Madras and Bombay Areas (with HQs at Kamptee, Madras and Bombay).
“Southern Command (India)” enters the record as indian Army command. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Southern, Command and India can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Southern Command (India)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Southern, Command and India provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7569787. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1895, 1961, 1965 and 1971.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Southern Command (India)” 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.