How many Indian colonial-troops were mobilized?

[Leutnant]

I know that India was an enourmous source of manpower for the British Empire,
but how many indian troops did the British enlist?

And how did they get them?
Was it by consprition or was it a purly volunteer-force.

[redcoat]

Around 2.500,000 Indian citizens served in British Empire forces during WW2.
It was an all-volunteer force.

[Gwynn Compton]

And in WW1 IIRC approximately 1,000,000 served, with 100,000 casualties.

Gwynn

[Polynikes]

Around 2.500,000 Indian citizens served in British Empire forces during WW2.
It was an all-volunteer force.

Actually no Indian citzens served...India was part of the British Empire, they were correctly Royal Subjects...there was no such thing as an Indian citizen until 1947.

But yes, the loyalty of the Indians to the crown (which incleded Sikh, Moslem and Hindu) was remarkable.

The Indian army was viewed as a great strategic resourse of the British Empire but in reality it was not...the ratio of Indian army formations was something like 3:5 British:Indian.

[Leutnant]

The Indian army was viewed as a great strategic resourse of the British Empire but in reality it was not...the ratio of Indian army formations was something like 3:5 British:Indian.

Can you explain why exactly?

[Wm. Harris]

But yes, the loyalty of the Indians to the crown (which incleded Sikh, Moslem and Hindu) was remarkable.

For the most part, but let's not forget that there were thousands of Indians who fought for the Japanese against the British -- including some turncoats who had previously been fighting on the Allied side. As many as 6,000 men of the Indian National Army went into action with the Japanese against Imphal in 1944, not quite as many as Axis propaganda liked to claim but still a sizable number.

There was also severe unrest among Indian civilians and some Indian military units during and after the war, including a mutiny aboard the Royal Indian Navy ship HMIS Hindustan and the shore installations HMIS Bahadur, Chamak and Himalaya in early 1946.

[Jon G.]

Ever since the Indian Mutiny in 1857 it was standard to brigade Indian Army formations together with British units - normally, one British and two Indian battalions to each brigade. Also, all higher level officers would be British.

Some of the very best Allied formations in WWII were Indian Army units. As far as I know, the WWII Indian army is the largest all-volunteer force that ever existed.

[DrG]

While it's true that the Indian Army was very large (from 189,000 men in 1939 to 2,644,323 in 1945), we shall remember that only a small part of it was in fighiting units, and of them not all saw combat (and sometimes not very successfully, as the 9th and the 11th in Malaya and the 10th in Marsa Matruh in June 1942). The number KIA, only 24,338, was also very limited (instead the civilian deaths, caused mostly by the horrible Bengal famine, were between 1.5 and 3 millions). Moreover, for a country with 320,000,000 people, it's not so impressive to find 2.6 millions of volunteers (historical data about Indian population). For example, in Italian East Africa, with a pop. of 12,100,000 there was a fully volunteer army of 200,000 soldiers (the ratio, about 61 inhabitants for each volunteer, is twice that of India, about 123 inhabitant/vol.).
And not all those soldiers belonged to the Indian Army, but to the armies of the many Princely States: I don't know if also those armies were made only of volunteers.

The 25 divisions in the Indian Army:

• 3 armoured divisions, but none saw combat: 31st Armoured served in the Middle East, 32nd and 43rd in India itself. Plus 5 independent armoured brigades, 3 of which fought in Burma.
• 21 infantry divisions of which 17 saw combat:
  3rd, 7th, 14th, 17th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 23rd, 25th, 26th and 36th fought in Burma.
  4th fought in North Africa, Italian East Africa, and Italy
  5th fought in North Africa, Italian East Africa and Burma
  8th fought in Italy
  9th and 11th fought and were destroyed in Malaya
  10th fought in Iraq, North Africa and Italy
  2nd, 6th, 12th and 39th saw no combat.
• 1 airborne division (the 44th) which saw almost no combat.

Some interesting links:
British Empire at war
The Indian Army in WW2 (official site)
The Indian Army in the Second World War
Military Uniforms of the British Indian Army
India (British Empire and Commonwealth Land Forces)
OOB of the Indian forces on 3 Sept. 1939
Detailed map of the Empire of India in 1934-47
Map of India in 1937 showing the Princely States and the areas under direct British rule