Indian Police Uniforms

Another from Les White, based on a plate from Blakeslee's Police Uniforms of the World

https://i.servimg.com/u/f62/12/22/09/10/britis10.jpg
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Those are brilliant Les - a glimpse of an important category of police seldom noticed except when portrayed as brutal minions of Empire attacking inoffensive marchers in the film "Gandi" .

The Bombay constable is quaintly dressed - some sort of maritime police or did they just do uniforms differently there?

Hi BuistR,
Appreciate your comments on my efforts.
Thanks to Sean for posting the illustration on my behalf.

The details of these uniforms are all taken from the book 'Police Uniforms of the World' by F.G. Blakeslee published in 1934. I would say by the time the info was accumulated and published that most of the details would be from no later than 1930.

Although Khaki would seem to be the normal colour used all over India at the time 'BOMBAY CITY' stands alone in it's uniform ideas, the blue with yellow trim illustrated is that worn by the normal beat police , it is described in the book ,however I used a colour postcard which I have in my collection from 1910 which matches perfectly with the decription in the book so looks like it lasted for quite a few years, there are photos on CORBIS from the 1930's of these uniforms still being used. In the 1950's they seem to change to a khaki uniform but retained the Blue and Yellow colours on their British Style sidecaps and today wear Blue peaked caps with yellow bands. I'm guessing that Blue and Yellow are the city colours.

It took a while and a little extra research to work out what the turbans looked like and hope that I got them right. I invite anyone to offer any assistance with corrections or additions to these uniform details.

I have some extra descriptive details on what the belt buckles looked like and of course most of them would have shoulder titles composed of interlinked lettering. So I may do another plate showing these once I can get pictures of what everything looked like.

This illustration is a companion to the previous one on British Empire Police uniforms. There should be enough info in the book for me to do at least another three plates , possibly more. Plus it also covers Europe, South America, Africa and Asia. All depends on getting some more descriptive info as some of the book ones are rather vague in places.

Best Regards,
Les