In 1922 the Prince of Wales Royal Indian Military College (now known as the Rashtriya Indian Military College) was set up in Dehradun to prepare Indian boys for admission to Sandhurst.
The Indianisation of the Army started with the commissioning of 31 Indian officers.
Among this first batch of officers to be commissioned was Kodandera Madappa Cariappa, who later became the 1st Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army and 2nd Indian Field Marshal.
Indian leaders then pressed for the issue at the 1st Round Table Conference in 1930.
Eventually, the establishment of an Indian officer training college was one of the few concessions made at the conference, so The Indian Military College Committee, set up under the chairmanship of Field Marshal Sir Philip W. Chetwode, recommended in 1931 the establishment of an Indian Military Academy in Dehradun to produce 40 commissioned officers twice a year following two and a half years of training.
The Academy was established in January 1932 at the premises of what was then the Railway Staff College and the first batch of cadets came for training in October that very year, which started the new chapter of Indian officers in the Army in a big way.
Field marshal SHFJ Maneckshaw, popularly known as Sam Bahadur was in this batch.
After independence in 1947, Brig Thakur Mahadev Singh was the first Indian commandant of the Academy.
In 1960 the name was changed to Indian Military Academy. In 1980, the commandants rank was raised to Lt General.
Updated on: July 12, 2014 9:33 IST
