Women's Auxiliary Corps (India)

The Women's Auxiliary Corps (India) (WAC(I)) was created in March 1942, out of the Women's Auxiliary Service (Burma). By the end of the Second World War, it had recruited 11,500 women.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Recruits had to be a minimum age of 18 years and their duties were clerical or domestic. In December 1942, the minimum age was reduced to 17 years. Volunteers could enlist on Local service or General service terms. Those on General service could be sent to serve anywhere in India.[7]

Compared to over two million men, the corps of 11,500 women was small, but recruitment was always hampered by caste and communal inhibitions. Indian women at the time did not mix socially or at work with men and a large part of the corps was formed from the mixed-race Anglo–Indian community.[8] The WAC(I) had an autonomous Air Wing, which served as the Indian counterpart of the WAAF: the women operated switchboards and similar duties at airfields and air headquarters (AHQ). In the earlier part of the war there was likewise a Naval Wing, but with the very localised environment of naval base and the very distinct ethos of the wartime naval services, British and Indian, this department was formally hived-off, in 1944, to become: the Women's Royal Indian Naval Service (WRINS), with its own uniform, similar to WRNS.

  1. ^ Harfield, Alan (2005). "The Women's Auxiliary Corps (India)". Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research. 83 (335): 243–254. ISSN 0037-9700. JSTOR 44231211.
  2. ^ Family Records gov uk Consortium. "FamilyRecords.gov.uk | Focus on... Women in Uniform | Women in World War II - Profile". FamilyRecords.gov.uk Consortium. Archived from the original on 20 July 2022. Retrieved 20 July 2022.
  3. ^ Sen, Sudarshana (2017). "2. Anglo-Indian women". Anglo-Indian Women in Transition: Pride, Prejudice and Predicament. Singapore: Springer. p. 69. ISBN 978-981-10-4356-7.
  4. ^ Perry, Frederick William (1988). "3. The Indian Army". The Commonwealth Armies: Manpower and Organisation in Two World Wars. Manchester University Press. p. 114. ISBN 0-7190-2595-8.
  5. ^ Vitali, V. (17 October 2019). "The Women's Royal Indian Naval Service: Picturing India's New Woman". Women's History Review. 29 (7): 1114–1148. doi:10.1080/09612025.2019.1674468. ISSN 0961-2025. S2CID 210364785.
  6. ^ Mohanan, Kalesh (2020). The Royal Indian Navy: Trajectories, Transformations and the Transfer of Power. Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge. pp. 94–96. ISBN 978-1-138-55495-5.
  7. ^ Brown, p.140
  8. ^ Blunt, p.61