The 42nd Deoli Regiment was an infantry regiment of the

British Indian Army The Indian Army was the force of British Raj, British India, until Indian Independence Act 1947, national independence in 1947. Formed in 1895 by uniting the three Presidency armies, it was responsible for the defence of both British India and ...

. The regiment traced their origins to 1857, when the

Meena Meena () is a tribe from northern and western India which is sometimes considered a sub-group of the Bhil community. It used to be claimed they speak Mina language, a Spurious languages, spurious language. Its name is also transliterated as ' ...

Battalion A battalion is a military unit, typically consisting of up to one thousand soldiers. A battalion is commanded by a lieutenant colonel and subdivided into several Company (military unit), companies, each typically commanded by a Major (rank), ...

was raised during the

Indian Mutiny The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the form ...

. This battalion was the nucleus for the infantry of the Deoli Irregular Force which in May 1861, numbered eight companies. A cavalry detachment was added to the regiment by 1865 and continued to form part of it until at least 1886. After this date the 42nd became an exclusively infantry regiment. From its foundation the regiment was recruited mainly from various

sub-sects. In the Indian Army List of January 1919 the recruitment basis was described broadly as "four companies of Rajputana Hindus and Musalmans". The regiment later served in the

Second Afghan War The Second Anglo-Afghan War (Dari: جنگ دوم افغان و انگلیس, ) was a military conflict fought between the British Raj and the Emirate of Afghanistan from 1878 to 1880, when the latter was ruled by Sher Ali Khan of the Barakzai ...

and

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

in the

5th (Mhow) Division The 5th (Mhow) Division was a regular division of the British Indian Army and part of the Southern Army which was formed in 1903 after Lord Kitchener was appointed Commander-in-Chief, India between 1902 and 1909. He instituted large-scale re ...

. During World War I a second battalion was raised in 1917. Both battalions remained in India for internal security duties during the war but a single company of Meenas was posted to Mesopotamia. After World War I the Indian infantry was reorganized, moving from single battalion regiments to multi-battalion regiments. Nine regiments were disbanded as part of this restructuring. The 42nd Deoli Regiment was one of the regiments surplus to the new structure and it was disbanded on 10 December 1921.Sumner p.15

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