When it comes to the Indian Army, it is often said that it is one of the finest institutions left by the British when they left, and comparison and contrasting between the Indian and Pakistan armies and their role in respective nations are discussed to oblivion. There is also a common perception that the British were the reason for the formation of a unified India, which is incorrect; It was VP Menon and Sardar Vallabhai Patel that united india. The English left what the could not have taken back, the rest, what they could take back, they did take.
This paragraph from Frontline tells how the state Indian army was really left to the Indians:
When the British left India, the new nation was left with nothing resembling a functional covert service. Departing British officers had denuded the Military Intelligence Directorate in New Delhi of almost all sensitive information, leaving it without even a map of Jammu and Kashmir to which the first radio intercepts of the Pakistan-backed invasion of 1947-1948 could be correlated. The Intelligence Bureau (I.B.) was, for its part, in what Lieutenant-General L.P. Singh has described as "a tragi-comic state of helplessness", empty of everything but "office furniture, empty racks and cupboards". Its senior-most British-Indian official had chosen Pakistani citizenship and left for that country with what few sensitive files the imperial authorities had neglected to destroy. (emphasis added)
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