10th Princess Mary's Own Gurkha Rifles
India gained independence from the British Empire in 1947. As a consequence of the Tripartite Agreement between India, Nepal and the UK, four of the 10 Gurkha regiments (eight Battalions in all), were transferred to the British Army; the 10th Gurkha Rifles being one of them. It joined the Brigade of Gurkhas which was formed to administer the Gurkha units transferred to the British Army. Before independence, the battalion decided to take the old colours of the 10th Madras Infantry out of India with it. Consideration was given to taking the regimental memorial at All-Saints Church in Maymyo Burma, which had been damaged by the Japanese during the war, but it was decided to leave it behind because of the expense involved and the uncertainty over where it could be relocated. It consisted of marble on the floor of the sanctuary and wooden plaques on the walls.
South India
The Europeans arrived in the 15th century and by the middle of the 18th century, the French and the British were involved in a protracted struggle for military control over the South India. After the defeat of Tipu Sultan in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War in 1799 and the end of the Vellore Mutiny in 1806, the British consolidated their power over much of present-day South India with the exception of French Pondichéry. The British Empire took control of the region from the British East India Company in 1857. During the British colonial rule, the region was divided into the Madras Presidency, Hyderabad State, Mysore, Travancore, Kochi, Vizianagaram and a number of other minor princely states. The region played a major role in the Indian independence movement; of the 72 delegates who participated in the first session of the Indian National Congress at Bombay in December 1885, 22 hailed from South India.