During WWII, for example, he was an ambulance driver (his poor eyesight kept him out of the infantry) attached to the old British-Indian Army in India and Burma, where, among other horrors, he witnessed a famine that took the lives of millions.
Economically, India was a growing industrial power which by 1935 had a positive balance of trade with UK. Militarily, the British Empire depended badly upon the large and powerful IndianArmy, particularly as Japanese advanced through Asia.