Martial race was a designation which was created by army officials in British India after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, in which they classified each caste as belonging to one of two categories, the 'martial' caste and the 'non-martial' caste. The ostensible reason for this system of classification was the belief that a 'martial race' was typically brave and well-built for fighting, while the 'non-martial races' were those races which the British considered unfit for battle because of their sedentary lifestyles. However, the martial races were also considered politically subservient, intellectually inferior, lacking the initiative or leadership qualities to command large military formations. The British had a policy of recruiting the martial Indians from those who has less access to education as they were easier to control.

According to modern historian Jeffrey Greenhunt on military history, "The Martial Race theory had an elegant symmetry. Indians who were intelligent and educated were defined as cowards, while those defined as brave were uneducated and backward". According to Amiya Samanta, the martial race was chosen from people of mercenary spirit (a soldier who fights for any group or country that will pay him/her), as these groups lacked nationalism as a trait. British-trained Indian soldiers were among those who had rebelled in 1857 and thereafter, the Bengal Army abandoned or diminished its recruitment of soldiers who came from the catchment area and enacted a new recruitment policy which favored castes whose members had remained loyal to the British Empire.

The concept already had a precedent in Indian culture as one of the four orders (varnas) in the Vedic social system of Hinduism is known as the Kshatriya, literally "warriors". Brahmins were described as 'the oldest martial community', in the past having two of the oldest British Indian regiments, the 1st Brahmans and 3rd Brahmans.

Following Indian independence, the Indian government in February 1949 abolished the official application of "martial race" principles with regard to military recruitment, although it has continued to be applied formally and informally in certain circumstances. In Pakistan, such principles, although no longer rigidly enforced, have continued to hold considerable sway and have had major consequences for the nation's political life—the most extreme case being the Bangladesh Liberation War, following decades of continued Bengali exclusion from the armed forces.