Gen. K.M. Cariappa was appointed to this rank in 1986, more than thirty years after his retirement from the Indian Army. He was a member of the Army Sub Committee of the Forces Reconstitution Committee, which divided the British Indian Army into the Indian and Pakistani Armies after the Partition of India in 1947. He served as the Indian Army's first Commander-in-Chief, India's first Indian Chief of Staff, and led the Indian forces in Kashmir during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947.