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Ethnic
Group Recruitment in the Indian Army: Dr. Omar Khalidi Introduction The Indian Army is one of the largest in the world, with a history going back several hundred years. Professional soldiers and academics have written both several historical works about the army. Military historians have paid some attention to the question of class or caste/ethnic/religious/regional group composition of the troops and officers of the army during the colonial period. What is lacking, however, is a systematic account of the ethnic group recruitment to the army since independence and the related questions of the following order: What, historically, is the pattern of recruitment in the Indian army? What changes and continuities with previous policies are discernible? What id the current recruitment policy? Does the composition of the military personnel mirror the religious and ethnic diversity of the Indian national population? If so, to what extent over time? If not, why not and to what extent? Does the military attempt to inculcate national values and perspectives in recruit training and professional military education? Do common military training, corporate life in a highly disciplined environment, isolation in cantonments, and shared experiences serve to reduce ethno- religious identification by building ethnic cross-pressures? Is there trans-community deployment of military personnel? Are promotion decisions based on perceived competence rather than on ethn0-religious affiliation? Finally, what is the impact of the polarization of Indian society along the religious divisions of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh, particularly during the last two decades? This paper attempts to answer these questions based on the conversations and writing of military officers, and the published accounts of defence ministries, politicians and informed journalists. Recruitment Policy in History In modern India, the East India Company (EIC) established three sepoy (native) armies, one based in each of the three presidencies of Bengal, Madras and Bombay. All three armies were ethnically mixed, although the Bengal Army was predominantly drawn from high-caste Hindus and Muslims of the Awadh and Bihar. During the 1875 Sepoy Mutiny, most regiments of the Bengal Army rebelled or had been disarmed in anticipation of their rebellion, while the Madras and Bombay Armies- despite some discontent - remained quiescent, even fighting with distinction against the rebels. In contrast to the upper -caste Hindu and Muslim soldiers if the Bengal Army, regiments of Sikhs and other Punjabis in the same army supported the military operations, along with the Garwalis and the Gurkhas. The end of the mutiny ushered in the beginning of a new recruitment policy in the armies of the Raj. It began to favour those who stood by the British in putting down the mutiny: Dogras, Garhwalis, Gurkhas, Pathans, and Punjabis- whether Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh- the so-called "martial races." The martial races theory predates the mutiny, according to some historians. Regardless, the theory holds that some Indian "races" (actually ethno-religious groups) such as the Dogras, Garhwalis, Gurkhas, Kumaonis, Marathas, Pathans and Punjabis (of all religious affiliation); Rajputs: as well as Hindustani, Decani and Moplah Muslims made good soldiers. The martial races were supposedly tall, broad-shouldered, light-skinned and capable of enduring hardship. Unlike the martial races, the inhabitants of the hot, flat plains of the country were supposedly unwarlike, flabby, dark-skinned and therefore unfit for military services. Still others were excluded due to their "ease of living" or branded as seditious agitators. Apart from their physique, the martial races were regarded as politically subservient or docile to authority. The recruitment to the army along ascribed military qualities of certain groups was pursued most vigorously between 1858 and 1939. The result was the evolution of the colonial army along ethnic lines with Dogra, Garhwali, Gurkha, Jat, Kumaon, Mahar and Sikh regiments - to name only the most famous; these the British called "one class." There were also "fixed class" units, which meant a regiment or battalion having two or three classes, but with each of its subunits being of one class. Finally, there was the "mixed class," comprising soldiers from different groups. This was how the army- mainly the cavalry and the infantry - was denoted. The small combat support arms - artillery, engineers and signals and the logistic support services such as service corps, medical corps, ordnance corps and the like were composed of men from all ethnic, caste and regional groups. Officers commanding the Raj's army were British, while Indians were admitted to the ranks only after world War I. The martial races theory did not apply in the case of officer recruitment, which was based on social class and loyalty to the Raj. Despite the large-scale recruitment of at least five Muslims ethnic groups noted earlier, there were no pure Muslim regiments ever created, although there were five anti-Muslim units. Given the leading role of Muslims in the 1857 uprising and constant attempt by some Muslims seeking Afghan help to free India, the British never fully trusted Muslims enough to group them into their own exclusive regiment, they were therefore, dispersed into mixed regiments. The outbreak of World War II in 1939 prompted the relaxation of the martial races theory and, consequently, increased the recruitment of soldiers from non-martial races because of the manpower shortage. After the end of the war, there was some demobilisation; shortly afterwards, the policy of recruitment reverted to old pattern. Nationalist Critique of the Recruitment Policy The Indian National Congress, a predominantly
Hindu organization, opposed the Raj's recruitment policy. The
Congress criticized the policy as restrictive and discriminatory,
and pressed for the opening of military opportunity for Indians
of all backgrounds, Nirad Chadhuri, better known as a master
of literary prose, wrote a series of articles in The Modern
Review, later published as an extended study. In this study,
published in 1935, Chaudhuri argued that a national army all
parts of the country and be animated by a national sprite. It
should be a self-contained fighting machine able to do without
the help and guidance of foreigners and, above all, it should
foster the military capacity of the whole nation and be directly
related to it." Towards the end of the colonial rule, The
British appear to have conceded to the demand. On 14 February
1947, the Secretary of Defence Ministry said in the Central
Legislative Assembly that it was the government's policy to
do away with the distinction between martial and non-martial
races in recruiting. It was subsequently reiterated that the
intention was to make the army more representative of India
as whole. Since the soldiers were already Indians, the nationalists
wanted full "Indianization"- the opening of officer
level opportunity for the natives of India. Around the time
of the partition, the British Indian army was still largely
composed of soldiers of martial race origin and junior officers
of Indian origin, while the higher officers were British. The
army comprised some 30-36 percent Muslim and 8 percent Sikh,
with the rest Hindu, including Gurkhas of Nepali background,
Indian Christians and Anglo-Indians." Partition and the Muslim Loyalty Question In mid-August 1947, at independence, the British officers left the subcontinent, and Muslim found them split on two sides of the border between the new countries of India and Pakistan, which were hostile to each other from the beginning. The central government in New Delhi was faced with a sensitive question: Will the Muslim army members and future recruits with kin across the frontier in the enemy country become a fifth column? In other words, a "Trojan horse dilemma" haunted the Nehru administration. Or to use Cynthia Enole's words: would Muslim soldiers be "politically reliable and dependable" under conditions of conflict with Pakistan? Were Muslim loyalties divided? By the terms of partition, jawans (young men) and officers of the Raj's army were given the choice of joining the forces of India or Pakistan. Naturally most Muslim soldiers-who were predominantly Punjabi or Pathan- opted for Pakistan. But as many as 215 Muslim commissioned officers and 339 VCOs (Viceroy's Commissioned Officers, later called Junior Commissioned Officers), chose India, according to the Ministry of Defence. Notable among those who decided to remain in India were officers such as Brigadiers Muhammad Usman and Muhammad Anis Ahmad Khan, and Lt. Col. Enayat Habibullah. Like millions of other Muslim families, partition divided the Rampur nobility as exemplified by the cases of Majors Yunus Khan and Sahibzada Yaqub Khan. Yunus decided to remain in India, while Yaqub, fearing discrimination in an independent India dominated by Hindus, chose Pakistan instead, becoming its foreign minister in the 1980s. To this list may be added seven officers of the Hyderabad State Force (HSF), when its Second Infantry Battalion was merged with the Kumaon Rifles in April 1951. The test of Muslim loyalty to the country came barely two months after the partition, when India went to war against Pakistan over Kashmir in October 1947. In this war, a paratrooper Brig. Muhammad Usman died fighting for India, which earned him a posthumous gallantry award. A year later, further test of Muslim loyalty followed, during India's military invasion of Hyderabad in September 1984, called Operation Polo. According to a New Delhi military expert, "about 700 Moslems left the army after it invaded… Hyderabad… and forced its merger with India." While it is possible that some Muslim soldiers may have deserted due to fact that they were fighting fellow Muslims in the HSF, contemporary accounts of Operation Polo do not mention what would have been perceived as a major event. While the desertions during Operation Polo may be disputable, it is true that at least one senior Muslim officer did not live up to his oath of allegiance. Maj.-Gen. Muhammad Anis Ahmed Khan, "afte4r having opted for India and advanced to position of responsibility [he become a Major-General] and access to secret information, in 1955 voluntarily retired and at once settled down in Pakistan, accepting a Pakistan government post. Given Maj.-Gen. Anis Ahmed Khan's move to Pakistan in these circumstances, it is not surprising that military became suspicious of Muslims, as articulated by no less than a former Commander-in-chief Gen. K.M. Cariappa. In an offensively titled diatribe published in Organiser, The mouthpiece of an extremist organization called Rashtrya Swayemsevak Sangh(RSS), Cariappa bluntly declared that Muslim "Loyalty seems to be primarily to Pakistan. This is a crime unpardonable. This is also the impression of a large percentage of non-Muslim intellectuals in India. Here is the root cause for there being a none-too-happy felling towards Muslims by a large percentage of the majority… This is understandable." Others may in fact have shared Cariappa's charge against Muslim, as the civil servant/historian G.D. Khosla reported rumors of Muslim infidelity to the nation floating in New Delhi about the same time. Fortunately for Muslims, Cariappa's fulmination was proven wrong not long after he wrote the piece for the RSS weekly. Raju Thomas, an india-born American academic who interviewed army officers, found that "when the [India-Pakistan] war began in September 1965, a Muslim majority battalion of the Rajput Regiment stationed in the crucial Poonch sector of Jammu and Kashmir, far from being hastily withdrawn, was allowed to play its part in the execution of the army's forward actions. According to several high-ranking Indian army officers, the fact that the battalion did not flinch and carried out its assigned role with considerable credit, sufficiently dispelled worry- at least within the military- about the loyalty of Indian Muslim soldiers." In the same war, two Muslim soldiers Havildar Abdul Hamid of the Grenadier Regiment and Maj. M.A.R. Sheikh received high military honours for gallantry, a pattern repeated in the 1971 war between the two countries over Bangladesh. Despite clearly demonstrated loyalty to the nation in the two major wars, Muslims may have remained suspect, as two researchers on the Indian army, Daljit and Katherine Singh, "were able to find not a single Muslim officer above the rank of a major-general occupying a responsible position of military command." Leaving aside the cases of the handful of Muslim officers who in any case joined the army before independence, what do we know about the recruitment of Muslims after independence? As early as 1953, Prime Minister Nehru noted the absence of Muslims from the army in a communication addressed to the chief ministries, observing that "in our Defense Services, there are hardly any Muslims left… What concerns me most is that there is no effort being made to improve this situation, which is likely to grow worse unless checked." Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah's concern about the lack of recruitment among Muslims was confirmed by Mohair Tyagi, the Minister of State for Defense. He told the Aligarh University Union that in 1953, "the percentage of Muslims in the armed forces forces, which was 32 percent at the time of partition has come down should be paid to their recruitment." The evidence of the Muslim absence coming from the highest executive authority in the country found confirmation in Kashmir. Before independence, the Kashmir's Dogra Maharaja's Force consisted of fellow Dogras and Sikhs, with some Muslims, but not Kashmir Valley Muslims, who were excluded from the state army as matter of policy. In October 1947, the State Force's Muslim soldiers rebelled and joined the Pakistan-supported tribal invasion. According to Sheikh Abdullah, the first post-independence Chief Minister of Kashmir, he was shocked when he came across secret circulars banning Muslim recruitment: As a result of Kashmir's accession to India, I had hoped that previous restriction on the recruitment of Kashmiri Muslims would be lifted and they will be given adequate representation in the army. I was taken aback when a secret circular came to my attention that directed recruitment officers not to enlist Muslim in the army. Word about this circular spread among the young men who took out a procession to Mujahid Manzil [the Sheikh's headquarters]. When the Defense Minister Gopalaswami Ayyangar came to Jammu, I took up the matter with him. He vehemently denied any such circular could have been issued in the first place. I asked Gen. KM Cariappa why Kargil Muslims were not recruited, to which he replied that their loyality to India was suspect! 25 Half a century later, there seems to be no change in the attitude of at least one senior army officer - Maj Gen. VN Budhwar, "who wanted Muslim villagers evicted from that Turtok area along the Line of Control" [in Kargil] during the fighting with Pakistan in the summer of 1999 despite the fact that many Kashmir Muslims denied fighting for India, including Haneefuddin. 26 Even more shockingly, "a handout issued by the Army through Defense wing of the Press Information Bureau in Jammu on 1 April, 2001, reads "No vacancy for Muslims and tradesmen." Despite protest in the Kashmir Legislative Assembly and from the Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, the Army did not deny its statement 27. According to Lt. Gen. ML Chibber, the Adjutant General in 1980-82, some Muslims may themselves be responsible for the absence of their co-religionists in the army. During his tenure in the Jammu & Kashmir Light Infantry, he found it too difficult to recruit Muslim who would rather fight "for Allah and not for the country"28, meaning: Muslim are interested in fighting for their own religion or their religion's supremacy, but not for their country, because it does not have Muslim majority. In contrast to the Muslims, the Sikhs have continued to be heavily represented in the army. The Contrasting Case of Sikhs Sikhs have been described as one of the most numerous and successful of the Indian army's recruited communities. In contrast to the Muslims, the Sikhs have always been over-represented in the armed forces, starting with as much as 8 percent 29 at independence to as high as 10-13 percent in the 1980s, whereas the total Sikh population (according to 1991 census) in the country is about 2.45 percent.30 The Two homogeneous Sikh regiments - the Sikh Light Infantry and Sikh Regiment - together contain approximately twenty highly trainee battalions that account for a major element of the strike force in the main army divisions. Sikhs constitute as high as 20 percent of the army officer corps. 31 given such disproportionate presence in the army, it is not surprising that Sikhs would be in the forefront of opposition to a policy that would make the military mirror the Indian national population. According to Durga Das, a journalist close to Sardar Patel, the Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Constituent assembly's Minority Rights Committee as early as January 1948, the Akali Dal, led by Master Tara Singh, demanded of Patel "separate representation for the Sikhs in the central services on the basis of their population. Sardar readily agreed, but meaningfully added that the population formula would also apply to the army. Since the Sikhs constituted a large proportion in the army, Tara Singh recognized the implication and drooped the request.32 From time to time, some Sikhs have alleged that their share in the army has been falling. The Anandpur Sahib resolution of 1973 went to the extent of alleging an outright " reduction in the recruitment quota [sic] of Sikhs in the armed forces from 20 percent." 33 Lt. Gen. S.K. Sinha, a deputy adjutant general, argued, "after the Green Revolution in Punjab and the availability of better employment opportunities outside the army, there were occasions when the Sikh quota [sic] of recruitment could not be filled." 34 On the contrary, Maj.-Gen. Jaswant Singh Bhullar, a Sikh officer, claimed that: "Sikhs now feel that while the criteria for all other jobs is merit alone, this [military] is the only profession where quotas based on population have been fixed….Among the popular myths is one that Sikhs, being well off, do not come forward to join the armed forces. This is not true as, in rural Punjab, fully 45 percent of the families live below the poverty line. But, as most of the recruiting officers in Punjab are non-Sikhs, they continue painting the false picture that Sikh recruits are not available. The fact is that almost all senior [Sikh?] officers keep getting requests from villagers to help them get enlisted in the forces, but they find themselves helpless, as the stock answer from the Recruiting Officers is that they have no "Sikh vacancies'".35 Sikh grievances inside and outside the army led to the Punjab imbroglio in the 1980s. Then on 5 June 1984, the Indian army stormed Sikhdom's holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, killing insurgent leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, along with 5000 of his followers, including a lieutenant general. The assault on the Golden Temple caused the unprecedented mutiny of 2,000 Sikh military recruits. Despite the mutiny and the subsequent assassination of Indra Gandhi by her Sikh body guards, Apurba Kundu's survey of about 100 senior retired military officers showed that the Indian army continues to recruit Sikh personnel." 36 Not only do they continue to be recruited as before, but even the "majority of the deserters were taken back into their units." According to Brig. Kuldip Singh Kang, the officer designated by the Army to process the mutineers' rehabilitation. 37 Indeed, Defense Minister (since May 1998) George Fernandes told Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal that his "state was already contributing 10-11 percent, about five times more than the prescribed 2.5 percent quota for Punjab." 38 As in the past, opposition to widening the recruitment base has come primarily from retired Sikh officers, although the recruitment base has come primarily from retired Sikh officers although couched not in ethno-religious terms but on grounds of combat efficiency, since they opine, "Being from the same stock is good for the morale in battle." 39 From the Sikh perspective, widening the enlistment opportunity would be at their expense, just as the affirmative action through reservation for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and the Other Backward Classes in the civil services is resented by the Hindu upper caste as infringing on their prospects. The Exceptional Cases of the Gurkhas In contrast to the Sikhs and other groups, the Gurkha recruitment is exceptionally secure due to Nepal's treaty relations with India. Nepal is renowned for it's fighting men, the fabled Gurkhas. The worldwide reputation of Nepalese soldiers as a superior fighting force can be attributed mainly to the qualities of the troops of Nepalese origin who have fought as contingents in the British army since the early nineteenth century and for the Indian Army since its formation in 1947. With their long record of martial prowess and battlefield heroics, the Gurkhas provide one of the more colourful chapters of modern military history. Under a tripartite agreement signed in November 1947 by Nepal, India and Britain, the Gurkha Brigade of the colonial army was divided between British and Indian forces. Four regiments remained in the British services and six passed to the new Indian army, which recruited an additional regiment for a total of seven. 40 in sheer numbers, one writer has estimated Gurkha personnel at independence as high as 4 percent. 41 Like the Sikhs, Gurkha are the only ethnic group that forms homogeneous military- "single class" regiments in the army. Although some Gurkhas originate in Darjeeling. West Bengal and the Terai region of Uttar Pradesh, India maintains recruitment centres located at Pokhara and Dharan in Nepal. 42 Within India there is no opposition to the recruitment of the Gurkhas, indeed the opposite seems to be the case. In the words of Lt. Gen. S.K. Sinha, "The Gurkhas from Nepal, who are not even nationals of this country, constitute nearly 5 percent of the strength of the Army [italics added]. Keeping in view their unique record of service to India and their continuing service to our Army which is in our national interest, the question of stopping their recruitment to our Army should never arise." 43 There is evidence that at least one Chief of Staff, Gen. A.S. Vaidya, tried to recruit them in greater numbers.44 Although the army units' composition is going through gradual change, evidently the Gurkhas are exempt from the measures to de-ethnicize the army for fear of repercussions on India-Nepal relations. 45 In Nepal, however, debate is emerging over recruitment of its citizens abroad. Supporters of recruitment argue for its continuation on grounds of employment that it brings to a poor, labour-surplus country such as Nepal, while opponents point to the odium attached to what they call "mercenaries" and the national embarrassment it cause in foreign relations. During the armed conflict in Kargil with Pakistan, the Gurkha units of the Indian army took a major part in the combat operation. 46 when the body bags of the dead Gurkhas reached Nepal, the casualties brought the question of Gurkah serving abroad in sharp focus. Despite the obvious advantage to the nation of a secure employment market for its surplus soldiers, at the close of the twentieth century, the Gurkha recruitment abroad "is being viewed as an affront to the national honour of Nepal." 47 Scheduled Castes and Regional Groups To many caste and ethnic groups, military service has been an avenue of social mobility. Enlisted men from disadvantaged groups hope to secure economic benefits, educational opportunities, leadership experience and enhanced social status in a caste-ridden society. For years the Indian government found itself attacked from opposite directions with regard to the caste and regional groups' composition of the army. Almost every debate in Lok Sabha over defense ministry budget presentations produces demands for and against the creation of new, homogeneous regiments. The Scheduled Castes (SC) (which explicitly excludes Muslims and Christians, but includes Sikhs) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) do not have reservation in the armed forces recruitment unlike the civil service - despite the desire for officer rank reservation by Jagjivan Ram, a defense minister and a scheduled caste member.48 However, they do have reserved quota in eighteen Sainik schools and five military schools and academies, permitting ease of induction to the officer corps. 49 The parliamentary committee on the welfare of the SCs and STs has frequently recommended that the principle of reservation should apply to recruitment in the armed forces. 50 The Bihar Regiment is reported to consist half of the Adivasis, a Scheduled Tribe. Additionally, the army authorities relaxed physical requirements (Chamars and Mahars, for instance) have achieved upward economic and social mobility via recruitment to the armed forces, 51 while other still aspire to a similar path, exemplified by the demand for a Bengal regiment. 52 Yadavas, a caste group, has been clamouring for inclusion in the army since before independence. 53 To Co-opt the Nagas, an insurgent northeastern tribal group, the government formed a new state of Nagaland in 1963 and created a Naga battalion. 54 Change and Continuity in Recruitment since Independence As noted above, just before independence the colonial administration agreed to throw open the army to Indians of all castes and communities. This was reinforced by Gen. K.M. Cariappa, who formally scrapped the concept of favouring the "martial races" in recruitment in 1949. In 1953, the government adopted a policy (further modified ten years later) that disallowed any one state from having a dominant position in military recruitment. During Indra Gandi's emergency rule (1975-77) a circular was issued undertaking to enlist armed forces personnel in proportion to their states' share of the national population. 55 Since 1984 the army has based its recruitment on a calculation of the " recruitable male population," (RMP), determined from the proportion of males between the ages of 17 and in the population of a particular state. 56 The State-wise Composition of the India Army The following state-wise figures for the 1968-1971 period show quotas and the recruitment percentage in all the class regiments. Table I
Table II
These tables give some idea of
the changes that have occurred over some years, yet it does
not tell us the religious, ethnic and caste composition of the
armed forces. Information about the religious and ethnic composition
of the army is one of the most well -guarded secrets. Figure
such as those available lack a comparative base or starting
point making them virtually useless. Does the government in
fact have such information? On the application forms published
and issued from time to time in the Indian press, there certainly
appears a column under "Religion," which implies that
statistics are in fact kept or at any rate calculable should
there be a need. 57 Yet neither the army nor the Ministry of
defense releases absolute figures of Single class composition
is obvious, and mixed class regiments' numbers can also be calculated
if one knows the strength and identity of the recruited group
in battalions. Identifying the composition of all class regiments
or special units - such as the Brigade of the Guards and Parachute
Regiment - is impossible unless the government discloses the
figures, a task for which it certainly is capable. In the mid-1980s,
Lt. Gen. S.K. Sinha calculated the army composition to be 70
percent mixed, with the rest either fixed or single class. 58
India's three services (army, air force and navy) have always
been long-service, all-volunteer forces, and general conscription
has never proved necessary. The normal securities of regular
services life in contrast to the low average per capita income
of most civilians have helped make military career attractive
for both the jawans and the officers, at least until the economic
liberalization of the early 1990s. The nation's ever-increasing
reserves of military manpower (women in the forces are still
a only a few hundred) have always far exceeded the maximum called
for by force authorizations or permitted by budgets. At the
close of the twentieth century, India still has a relatively
small army compared with its population, in world terms. The
ratio is 1.4 per 1000 people. 59 The total enlisted in the army
is estimated to be about 1,100,000. 60 Far from constituting
a drain on the civilian labour force, service in the military
has provided critical employment opportunities in a nation in
which unemployment remains a perennially significant problem.
Of the million plus army, a majority are the jawans, recruited
by quota in each state. Some states have done well is Bihar,
where young men appear eager to enlist. This was tragically
demonstrated in Darbhanga and Chapra districts in July 1999,
where twenty youths were killed by police firing on a stampede
during an army recruitment drive. 61 By comparison, in Andhra
Pradesh, there appears to be less enthusiasm to join the armed
forces. During the same period of rush to recruitment in Bihar,
the Deccan Chronicle, a Hyderabad newspaper reported that for
" the last several years the Branch Recruitment Office
of the army in Secunderabad is finding it quite a task to recruit,
as enthusiasm among the youth to commit themselves to fighting
for the country is low. 62 Earlier, the small percentage of
Andhra Pradesh recruits was attributed by the then Chief Minister
N.T. Rama Rao to his state's largely Telugu-speaking population's
lack of proficiency in Hindi, which made it difficult for some
to pass the military exams given in that language. Rama Rao
"appealed to the defense authorities to permit candidates
to write recruitment tests in their mother tongue, Telugu. Inaugurating
a civil-military liaison conference in Secunderabad… the
Chief Minister said it was essential to encourage recruitment
of jawans from all parts of the country to maintain the national
outlook of the armed forces. Candidates recruited on the basis
of test in Telugu could acquire proficiency in Hindi later."
63 Several recent events point to emerging problems,
however. First, the refusal of the army authorities to permit
Friday prayers (which is an Islamic religious obligation and
must be performed in congregation) has given rise to complaints
similar to the refusal to allow Muslim soldiers to grow beards,
in contrast with the Sikh, who are permitted to keep them. 78
Second, the tendency of some top military officers to draw values
to be inculcated (even when universal in import) only from one
tradition (in this case from Hinduism) can cause resentment.
For instance, Gen. B.C. Joshi, the Chief of Army Staff exhorted
his troops "to follow the path of Dharma" and moral
obligations "enshrined in the two Vedas- Rigveda and Artharveda."
79 Third, invitation to politicians such as Bal Thackerey and
Tarun Vijay (of Shiv Sena and RSS respectively) to military
events has caused dismay among Indians committed to inter-group
harmony. Fourth, by allowing the anti-Muslim, anti-Christian
Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) to distribute denominational gifts
(such as the rakhis, Hindu sacred wrist-bands given by women
tomen as a token of sisterly love) to the jawans - regardless
of religious affiliation - the army has permitted its premises
to be used for sectarian purpose. 80 The danger of introducing
known anti-minority politicians into the armed forces premises
seems to have either been lost on the authorities or may demonstrate
that some of them are sympathetic to organizations such as the
VHP. The ability to develop an army culture through common celebration
of religious and cultural festival, and respect for diverse
beliefs certainly serves as ethnic cross-pressure, preventing
stereotyping and prejudice among the troops. This necessarily
implies recruitment of all ethnic and religious groups in India,
as absence of particular groups from its rank and file may lead
to biases based merely on ignorance. The army's example is worthy
of civilian emulation. If different ethnic and religious groups
in India and elsewhere can be integrated in schools, trade unions,
sports, NGOs, and the like, the likelihood of negative socialization
through prejudice may decrease. 1. I would like to thank the three anonymous
readers of Pacific Affairs, as well as retired officers Lt.
Gen. M.L. Chibber, Lt Gen. V.R. Raghavan , Maj-Gen. Indrajit
Rikhye, Maj. Maroof Raza; Professors M.E Ahrari, Tahir Amin,
Mohammed Ayoob, De witt Ellinwood, Sumit Ganguly, Rajesh Kadian,
Apurba Kundu, Stphen Rosen, and Theodore P. Wright, Jrfor their
comments on an earlier draft of the paper. They are not responsible
for its contents or interpretation. send your comments to us : defenceindia.com |
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