(Economic and Political Weekly
February 25, 2008)
Collating Information, or 'Communalising' the Army?
The army collects information from all recruits about their religion. It also used to invoke religious symbols to train recruits for defending the republic. Then why the storm about a committee making a legitimate request for information as it goes about the task of ascertaining the share of Muslims in public and private employment?
by Gautam Navlakha
The storm over the request by the justice Rajendar Sachar committee to the army to provide data on the number of Muslims in the army is misplaced, if not itself problematic. All that the Sachar Committee has done is to request data from more than 500 departments of the government to provide data (not undertake a survey, as falsely claimed) under clause 5(a) of its terms of reference. The clause obliges the committee to find out, “What is the Muslims’ relative share in public and private sector employment?”
It is worth noting that, all applicants to the army are asked to fill a form that asks for a person’s religion. And the army, reportedly, maintains two registers, one for the officer and the other for ranks, where their religion is marked (The Hindu, February 15, 2006). If, by providing this data, the committee is helped in its analysis, as part of an exercise to find out why Indian Muslim participation is low in various walks of life, how does this amount to communalising the armed forces? In fact there are a couple of reasons why there is a need for wider public debate.
In the first place, it is a fact that on the eve of independence Muslims comprised 32 per cent of the army personnel (Indian Express, February 15, 2006). In 2004, there were 29,093 Muslims in the 1.13 million strong army (Indian Express, February 12, 2006). This means that Indian Muslims now make up about 2.7 per cent of the army. The British raj, as part of its divide and rule policy, had reportedly encouraged recruitment from among the minorities. A sizeable section of the recruits were from present-day Punjab in Pakistan. Partition and transfer of power led to the government of India reducing recruitment along caste, linguistic and religious lines. However, an assessment made consequent to the “mutiny” by Sikh soldiers in June 1984 reportedly revealed that 70 per cent of the army regiments were “mixed and rest were either fixed or single class” (Indian Express, February 17, 2006). Therefore, there is nothing wrong in finding out how the army ensures that its recruitment provides representation for everyone. Where are recruitment rallies held? Are these advertised in the vernacular press including Urdu print media, etc? Is there room for improvement?
Secondly, what changes in training, if any, were brought about consequent to the so-called mutiny by the soldiers of the Sikh Regiment who left their lines on hearing of the damage caused to Amritsar’s Golden Temple in June 1984? This is germane to the present controversy. Lt General Harbaksh Singh, one of the most decorated soldiers and a hero of 1965 war with Pakistan, said in a public statement which now deserves to be recalled:
As the senior-most officer of the Sikh Regiment and having been Colonel of the Regiment for the longest period of twenty years, 1951-71, I consider it my moral duty to apprise the general public that the Sikh soldier (like his comrades of other religious denominations in the Indian army) is nurtured of old on his religious tenets and traditions, which have been fully approved and supported by the army and the government of independent India for the past 37 years.
Lt General Harbaksh Singh then proceeded to explain how religion was used to produce a “loyal” soldier from the time he is recruited to the time of his induction in the army as a trained soldier. There is an oath of allegiance where he touches the Guru Granth Sahib. The vow is the same as the one Guru Gobind Singh took “at the time of taking up the sword of righteousness against Moghul oppression”. And the war cry is the same as the Khalsa of Guru Gobind Singh. So much so that “the Guru Granth Sahib accompanies the battalions of the (Sikh) Regiment into the operational areas” (EPW, ‘Using Religion’, September 8, 1984).
In other words, it is worth knowing whether and how the army introduced changes, subsequent to the 1984 mutiny, in its training policies in order to make the soldiers defenders of India’s secular democratic republic and reduce/cease the invocation of religious symbols during their training and later. This is of vital importance because nearly one-third of the Indian army, according to the army chief, is deployed in “disturbed areas” fighting insurgencies, so to say, fighting our own people. How does the army ensure that religious and other divisive issues don’t influence the conduct of its personnel in these theatres of internal wars?
If it is not divisive to continue to recruit people in 30 per cent of the regiments according to their religion, caste or ethnic origins and/or if it is all right to employ religious fervour to ensure devotion and loyalty of the soldiers, then how does it become communal to find out why a section of Indians, namely, the Muslims, find such a low representation in the army? Will not an army that resembles the diversity of India in its recruitment be a better defender of our secular democratic republic? To demand uncritical reverence or to shy away from sharing information, which the army possesses, in this day and age is most unfortunate.