Politicising The Army

The manner in which the Chief of Army Staff Gen V.P. Malik sent a message to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad that he was 'not amused' by their sudden solicitude for the spiritual welfare of the soldiers who had fought in the Kargil war is profoundly reassuring to those who value the relaxed pluralism on which India's nationhood is built. When the leaders of the VHP descended upon South Block last week to present soldiers with 20,000 rakhis, Gen Malik was unavailable. Then the army informed them that for logistical reasons they could not distribute 20,000 rakhis, but would accept one as a symbolic gift. All that the leaders got out of their visit was a few photographs with a very reluctant senior officer from the Military Intelligence branch.

This was not the first effort by the saffron brigade to give the Kargil victory a "Hindu" flavour. During the early phase of the war, the government asked the service chiefs to brief the BJP's cadres on developments in Kargil. This was a disturbing departure from past practice. When the war was over, their leaders descended upon Kargil and got a priest to bless the jawans. "How," one might ask, "can I take objection to such a touchingly simple ritual?" The answer is that I do not. If a jawan goes to a temple and gets anointed by a priest, that is his decision, his faith, and therefore deserves the highest respect. But the VHP's gesture in Kargil was blatantly political, sectarian and divisive. There were Muslims and Christians, not to mention Sikhs, who fought for India and gave their lives in its defence. The ceremony at Kargil excluded them in fact if not in intent.

There was nothing innocent about these attempts. Between '90 and '92, the government had found it almost impossible to police the Babri Masjid effectively because no sooner would they move a detachment of the CRPF into the mosque compound to guard it than a bunch of sadhus would appear to sprinkle Ganges water on them and recite prayers of purification. The policemen would touch their feet, receive their blessing and become useless as guards for the mosque thereafter. In desperation, New Delhi was forced to change the personnel guarding the mosque every week.

There have been other attempts by zealots in the Sangh parivar to play the Hindu card in these elections. But it is a tribute to the powerful secularising forces constantly at work in the Indian polity that the prime minister and the senior leaders of the BJP have disowned all of them. Not long ago, Atal Behari Vajpayee found himself giving an election speech in Uttar Pradesh in front of a backdrop depicting the three service chiefs. He's reported to have been furious. More recently, BJP party secretary K.N. Govindacharya was reported to have asserted that a temple at Ayodhya on the site of the Babri Masjid was very much part of the BJP's agenda. On that occasion, too, Vajpayee squashed the idea very firmly, reminding his own party cadres that the BJP was part of a National Democratic Alliance that had a common manifesto and contained parties that would have no truck with political Hindutva. He has now gone so far as to say that the temple issue is behind the party and that the VHP would have to go it alone.

The latest attempt by the VHP to squeeze some political mileage out of the Kargil war could not have come at a worse time, for in recent years, the taboo in the armed forces against communal actions and aspersions has been broken more than once. On July 2, '98, the Akali leader Gurcharan Singh Tohra tabled a question in the Rajya Sabha, wanting to know whether there was an official policy to exclude Sikhs from the post of Military Secretary, and asking the government, if there was no such policy, to supply him with the names of all Sikhs who had held this position since '65. The Military Secretary handles the purchase of all weapons, ordnance and other materials for the entire army!

Not entirely by coincidence, in a petition lodged in the Calcutta High Court the same month, the present Deputy Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Harinder Singh, alleged that he was being passed over for promotion to the grade of Principal Staff Officer because he was a Sikh and the Chief of Naval Staff (CNS) Admiral Bhagwat harboured prejudices against the Sikh community. Worst of all, instead of reprimanding him for making a totally uncalled for slur on his own chief and breaking the taboo against communal aspersions, the defence minister, George Fernandes, and the recent unlamented defence secretary, Arun Kumar, forced Harinder Singh's promotion through the appointments committee of the cabinet in the teeth of the CNS'' objections and forced a showdown with the latter that ended with his unprecedented dismissal from service.

Vajpayee and Malik have put the brakes on this trend in the nick of time. The armed forces are the most important bastion of India's pluralism. Thus, attempts to communalise them strike at the very foundations of the Indian nation. There is a widespread belief that a non-communal army was one of the better legacies of the British. That is far from the truth. Mughal armies were every bit as plural in their makeup and in their command structure. From the days of Humayun, Mughal armies were mixed ones that contained Rajputs, Afghans and Turks. Indeed, the bulk of the forces in the later years were Rajput and the military command was almost always in the hands of a Rajput general. Nor were the Maratha or Mysore armies any different. It was only when Aurangzeb lost the support of the Rajputs, partly because of his excessive reliance on the Sunni, Afghan faction in court, and partly because the Rajputs were getting too uppity anyway, that the Mughal Empire began to disintegrate.