Author:
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: February 14, 2006
URL: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=62813
The government's decision to collect information
on the number of Muslims in the Army and its overruling the Army's protest
on such thinking undermines a basic ethos of the Indian Army.
To have minorities, however defined, suitably
represented in institutions of national importance is a desire shared by many,
including this paper. Yet, how to do so elicits no unanimity.
Having said which, we trust this effort to
make the Army, a staunchly secular institution with a long and proud tradition,
think along these lines will be given up. And not because we think calling
for such data is "a seditious act," to quote the NDA convenor. The
mere calling of data on an issue can hardly be an anti-national act in a democracy.
Our reasons for requesting the government
to desist from entering this area goes deeper and for the same reason why
the national census stopped asking Indians to identify their caste some decades
ago. The very exercise of making people think in this manner has consequences
which aren't happy. Military personnel have never been encouraged to think
in this manner and the nation has believed the results of such an approach
have been salutary. Everyone would agree the personnel in institutions such
as the defence services, the police, the judiciary and so on should be doing
their duty irrespective of individual faith-their own or that of the citizens
they deal with. One approach to this end believes this won't happen if these
institutions do not mirror the composition of the society they serve. Examples
are the demands for more Asians in the British police or women in our legislatures.
The corollary is to compel quotas in this regard if selection procedures don't
satisfy this count.
The government denies either motivation on
the Army: it says it is just asking for data. Yet, we know the inevitable
next step from Indian experience: it is not unlike opening a Pandora's Box.
The military has, over scores of decades, fashioned an ethos where its soldiers'
personal faiths and backgrounds are respected, but subsumed in a larger identity.
Indians take pride in the result. Leave well alone.
