The prospects of Hindu officers rising higher up in the hierarchy seem to be limited. It is evident from the fact that after seven decades of existence, the country’s highest-ranking Hindu officer is still a Major. Moreover, the toxic blend of martial race and Islamic garb will continue to keep Hindus on the fringe

Faith, as German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer defines, is the enquiry of unknown, which doesn’t pay much attention to knowledge. The toxic face of majoritarianism has been the motherboard of religious revisionism: An uncomfortable truth both in the past and the present. Notions like “Promised Land” among Jews, “Ram Rajya” in Hinduism or “caliphate in Islam” continue to intrigue or captivate masses and are used for political propaganda. History is replete with examples where catalogues of such horrendous ideas exploit religion by portraying Gods as real estate agents. The partition of British India in 1947 is often seen in a similar vein - a product of the collective ego of elites who exploited religion for power and political gains.

India’s tryst with destiny under Jawaharlal Nehru found a secular liberal State. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan, on the other hand, posited the army as custodian. One wonders why the status of the army followed a different script in both countries despite mutual hatred, paranoia, fear, and antagonism on both sides. The answer perhaps lies in events that occurred at the time of partition. Pakistan suffered early setbacks: The passing of Jinnah and a weak Muslim League without much political legitimacy. For India, Nehruvian consensus shaped a different history. In 1946, as a member of the pre-Independence government, he called for a radical change in the army which they inherited from the British raj. Nehru’s idea of a functional democracy attributed limited role and space to the military and thus what India got was an accountable and diverse army. For Pakistan, it was an “identity incongruous”. Although Jinnah envisioned a country with equal rights for non-Muslims, the reality has been quite the contrary. As Babar Ayaz puts it, Pakistan was “caught in a whirlpool of trust deficits”.

Religion gave the country a common cause and identity, and a perceived threat to Islam and existential threat from India gave the army the grandeur, power and control it desired. The Pakistan Army functioned without any accountability, as rightly pointed out by historian Ayesha Jalal, and posited itself as the protector of Islam and guardian of the national borders. However, that wasn’t enough for the army to establish political clout internally. Islamic garb conveniently veiled the baggage of colonialism for the Army to carry out its own design and shape its narrative. Thus, the uncharted manifesto of the Pakistan Army was to follow the colonial practices: ethnic imbalance and the myth of the martial race (Punjabis, Pashtuns over the rest).

The marital race theory, with its origins in British Raj, was a blessing in disguise for the Pakistan Army and an unfortunate casualty of this practice were the Hindus of independent Pakistan. The sorry state of Hindus in Pakistan is a well-established fact, but rather lesser-discussed aspect has been their lack of representation in the military.

To attribute exclusion of Hindus squarely to religion is perhaps an oversimplified hypothesis. Even though the religious factor cannot be discounted, ethnic identity provides an alternative explanation. The exclusion of the Hindu community from the military at large may be seen as a subset of Pakistan’s attitude towards Mohajirs - an ethnic group which has been sidelined in Pakistan’s social fabric despite their Islamic affiliation. When General Ayub Khan took up the reins of Pakistan in 1958, tension between Mohajirs on one hand and Sindhis, Punjabis and Pashtuns on the other started surfacing. It was during this period that a sense of alienation started enveloping the community.

The ethnic cleavages in conjunction with the myth of the martial race sustained themselves with the passing of time and the melting pot of colonialism, faceless bureaucracy and military’s politico-economic clout reduced the Pakistan Army to a clique of Punjabis and Pashtuns. This was rubbed off on the face of Pakistan.

Therefore, the absence of Hindus in the Pakistan Army till 2001 was not just a matter of faith or religion. The myth of the martial race, which kept Punjabis and Pashtuns at the helm of military and political affairs, couldn’t save the marriage between the ideology and religion as an idea of Pakistan, and the 1971 Bangladesh war came as a testament to this.

As an essential evil for the state’s sustenance, some space had to be created for the ethnic minorities, including Balochis, Sindhis, and religious minorities such as Hindus.

Hindu’s tryst with Pak Army

Interestingly, in 2001, when Pervez Musharraf became the President, the chicken started coming home to roost. Musharraf, a Mohajir, needed to build a support base for his unelected party and thus co-opted the Mohajir Quami Movement (MQM). This political alliance gave a sense of security to the alienated Mohajir community, who started altering the political situation in Sindh to their advantage. It was against this backdrop that Hindus found a place in the military for the first time in the history of Pakistan.

The data on ethnic and religious segregation in Pakistan military forces has been selective and scant. However certain cases are deliberately highlighted in the local and global media to portray a tolerant image. In 2006, Danish, a resident of Sindh became the first Hindu cadet in the army. His induction was preceded by Nankana Sahib’s Harcharan Singh, who became country’s first Sikh to have joined the forces in 2005.

In 2008, the Pakistan Army had two Hindu officers in its Medical corps: Capt Danish and Capt Aneel Kumar. In 2019, Dr Kelash Garvada became the first-ever Hindu Major in the Pakistan Army.

Evidently the prospects of Hindu officers rising higher up in the hierarchy seem to be limited evident from the fact that after seven decades of existence, the country’s highest-ranking Hindu officer is still a Major. Moreover, since Major Kelash is being celebrated as the country’s first Hindu officer to have braced the rank of Major, it is safe to assume that both Capt Danesh and Aneel Kumar did not rise further up the ranks. It is also worth noting that the inclusion of Hindus in officer cadre was always limited to the Medical corps.

Besides officers, the Pakistan Army also has Hindu soldiers. In 2017, Lance Naik Chand Rabari, a Sindh-based Hindu, died on active duty while serving on Mangla front near Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and got ample media attention in Pakistan.

Evidently, in a bid to feign a tolerant identity, the country continues to play trump cards such as sporadic and selective inclusion of Hindus in its military forces. Even though, after 2001, the smokescreen of Hindu inclusion in military was celebrated as a watershed moment, the community still continues to live on the periphery. Equal citizenship, human rights, religious freedom, these are sporadic political gimmicks used by the Pakistan Army to strengthen their domestic hold while portraying a positive image to the world. Nevertheless, the toxic blend of martial race and Islamic garb will continue to keep Hindus on the fringe.

(Prem Anand Mishra is a doctoral candidate at the School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi. Divya Malhotra is a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute, New Delhi)