A Sangh takeover of our armed forces

The Indian armed forces have traditionally been insulated from politics. Soon after India became independent, there was a demand that the Indian National Army (INA) — founded by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose — be merged with the Indian Army. This was disallowed, and the INA was disbanded to keep the Army apolitical. During communal riots, it is the Army, trusted as a neutral force, that is brought in to restore peace. These traditions are no longer inviolable.

While India does not have a quasi-religious police force like Saudi Arabia’s Mutaween, the vigilantes of the RSS-Hindutva brigade act as extra-constitutional groups who take the law into their own hands, lynching, punishing, threatening and extorting large sums of money from Muslims.

In fact, India recently took a step towards creating a Mutaween-like force when policemen posted at the Kashi Vishwanath temple were made to wear saffron dhoti-kurtas, rudrakasha beads and tripund tilaks, and told to greet pilgrims with the chant 'Har Har Mahadev'.

The saffronisation of India has taken a new and dangerous turn with Sainik Schools being handed over to Sangh affiliates on a public-private partnership model. The move threatens to bring Hindutva ideologies into military educational institutions. Since Sainik Schools help prepare a large number of students to join the armed forces, the ultimate outcome could well be the transformation of our secular armed forces into another arm of the Hindutva brigade.

Earlier, the autonomous Sainik Schools Society (SSS) functioned under the guidelines of the ministry of defence. The SSS ran 33 Sainik Schools for about 16,000 students and sent 25-30 per cent of them to various training academies of the Indian armed forces. Defence minister Rajnath Singh is on record stating that Sainik Schools have contributed more than 7,000 officers to the armed forces.

In 2021, the Union government unilaterally decided to open the doors to private players. Plans to set up 100 new Sainik Schools across India with a budgetary allocation of Rs 100 crore were announced. All that was required to kickstart a new Sainik School was ‘land, physical and IT infrastructure, financial resources and staff’.

Selected schools would receive financial support of up to Rs 1.2 crore from the government and would be run ‘as an exclusive vertical (model) which would be distinct and different from existing Sainik Schools of MoD’.

This simplified criteria, confirmed by the Reporters’ Collective on the basis of RTI replies and government press releases, revealed that ‘of the 40 Sainik School agreements so far, at least 62 per cent were awarded to schools linked to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its allied organisations, politicians of the BJP, its political allies and friends, Hindutva organisations, individuals, and other Hindu religious organisations’ (3 April 2024). By May 2025, another 46 schools received approval.

Many of these allottees are extremely questionable. Sadhvi Ritambhara, founder of the Durga Vahini, the militant women’s wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, is one. Her Vrindavan school is called the Samvid Gurukulam Girls Sainik School.

Ritambhara played a key role in whipping up anti-Muslim sentiment in the run up to the demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992. The Liberhan Commission, which investigated the demolition, named her among the 68 individuals responsible for bringing the country to the “brink of communal discord”. She was booked by the police for provocative speeches in 1991 and was a key accused in the CBI chargesheet for criminal conspiracy.

Bhonsala Military School (BMS), Nagpur, established in 1937 by Hindu right-wing ideologue B.S. Moonje and run by the Central Hindu Military Education Society, was another.

During the probes into the 2006 Nanded bomb blast and the 2008 Malegaon blasts, the Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad and other agencies revealed that individuals involved in the conspiracy received training in arms and explosives at BMS. In 2025, seventeen years after the Malegaon blast, all seven accused were acquitted by a special NIA court in Mumbai.

The Adani World School in Nellore, Andhra Pradesh — located near the Krishnapatnam deep-water port operated by the Adani Group — has also won a Sainik School affiliation. The Gautam Adani Group stands indicted by the US government for orchestrating a multi-billion-dollar bribery and fraud scheme to secure solar power contracts. While the group has denied the charges, several Army officers are of the opinion that an allotment should have come only after the group was absolved.

Most of the new Sainik Schools have been handed over to BJP leaders or are owned by trusts that they head. These schools are dotted across the length and breadth of the country. For example, the Tawang Sainik School in Arunachal Pradesh is owned by the state's chief minister Pema Khandu. Khandu’s brother Tsering Tashi, a BJP MLA, is the managing director.

In Mehsana, Gujarat, Motibhai Chaudhary Sagar Sainik School is affiliated with Dudhsagar Dairy, which is chaired by Ashok Kumar Bhavsangbhai Chaudhari, a former BJP general-secretary for Mehsana.

Similarly, the Banas Sainik School in Banaskantha is managed by the Galbabhai Nanjibhai Patel Charitable Trust under Banas Dairy, and is headed by Shankar Chaudhary, BJP MLA from Tharad and speaker of the Gujarat Assembly. This pattern is repeated in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Since 1977, the RSS has run its own network of schools under the Vidya Bharati banner. At present it runs 12,065 formal schools, with 3,158,658 students, making it one of the largest networks of private schools in India. On its website, Vidya Bharati announces its mission to ‘build a younger generation which is committed to Hindutva and infused with patriotic fervour’.

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“What is happening is completely unconstitutional,” says a retired major-general under condition of anonymity. “Not only will these new Sainik Schools alter the apolitical character of the Army, Indian democracy is also at risk. The government should have focused on strengthening the existing Rashtriya Indian Military College and Schools. By affiliating them to national institutions, particularly defence, the government is bringing unspeakable danger to the country. It’s bound to infect the defence forces with a majoritarian, communal outlook.”

Former deputy Army chief Lt Gen. Zameeruddin Shah believes that the present government “wants to fill the Army up with people who are indoctrinated. This is not to say that earlier we were irreligious. It was just that certain boundaries were not crossed. The government seems to forget that by choosing this path, they are putting a noose around our necks. What will happen to soldiers from other communities who also want to serve their country?” asks Shah.

Equally critical of the Agnipath scheme, Shah said, “In my experience, the best soldiers are in the 25-35 age group. But when they join, Agniveer recruits are typically 18; by the time they are 22, they are out of the Army.”

Lt Gen Prakash Menon (retd), director of the Takshashila Institution’s Strategic Studies Programme, has warned against the nexus developing between the government and private parties to push an ideologically slanted version of education, far removed from the values enshrined in the Constitution.