The Indian Army between myth and Sociology

One of the dangers of attacking the army as a myth is that iconicity and sociology, the epic quality of battle narratives and the everyday basis of life, separate out into distant silos. At a time, when all institutions are under attack, to keep army and Supreme Court as above question seems artificial. The army no doubt is an important symbol for India. The bravery of our troops is legendary but to project the army as a superior form of life undermines its own sense of the future. The army is a symbol of nationalist unity but to reduce it to a code of uniformity would be disastrous.

The Indian army is a blend of traditions, a hybrid of identities. It is a symbol of the power of the nation state but the army is built on a colonial tradition which is problematic. Firstly, the Indian army was the Imperial reserve for an empire under threat. Translated simply, it means that we were cannon fodder for the empire. The empire bought with its stereotypes, the whole idea of racism, the sense of the martial races, a fiction threatens the sense of democracy.

The military historian Gajendra Singh in his study of the army in World War I shows that racial stereotypes underlined the creation and construction of the colonial army, stereotypes we carry to this day of the fighting Sikh and Pathan along with the cowardly Bengali soldier. These colonial negatives, as Singh called them, were a creation of British fantasies reworked to create the idea of martial races. The irony is that we see these colonial fictions as self-fulfilling prophesies, real types even a science that haunt our military narratives. Interestingly the idea of shell shock, itself arose within the context of the Indian army. It was initially racist. It was argued that sepoys were prone to emotional breakdown which white British officers could not succumb to.

The army’s colonial content also made it mercenary force. In India, we build the legend of the Sepoy Mutiny but forget that Sikh soldiers were used to suppress the Boxer uprising, the Chinese equivalent of 1857. Pankaj Misra in his book From the Ruins of Empire points out that the image of the Sikh soldier in the Chinese imagination is that of a mercenary. Colonial troops were used regularly to suppress rebellions elsewhere.

One cannot live down these traditions or even dream away the folklore of British Colonialism that haunts the army. But it raises crucial issues when an army is used to suppress internal conflict. The whole struggle over the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) is about the brutality of the Indian army against its own people. I remember the late Giri Deshingkar, a China Scholar and defence expert, observing quietly that there was a decade where almost all the awards for gallantry the military got was for action against our own people.

The army is a modernising force evolving out of the cultural contradictions of the time. By being blind to its sociology, we create a black box which blinds us to these facts. The future too has become problematic. As AS Paneer Selvam has pointed out, the metaphors of militarism often over-run the language of peace. The war against hunger does not remove hunger but securitises our mind. Instead of hunger, we talk of food security. Civilian experts then wage game theoretic battles which create huge military causalities. Human rights activists have warmed against the amoeboid nature of security which engulfs other forms of life. Securitisation thus renders sustainability vulnerable and seeks to panopticise through huge frameworks of surveillance which destroys the democratic way of life.

Securitisation creates a militarisation of the Indian mind which when accompanied by majoritarianism creates the basis of the authoritarian ethic. It is not the army but civilians seeking authoritarianism control which is responsible for it. There are more dissenting imaginations and peaceniks in the army than we currently recognise.

Myths are important to sustain unity and the epic courage of the army needs its storytellers and genealogists. But myth has to have a sense of reality especially the reality of Kashmir and Manipur. More, we have to understand the changing social forces behind army life. The army was once a great educational force but today it needs a technological reskilling to adapt to the new forms of warfare.

Second our soldiers retire early and adapting to civilian life is traumatic. We need more attention to this than jingoistic slogans about the army. The sadness is that instead of using myths to understand courage and sacrifice, we use it to suppress dissent and critique. The army needs new mechanisms to help it adapt to the post army life. Reducing the issue to a question of pay checks will not do. Jingoism, securitarianism and surveillance weaken the army in the long run both as a military and as a bulwark of democracy. The recent attempts to reify the army as a subject of loyalty creates a system of vigilantism. Critics then sound like nitpickers when actually they point to the diversities contained within the army.

Shiv Visvanathan is Professor, Jindal Global Law School, O.P Jindal Global University and Director, Centre for the Study of Knowledge Systems. He tweets at @ShivVisvanathan