21 August 2015

The Yogi as a Pugilist




Vol - L No. 33, August 15, 2015 | 

The way in which the secular practice of yoga is being saffronised by a government that has made it compulsory for the armed and paramilitary forces looks like yet another attempt to supplement colonial model-based recruitment on the basis of caste and region, by psychologically indoctrinating jawans in the values and norms of Hindutva.

Sumanta Banerjee (suman5ban@yahoo.com) is a writer and journalist currently based in Dehra Dun.

During the recent International Yoga Day celebrations, the media highlighted the participation of the Indian armed forces in it. They described how soldiers from the snow-capped Siachen in the north to sailors on Indian warships in the contentious South China Sea celebrated the occasion. On New Delhi’s Rajpath, General Dalbir Singh Suhag, Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha, and Admiral R K Dhowan presented themselves, heeding the call of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who led the mega event. The government has made yoga compulsory for soldiers of the seven paramilitary forces, including the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), and the Border Security Force (BSF), among others, through a 26 May 2015 circular (Singh 2015).

But behind this media-hyped gung-ho, all does not seem well in the barracks of our jawans. According to Ministry of Defence statistics, at least 1,383 Indian soldiers lost their lives between 2001 and 2011, not because of Pakistani bullets, but because of suicides and fratricides (known as “fragging”). In 2014 alone, at least 100 defence personnel died due to these causes. The official statistics indicate a shocking average of 125 soldiers every year either killing themselves, or being killed by their fellow soldiers. The Navy and Air Force are losing 23 men every year on an average because of these problems. The main reasons for the rise in such suicidal and homicidal acts among jawans are said to be uncomfortable living conditions, oppressive behaviour by their superior officers, and denial of leave to rejoin their families (Shah 2015).1 

It is in this context that we have to locate the sudden deification (and internationalisation) of yoga by Modi as a nostrum for all grievances and ailments. Trying to cope with the immediate discontent among jawans (including the paramilitary security forces), the Indian state is resorting to a variety of measures—ranging from the solace provided by religious preachers to the exercise of yogic practices. Yogic teachers train jawans in spiritual meditation to calm their nerves and teach them to be docile in the face of humiliation by senior officers. They also train them in asanas (supplementary to their military training), which are expected to keep them physically fit to fight both the state’s external enemies and internal dissidents. Yoga is thus being used to serve the twin goals of (i) conditioning a jawan’s psyche to submit to his superiors in the cantonments, and (ii) orienting his aggression in the battlefield in the direction ordered by his superiors—whether against Pakistani soldiers, or Indians in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, or Kashmir. 

Gita and Tennyson in the Army

There is a convergence between the present government’s attempts to discipline its armed forces on a religio-nationalist agenda, and the 19th century British Victorian regime’s efforts to submit its soldiers to the strict regimen of an imperialist agenda. The soldier’s duties were best expressed by its poet laureate Alfred Tennyson in his celebrated poem The Charge of the Light Brigade—“Theirs not to make reply/Theirs not to reason why/Theirs but to do and die.” In a similar vein, the Hindu yoga laureates of the present regime din into the jawans’ ears selective messages of the Gita, which describe Krishna as Yogeshwarah (the Lord of Yoga) who advises Arjuna as the Dhanurdharah (the soldier holding the bow) to be nimitta matram (a mere agent) in the greater divine plan where he is destined to carry out the role of destroying his kinsmen to win back his kingdom. Arjuna’s questions to “reason why” are met by Krishna’s stern reprimand to “do and die.” In a modern replica of the Krishna–Arjuna encounter, jawans are required to fit into the role of the dhanurdharah Arjuna, who are ordained to carry out the orders of their superiors, the yogeshwarahs who are now the charioteers of the armed forces.

Yoga as Martial Art

Yoga as a discipline has been generally recognised as a part of psychotherapeutic healthcare and as treatment for stress-related ailments. But its transformation into a Hindu martial art is a new phenomenon. We come across a revealing report about such transformation in 2008, which approvingly claims how yoga has been turned “from a peaceful pastime and mental solace” into “a mechanism to improve physical strength, flexibility and balance in its [Indian] soldiers to make it [sic] a stronger fighting force.” It then describes a three-month experiment carried out by the Indian Army on recruits for the Bengal Engineering Group, who did 50 minutes of yoga a day (combined with 40 minutes of traditional exercise). It was found that these yoga-trained new soldiers had “steadier hands, stronger grips...than peers who underwent a 90 minute military workout instead.” What was more important for the project analyst (a Shirley Telles, described as Director of Research at Patanjali Yogpeeth, Haridwar) who examined these soldiers was that such training “would be especially useful for activities such as shooting.” Incidentally (according to the report), the “military’s routine is based on the teachings of Baba Ramdev” (Wade 2014). One wonders what sort of teaching is being imparted to jawans by a quack-turned-Hindu god-man facing several allegations of fraud in the courts.

The present government’s stress on yogic training in the army has strong Hindu religious overtones—marked by rituals like surya pranam and obligatory chants from Hindu Sanskrit scriptures. Yet, physical exercises that are known as yogic practices have been followed for decades by many, crossing religious and territorial boundaries. Recent research reveals that these physical exercises were not the monopoly of Hindu yogis, but were fashioned and practised for ages by several non-Hindu sects such as the Buddhist Tantriks. Besides, ancient yogic postures have been modified to a large extent to suit the requirements of the present generation, both by modern yoga experts in India and abroad, cutting across religious lines (Singleton 2010). Yogic practices therefore cannot be monopolised by the Sangh Parivar as its exclusive preserve.

As an extension of its claim to that monopoly, the Parivar’s agents in the present government are attempting to transform yogic practices from a secular physical set of exercises to Hindu evangelical training. It is the institutionalised system of religious teaching in the Indian Army that is providing the Parivar with an avenue for introducing its Hindutva-dominated values and norms into it.

Religious Teaching in the Army 

Religious teaching has been a routine in our army from colonial days (when the British, to prevent a repetition of the 1857 rebellion, introduced it to pacify various religious communities from which the soldiers were recruited). In continuation of that tradition, the Indian Army even today recruits religious teachers for its soldiers, who are appointed as junior commissioned officers (JCOs). The following educational qualifications are necessary for the various teachers—Madhyama in Sanskrit for Hindu pundits; Vidyan in Punjabi for Sikh Granthis; Maulvi Alim in Arabic for Muslim maulvis; recognised priesthood by an appropriate ecclesiastical authority for Christian padres; and certification by head priests of monasteries for Buddhist Bodh monks, among others.2 The army authorities boast of their secular credentials by claiming that there are mandirs, masjids, gurudwaras, and so on in every cantonment to cater for the religious needs of their jawans.

True, but should religious messages be the only motivation for jawans? Besides, are the recruits (particularly atheists) given the option of refusing to join regiments that have a religious or casteist orientation? Instead of recognising the secular right of recruits, army authorities reinforce the identity of each segment of the armed forces on the basis of Hindu castes, or regions. There are at least 22 regiments classified under such categories (for example, Jat Regiment, Rajasthan Rifles, and so on). In response to a petition filed by I S Yadav in the Supreme Court on 10 December 2012 that described such classification as a “British legacy...not sanctioned by any law made by Parliament,” the Indian Army submitted an affidavit the next year, which is quite a revealing document. It belies the Indian state’s claim of national integration, and instead reiterates the old colonial divide-and-rule policy of deploying soldiers from one community against civilians of another. The army affidavit justified grouping people coming from a region in a particular regiment on the ground that “social, cultural and linguistic homogeneity has been observed to be a force multiplier as a battle winning factor.” It then added, “The commonality of language and culture only further augments the smooth execution of operation” (PTI 2013).3 I shall come in a moment to the ways in which the Indian Army carries out such “smooth execution of operation.”

Meanwhile, let us see how the army top brass—despite its claim that regiments are not defined by religion or caste—encourage battle cries that are rooted in faith in different deities (among Hindu soldiers in particular). Thus, the battle cry of the Garhwal Rifles is “Badri Vishal lal ki jai” (from Lord Badrinath); that of the Dogra Regiment is “Jawala Mata ki jai” (recalling the goddess Jawala, a popular form of Shakti in the Jammu and Kashmir area from where the soldiers of the regiment are mainly recruited); and the Sikh martial cry “Bole so Nihal, Sat Sri Akal.” The Indian Army has no national battle cry. The army appeals to the religious sentiments of different segments of its recruits (mainly Hindus and Sikhs) by invoking their religious militarist slogans (Guha 2005).

But such efforts at reviving religious roots to reinforce militarism among the armed forces quite often boomerang on the state itself. Exclusivist religious battle cries can divide the people even in situations when the nation is not facing a common external enemy, but internal dissidence. In the 1980s, it was a Sikh officer, Major General Shabeg Singh (recipient of the Ati Vishisht Seva Medal [AVSM] and Param Vishisht Seva Medal [PVSM]), whose disgruntlement with the military authorities led him to join Jarnail Singh Bhindranwala and invoke the same Sikh martial slogan to train Khalistani militants in the Golden Temple. He was killed during Operation Blue Star in 1984. That invasion of Harmandir Sahib and the killing of Sikh pilgrims fractured the much-proclaimed secular image of the Indian Army, with a mutiny-like situation among Sikh soldiers, ending with Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her own Sikh bodyguards, which, in turn, unleashed a genocide against Sikh people.

A stress on religious teaching of soldiers, particularly in perpetually volatile places in India, which are ridden with religious conflicts and caste animosities, may quite often see the behaviour of these soldiers aggravate divisions in society.

Experiences with Indian Jawans and Their Victims

Let me give two examples from my personal experience. In 1984, as a journalist member of a team of investigators, I visited a village to look into the plight of Sikh civilians who had become victims of the state’s anti-Sikh persecution following Operation Blue Star that was to lead to the indiscriminate killing of hundreds of innocent Sikh youth in false encounters in the name of countering terrorism. I here met a retired Sikh soldier who was once posted in Nagaland. But at that time, settled in his own village, he complained of harassment and persecution by the same security forces for which he once worked. It hurt his ego, since he enjoyed a certain status in the village as a fauji (a retired soldier) and expected to be treated as such. When we reminded him of allegations of similar persecution of Naga civilians by his own regiment in Nagaland, he paused for a moment, and then struck his head, and said, “Yes, the way we are being ill treated today…we misbehaved with the Nagas in the same way.”

Those parting words of his, as we left him, made me wonder. Could this Sikh soldier (brought up on the teachings of his religion, both in his family and the army) realise that self-flaunting jawans in Nagaland or any other area of conflict will be reduced to non-entities after retirement, especially if the ruling powers choose to discard their past minions? According to fatalistic religious precepts, should he passively accept his current predicament as retributive justice for his wrongs in Nagaland? Or, should he take on a proactive role, advising those being recruited by the army from his village that they should not perpetuate the misdeeds that he and his colleagues committed in Nagaland and other areas? Retired jawans and officers can play an important role in sensitising the present generation of army recruits to the issue of human rights.

My second experience was in 1990, when as a part of a fact-finding team I visited Kashmir. Muslim families told us how the Hindu-dominated paramilitary forces constantly taunted them about their religious beliefs when beating them up, and asked them to go to Pakistan. Incidentally, Muslims constitute only 2% of the Indian Army, although they are 13.4% of the population. Hostile prejudices among Indian soldiers (whether military or paramilitary) are not just against Muslims. They are directed also against other minority groups—tribal, linguistic, or regional. The paramilitary Assam Rifles in Manipur acquired notoriety for raping and killing local women. In the Maoist insurgency-affected tribal areas of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and other places, the state deploys the CRPF, which is headed and manned by soldiers mainly from the Hindu upper castes and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Many of them have been reared on traditional prejudices against Dalits and Adivasis, and act these out by torturing and killing them in the name of counter-insurgency operations. This is what is described as “smooth execution of operation” by the army authorities. The state follows the colonial divide-and-rule policy of pitting one section (religious, regional, or caste-based) of the armed forces against a different section of the civilian population in insurgency-affected areas.4

Conscience of Jawans

In such a situation, the jawan becomes a split personality. His conscience is divided between his peaceful responsibility to look after his family and children as an ordinary member of society, and his obligation to violently kill impersonal and unknown enemies (designated as such by his superiors) in his role as a member of the armed forces. The rising suicides and incidents of fragging reported from the barracks are manifestations of these tensions. Such tensions among the armed forces were not uncommon in British-ruled India. But they found outlets in collective actions of protest rather than individual acts of suicide and fratricide.

On quite a few occasions, Indian jawans disobeyed the orders of their British commanders when they found that such orders put them in direct confrontation with their own people (irrespective of religion or region)—the most striking example being the refusal by Garhwal Rifles jawans (mainly Hindus) to open fire on unarmed Muslim protestors in Peshawar during the non-cooperation movement in the 1930s. They dared to challenge their superiors and faced court martial. Still later, in 1946, Royal Indian Navy cadets in Bombay rose in revolt against their British commanders. At the same time, in the war zone of South-East Asia, Indian jawans were deserting the British Army and joining the Subhash Bose-led Indian National Army (INA). (A well-meaning and heroic nationalist experiment, but a politically opportunistic gamble that depended on fascist Japanese support, which did not work out in the end.)5

In post-independence India, the conscience of jawans underwent a change. In 1974–75, when Jayaprakash Narayan called on the armed minions of the state (including the police) to resist illegal orders by their superiors, there were few to heed to his call. They had already been lured by the state, which in a Machiavellian way had cajoled recruits into the armed forces with dollops of privileges and assurances of protection. In the 40 years since Narayan’s call, the army had been corrupted by promises of out-of-turn promotion and a race for gallantry awards, which have induced personnel to kill civilians and describe them as terrorists to win promotions and awards. Besides, the Indian state protects them even when they violate human rights, by invoking the notorious Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), which insulates them from criminal prosecution.6

The present Bharatiya Janata Party-led government’s decision to make yoga compulsory in the Indian armed forces is not an innocuous move. In the guise of spiritual and physical exercise, it is an attempt to psychologically indoctrinate jawans in the values and norms of the chauvinist ideology of the Sangh Parivar, and physically discipline them into a force that unquestioningly serves this ideology.

Notes

1 The latest incident of an Indo–Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) jawan shooting down his immediate superior outside the gate of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie on 10 July 2015 was provoked by a primitive form of punishment known in the armed forces as pitthu—where a jawan accused of a crime is forced to carry a man on his back while walking/jogging. The ITBP jawan was given this humiliating sentence by his senior for his “crime” of chatting on his mobile phone during duty hours. The jawan, after a heated argument, opened fire on him (PTI 2015).

2 Curiously enough, I have not found in the list any space for application for a Zoroastrian priest to look after the religious needs of the Parsi jawans and officers, who have been some of the guiding forces in our wars, including Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw.

3 In February 2014, the Supreme Court dismissed Yadav’s petition saying, “We do not want to rock the army’s boat,” indicating the extent to which the apex judicial authority is in awe of the status of the army.

4 As far as I know, there is no reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Indian Army. It would be interesting to find out if there is a caste- and tribe-wise survey in the armed forces, how many come from the Hindu upper castes and OBCs (some of whom were designated as martial races by the British), and how many from the Dalit and Adivasi communities (barring the Gurkhas, who enjoy a special status). In 1941, a Mahar Regiment was set up at the insistence of B S Ambedkar (who himself came from the Dalit community) when he was appointed to the Defence Advisory Committee of the Viceroy’s executive council. Today however, that Mahar Regiment is composed of people from all communities and regions. We should not object to this, but must enquire whether the other regiments named after castes, religions, and regions have opened up to recruits from outside their communities, particularly Dalits and tribals.

5 Gandhi condemned the Garhwali soldiers although they followed his message of non-violence, because, according to him, if allowed, such disobedience would provide a precedent for soldiers in a future independent India to threaten the state (interview in Labour Monthly, Vol 14, April 1932). Following the same principle, in 1946, Congress leaders (led by Vallabhbhai Patel) refused to support the mutineers in the Royal Indian Navy and advised them to surrender. It was no coincidence that while calling on every section of Indians to disobey colonial laws and refuse to cooperate with the rulers (during the civil disobedience and non- cooperation movements), the Gandhi-led Congress left out the jawans from it.

6 For a damning exposure of atrocities by Indian jawans, see the latest report by Amnesty International, titled “Denied: Failures in Accountability for Human Rights Violations by Security Force Personnel in Jammu and Kashmir.” The present BJP-led government punished Amnesty International by deporting its researcher Christine Mehta, who played a key role in the preparation of the report, from India.

References

Guha, N C (2005): “Religion in India’s Army,” www.hinduismtoday.com, September.

PTI (2013): “Army Recruitment Done on Caste, Region, Religion Lines, SC Told,” The Hindu, 4 December, New Delhi.

— (2015): “ITBP Jawan Opens Fire in Mussoorie IAS Academy; Kills Officer,” Times of India, 10 July, New Delhi.

Shah, Adfar (2015): “Casualties of an Alternate War: Of Suicides and Fratricides in the Indian Armed Forces,” 10 March, www.pointblank7.in/?p=15

Singh, Vijaita (2015): “Yoga Made Must for Paramilitary Forces, Government Seeks Action Taken Reports,” Indian Express, 29 June, New Delhi.

Singleton, Mark (2010): Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice, New York: Oxford University Press.

Wade, Jonathan P (2014): “Indian Army Replaces Military Drills with Yoga Workout,” 18 April, www.motleyhealth.com/blog/Indian-army-replace-military-drills

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