A READER, a former soldier, wrote last week of his joy at seeing military columns march to the tune of Aiy mard-i-mujahid jaag zara ab waqt-i-shahadat hai aya, Allah-o-Akbar at the Pakistan Day parade in Islamabad.
He believed the musical theme was banished after 9/11 because words like ‘mujahid’ or ‘jihad’ could have worried Pakistan’s American friends.
“Oh soldier of faith, rise to the occasion in defence of your motherland, even at the peril of your life, Allah is the greatest,” was how the former soldier translated the words, which he said were composed “with zero connotations of any extremism”.
I can’t imagine Indian troops marching to a religious tune with or without any connotations of extremism. On the contrary in January 2004, India’s military instructed its personnel to not even sport bracelets, birthstone rings, vermillion streaks or sacred threads precisely to maintain a secular image. This is not to say that there are no religious or even communal elements within the armed forces. In fact the orders on religious symbols came only because senior officers found that more and more personnel of the million-strong army were indulging in overtly religious practices.
It is bad enough that Indian troops were dispatched to Kashmir, Nagaland or the Golden Temple and so on to confront their own alienated citizens. Imagine the disaster had they begun to sing a Vedic hymn in their efforts to subdue the Muslims of Kashmir, Christians of Nagaland or Sikhs in the Golden Temple. Given the context of Pakistan’s most crucial challenge today, it would be baffling to even think of army columns marching in the name of God in the Swat valley against their own embattled and alienated citizens who too, by the way, would be singing praises to the same God in their effort to tame the Pakistani state.
I do not know how it plays out in Pakistan where the army has had a domineering political role, but in most parts of India where the army does not have a menacing presence, in times of ethnic strife or communal conflagration (in which the police and paramilitary units become readily identified as suspects) a flag march by army units in the affected areas ensures instant hope and a sense of neutrality among the victims.
And yet the nexus between religion and armies is so irretrievably rooted in history that without a fine balance between the two there would be plain havoc. Unit, Corps, God, Country is how the US Marines define their purpose in life by and large and in war particularly. Any change in the order would alter a fundamental world view. It would be a worrying sign for all if God, for example, were to take precedence over the Unit and the Corps a Marine was loyal to. But this is precisely what may be happening in a slow, almost imperceptible way.
As Jason Leopold says in a Truthout email dispatch, the “Christian right has been successful in spreading its fundamentalist agenda at US military installations around the world for decades. But the movement’s meteoric rise in the US military came in large part after 9/11 and immediately after the US invaded Iraq in March of 2003.
“At a time when the United States is encouraging greater religious freedom in Muslim nations, soldiers on the battlefield have told disturbing stories of being force-fed fundamentalist Christianity by highly controversial, apocalyptic ‘End Times’ evangelists, who have infiltrated US military installations throughout the world with the blessing of high-level officials at the Pentagon.”
Leopold further states in his researched article ‘Military Evangelism Deeper, Wider Than First Thought’ that “Proselytising among military personnel has been conducted openly, in violation of the basic tenets of the United States Constitution.”
The problem of course begins with President George W. Bush who, Leopold says, “has been vocal about his fundamentalist Christian beliefs and how God has helped him during his presidency.” Late last year, “the White House sent out Christmas cards signed by President Bush and his wife Laura that contained a Biblical passage from the Old Testament:
“You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.” The inclusion of this passage, says Leopold, “caught the attention of long-time broadcaster Barbara Walters, who was a recipient of the presidential Christmas card.”
It seems Walters could not “recall receiving ‘religious’ holiday cards from past presidents and she wondered how non-Christians would receive such an overtly religious greeting. ‘Usually in the past when I have received a Christmas card, it’s been ‘Happy Holidays’ and so on … Don’t you think it’s a little interesting that the president of all the people is sending out a religious Christmas card? Does this also go to agnostics, and atheists, and Muslims?’”
Perhaps the most influential fundamentalist Christian group is the Military Ministry, an American “national organisation and a subsidiary of the controversial fundamentalist Christian organisation Campus Crusade for Christ.” According to Leopold, “Military Ministry’s national website boasts it has successfully ‘targeted’ basic training installations, or ‘gateways’, and has successfully converted thousands of soldiers to evangelical Christianity.”
He adds: “Military Ministry says its staffers are responsible for ‘working with chaplains and military personnel to bring lost soldiers closer to Christ, build them in their faith and send them out into the world as government paid missionaries’ — which appears to be a clear-cut violation of federal law governing the separation of church and state.”
In India, there was an occasion recently when, during a collection of data on the percentage of Muslims in the army, the government had to take a call on the Indian military’s aloofness from religion. “The armed forces are professional, apolitical, and secular and the most disciplined force the country has today.... We would not like to include [the armed forces] in such a type of survey, [but)] in the case of other departments and ministries such a study will continue,” then defence minister Pranab Mukherjee told parliament.
There is an interesting story that an elderly Muslim lady in Lucknow narrates about a Hindu army doctor who asked her for an amulet with Quranic prayers. He kept it with him till another officer friend saw it and borrowed it for good luck in a campaign. And as luck would have it this man found himself with his borrowed amulet in Pakistan’s custody during the 1971 war. The officer was eventually freed but the Pakistanis kept the amulet because, as one of them told the Indian officer, “This belongs to us.” And so the issue of religion in the armed forces will continue to mock us even if there is the occasional happy denouement.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
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