More than two years after the Supreme Court, in the case of Joseph Shine vs Union of India (2018), struck down Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to adultery as unconstitutional, being violative of Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the constitution, the Indian armed forces want to be exempted from this.
Pursuant to its 2018 order, in August 2019, the Supreme Court had quashed the General Court Marshal (GCM) proceedings against a colonel who was accused of having an adulterous relationship with the wife of a retired Lt. Col.
Earlier this year, the Centre filed an application requesting that this archaic law, which was condemned in eloquent terms by the Supreme Court, should continue to apply to the armed forces. The Supreme Court stated that the request to seek clarification would be placed before a five-judge bench as deemed fit by the Chief Justice of India.
Grounds for seeking exemption
Among other things, they have raised the issues of discipline; ‘unbecoming conduct’; the ‘peculiar conditions’ in which its personnel work, away from families for long; ‘the possibility of a concern in their minds about the family indulging in untoward activity’; and that this could cause instability within the services, etc.
How the Army has been dragging the corpse of a vague, Victorian notion
Quite amusingly, the very word ‘adultery’ does not figure anywhere in the Army Act, 1950 or the Army Rules, 1954 made under it. Sections 45 and 63 of the Army Act, Sections 45 & 65 of the Air Force Act and Sections 54 (2) and 74 of the Navy Act speak of ‘unbecoming conduct’, but, lacking precise definition, anything could be stretched to come under this. Section 63 of the Army Act and corresponding sections in other Acts, speak of acts prejudicial to ‘good order and military discipline’.
We have often heard of an antiquated phrase ‘stealing the affection of a brother officers’ wife’. Apparently, it finds mention in a pre-independence Military Manual only and yet continues to bother the army long after the said manual has passed into history.
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First, it speaks of a brother officer’s wife. That is, it reflects the value system of a class-ridden British society. They were not bothered about the other ranks and their wives. It is thus discriminatory.
Second, it screams of a regressive, patriarchal mind-set, which regarded women as dumb objects, incapable of deciding what is good or bad for them.
Third, affection is not something that could be stolen. A theft takes place without the knowledge of the owner; otherwise, it becomes robbery. It would mean that affection is something, the very existence of which the wife is not aware of, and that she could be ‘dispossessed’ of it without her coming to know when someone else staked claim over it.
Fifth, it also suggests that the so-called officer’s wife does not love her husband consciously but the appendage of love accrues to her mechanically because of the institution of marriage.
Indian army recruits wearing their ceremonial uniform perform a salute during their passing-out parade at a garrison in Rangreth on the outskirts of Srinagar March 27, 2015. Photo: Reuters/Danish Ismail
Psychological reasons for sexually deviant behaviour in armed forces personnel
Psychologist Norman Dixon has shown in his famous work On the Psychology of Military Incompetence that since military organisations constitute virility-proving grounds, they give rise to excesses of drunkenness and overt sexuality. Popular notions harboured by men in uniform regard themselves as being oversexed with raging testosterone levels who compulsively need women for their ‘sexual conquest’, or whom the women find irresistible.
Military historian John Laffin reveals in his book Americans in Battle, “American fighting men want sex for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Women and sex make up a large part of the thoughts and speech of any army, but with the Americans, they amount to an obsession. Officers particularly have often seemed more interested in women than in getting on with their war job; private soldiers have complained about this since the days of the Revolution.”
Quite understandably, the ‘sanskari’ Indian armed forces would not admit this harsh reality, but truth is known to most people.
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How power corrupts sexually too
At the peak of his career in 1988, the then DGP of Punjab, K.P.S. Gill had molested a senior woman IAS officer Rupan Deol Bajaj during a dinner in which her husband was also present. He was convicted after a 17-year long legal battle in 2005. The Supreme Court observed, “…He knew fully well that gently slapping on the posterior of the prosecutrix in the presence of other guests would embarrass her. Knowledge can be attributed to the accused that he was fully aware that touching the body of the prosecutrix at that place and time would amount to outraging her modesty.”
Why did he indulge in such disgusting behaviour? It was because of the power that he wielded and the adulation, which he got from a sycophantic media calling him Super Cop that made him think that he could get away with anything.
In fact, in his defence, he had given a ludicrous argument that the case was false because the accolades accorded to him in controlling militancy made other bureaucrats jealous—the Supreme Court, of course, dismissed it. Bajaj recalls as to how the drawing room discussions were around why a woman would trouble a man of that stature for such a trivial thing.
There is no reason to believe that Gill was an exception and that other senior officers are not capable of such behaviour.
Exploitative sexual behaviour including generally lewd, lecherous conduct is indeed expected from men holding positions of power and particularly so in the armed forces.
It can also be expected that being ‘closed societies’, the armed forces would go the extra mile in sweeping such incidents under the rug. They have had a well-known sub-culture of hushing up even murders in fake encounters, as brought out famously by the Supreme Court in the ‘Smoking Gun’ judgment about as many as 1,528 fake encounters that were simply buried—where does sexual misbehaviour count.
The Army knows the real reason but won’t admit
They know that, given the rigid hierarchical structure and the almost absolute power, which the senior officers wield over their juniors, if adultery is decriminalised, the ‘deviant’ seniors might indulge in sexual exploitation of the wives of the juniors and, if caught or complained against, try to pass it off as an adulterous relationship.
Lacking the moral courage to admit it, they have tried to shoot off the shoulder of the imaginary concerns of the jawans (so-called ORs/other ranks) about the chastity of their wives.
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It is as shameful and ridiculous an argument as when, in the matter of opposing the giving of commanding officers’ post to women officers, the army had tried to peddle its sexism by arguing that ‘rural Indian men’ would not take orders from a woman commander!
Representative image. Photo: PTI
It is both shocking and despicable that the army had the gall to argue that, in the course of the short visits of some junior officers to jawans’ families to ascertain their welfare; they would seduce the jawans’ wives and have sexual intercourse with them! Do they regard the jawans’ wives as so desperate for sexual attention or their junior officers and JCOs such veritable Casanovas?
If this is not an insult to the character and intelligence of the jawans’ wives as well as our JCOs, what else could be? The National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW) has also called the government’s argument an ‘insult to the armed forces personnel and their spouses’. Thank God, the army did not suggest making the wearing of chastity belts mandatory for the wives of the jawans!
Moreover, by throwing the blame on junior officers, the army has betrayed its feudal character. A Google search would show that most of the reported cases of adultery have involved senior officers and not junior officers and JCOs.
For the sake of argument, let us accept for a moment that visiting junior officers could enter into an adulterous relationship with jawans’ wives. Question is, why has no instance of someone having been court-martialed for that has been reported in the public domain? Are we to conclude that the armed forces hushed up such incidents and forced the wronged husbands to live in agony?
The plea of the jawans living away from their families has no merit because millions upon millions of other citizens of this country, such as migrant labourers, live away from their families. If they can live with the ‘supposed’ tension of their wives going astray, so can the jawans.
Referring to their working in ‘areas having inhospitable weather and terrain’ is a poor attempt at emotional blackmail. A very large number of labourers for the Border Roads Organization, for example, also work under far more difficult conditions because their contractors could not be bothered to look after them as in the army. Do we bother about how they must be concerned about the chastity of their wives?
Coming to the plea of discipline, there is no explanation of how could an affair with someone else’s wife affect military discipline in the field? On one hand, the army maintains that personnel’s personal lives must not have any bearing on the discharge of their duties. For example, a man denied leave in spite of having a terminally sick mother at home, is still supposed to work as if nothing has happened. Then, by the same logic, how could having secretly been in the arms of someone else’s wife last month have any effect on good order and military discipline?
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An adverse effect of adultery on discipline in the army could theoretically be accepted had there been any instance of a wronged husband having made it a point of honour and killed the offending officer. However, nothing of that sort has ever been reported.
Insistence on an irrational position places armed forces on the horns of a dilemma
Opposing decriminalisation of adultery in the armed forces is an indirect admission that they regard their own officers as ‘potential sexual predators’ and ‘untrustworthy companions’ of such magnitude who, unless kept on a tight leash of the threat of court martial, would pounce upon the hapless wives of their subordinates or colleagues and seduce, exploit, molest or rape them.
If they want retention of adultery as a punishable crime for the mental peace of all personnel, they must have the moral courage to admit this fact. Otherwise, there is no running away from the possible slur on the image.
A rational solution is indeed possible
There is no need to create a discriminatory set of laws for the armed forces. The solution lies in ending that culture of absolute power, which the seniors wield over their juniors, usually through their ‘highly subjective and even arbitrary evaluations’ in the Performance Appraisal Reports (commonly known as ACRs/Annual Confidential Reports) and the place of posting on which their careers and quality of lives with their families depend. To build trust and healthier relationships, all that the senior officers have to let go is that thumbscrew of making or marring juniors’ careers.
Dr N.C. Asthana, a retired IPS officer, has been DGP Kerala and a long-time ADG CRPF and BSF. Views are personal. He tweets @NcAsthana.