Chandigarh: The 2021 dismissal of Lieutenant Samuel Kamalesan – a Christian officer who refused to enter his armoured regiment’s temple and gurdwara sanctums – has dragged the religiously diverse Indian Army’s most sensitive internal fault line back to the surface, after the Supreme Court’s refusal last week to reinstate him.

For years, this long-ignored but troubling fault line was acknowledged privately but never addressed openly, continually side-lined under the guise of sensitivity and institutional caution. But Kamalesan’s removal – now seen as more than merely the dismissal of an officer on broadly religious grounds – has forced the issue into the open, stirring unease across the force and prompting guarded observations from senior veterans.

Consequently, their recent newspaper columns reveal a mounting unease within the armed forces, where the emerging “new normal” increasingly equates patriotism, reliability, and national belonging with visible adherence to the country’s majority religion – a complete inversion of the military’s defining apolitical ethos.

However, as India’s largest, most visible, and socially embedded force – shaped by its centuries-old recruitment pattern – the Army has become far more susceptible than the Indian Air Force or the Indian Navy to political signalling over the past decade.

Unlike the other two services, whose recruitment has traditionally been technocratic, aptitude-driven, and focused on specialised technical roles, the Army draws from a much broader social base with deep regional, caste, and community linkages – a system dating back to the mid-19th century British Raj. This breadth has historically made it more reflective of, and sensitive to, prevailing social and political currents.

Compounding this, the Army operated under far more direct government oversight, engaging constantly with civilian populations through counterinsurgency duties, disaster-relief operations, and repeated interventions to quell unrest. Together, these conditions made it uniquely vulnerable to political messaging and societal pressures in a way that the more insulated, technically oriented Air Force and Navy were not.

Accordingly, the Army’s heightened public visibility made it increasingly susceptible to political signalling. Three successive BJP-led governments had successfully prevailed upon it to willingly incorporate religious imagery and Hindu mythology into the naming of battlefield formations, operations, exercises, and other institutional initiatives.

References to deities, mythological epics, and allegorical warriors – once confined to informal regimental lore and the privacy of unit langars – have now been formalised into official nomenclature and doctrine in ways unprecedented in the Army’s history. Even its symbols and ceremonial practices have drifted from the secular ethos long central to its identity, increasingly reflecting a deliberate embrace of majoritarian imagery that would once have been unthinkable within its ranks.

Officers

But this shift has not occurred in isolation. It is accompanied – and increasingly justified – by the Army’s top leadership through a broader ideological reframing, which casts these changes as acts of anti-colonial reclamation. In reality, senior officers at Army Headquarters in South Block, New Delhi, appear to take cues directly from political leaders, who frame Atmanirbharta, or indigenisation of the armed forces, as a ‘civilisational mission’.

These officers actively pursue a goal of purging the Army of “inherited foreign norms,” replacing them with an imagined cultural authenticity drawn from a selectively interpreted – or entirely reinvented – glorious past. Many veterans have noted that this agenda is steadily reshaping the Army’s institutional neutrality with myth, nostalgia, and a distorted reading of history.

In late 2023, for instance, the Army enthusiastically embraced Project Udbhav (Genesis) at the behest of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), aiming to “synthesise ancient wisdom with contemporary military practices” to forge a unique and holistic approach to modern security challenges.

Launched jointly by the Army and the United Services Institution (USI) think-tank in Delhi, but under the MoD's aegis, Udbhav aims to exploit India’s 5,000-year-old civilisational legacy to ‘comprehend its enduring connect, relevance and applicability in modern times’ through seminars, research projects and training-curriculum inputs.

Udbhav seeks to infuse ancient Indian strategic and philosophical ideas into contemporary military thinking by encouraging Army officers to study classical texts and historical practices as complementary frameworks to modern doctrine, thereby promoting an “indigenous” strategic outlook. This involves examining the writings of Chanakya (Arthashastra), post-Mauryan Kamandaka (Nitisara), and the Tamil saint-poet Thiruvalluvar (Tirukkural), all of which the MoD declared “aligned with modern military codes of ethics, just war principles, and the Geneva Convention.”

At its inauguration, the Press Information Bureau hailed Udbhav as a “visionary Army initiative” seeking to integrate age-old wisdom with contemporary military pedagogy, while enhancing “strategic thinking, statecraft, and warfare.” In short, according to the MoD and government statements, Udbhav was intended to foster a deeper understanding of military matters and enrich military curricula, even in the nuclear era of the 21st century.

A few months earlier, in a move that many veterans saw as a clear politicisation of the forces, Army Headquarters had officially “recommended” – the military's  euphemism for ordered – that all soldiers on home leave promote government welfare schemes in their villages, towns, and city neighbourhoods. These included Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, and others, with units instructed to monitor compliance through quarterly feedback supported by photographs and videos.

The Army Training Command  in Shimla reportedly circulated formal guidelines on how soldiers were to carry out these “educative” tasks, explicitly aiming to “leverage” military skills and discipline for nation-building. Senior veterans estimated that at any given time, as many as 350,000 personnel could be functioning as uniformed “social warriors” engaged in welfare activities – effectively creating one of the largest government-directed social outreach drives ever undertaken. Soldiers are entitled to two months of annual leave, in addition to 30 days of casual leave, providing a substantial window for participation.

According to a cross-section of veterans, such measures sit uneasily with the Army’s core ethos, anchored in its long-established credo of ‘naam, namak, nishan (honour, loyalty, and identity)’ – a secular and unifying code designed to transcend religious and political exclusivism. They note that this living code derives its strength not from manufactured symbolism, but from centuries-old regimental customs, lineages, and battle cries. Any attempt to impose external rituals or symbols – or to politicise the institution – on this foundation, they argue, risks undermining the traditions and collective spirit that have historically bound the Army together, while diluting its time-honoured values developed over a millennium.

“In seeking to impose these traditions laced with a singular political narrative rooted in the country’s dominant faith, the government and complicit senior Army brass risk unsettling the secular architecture that has historically anchored the force,” said a two-star Army veteran. “This new ideological reframing of the Army’s code around a dominant cultural narrative,” he added, speaking anonymously, “runs counter to its founding principles.

Thus, the Army’s participation in last month’s Dharma Dwaj saffron-flag hoisting at the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya – one of numerous such instances of its growing involvement in government-backed Hindu festival celebrations – underscored the increasingly blurred line between military duties and politico-religious activities.

At this event, uniformed personnel assisted the Ram Mandir Trust in preparing and rehearsing the installation of a 22-foot saffron flag atop the temple’s 161-foot-tall spire. The Ram Mandir, one of the most politically charged temples in India in recent years and the focal point of a movement that helped catapult the BJP to power in 2014 and twice thereafter, saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi perform the ceremonial hoisting, while widely shared social media footage showed Army personnel actively facilitating the ritual. This episode further highlighted the Army’s direct involvement in a highly politicised religious event.

And earlier this year, Army units – including one- and two-star officers, all in uniform – played a prominent and widely publicised logistical and security role at the Kumbh Mela at Prayagraj, once again heightening concerns over their visible participation in overtly religious Hindu rituals. Observers noted that the Army’s conspicuous presence at the festival strongly signalled alignment with a particular religious identity, raising questions about the boundaries of its institutional role.

As retired Lieutenant General D.S. Hooda noted in The Tribune on December 2, senior officers may visit religious institutions in private, but there was no reason to officially post pictures of such activity on social media – a trend that had become increasingly common.

He also warned that for a force whose members are expected to subsume personal identity in the service of the nation, even the appearance of endorsing a single faith risked fraying the quiet trust that binds a diverse military together. In his analysis, the three-star officer lamented the blurring of the line between private belief and institutional endorsement – a distinction whose erosion could undermine the Army’s secular and professional character.

Gen. Hooda’s observations condemning social media circulation of such religious activity by senior officers paralleled footage of Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi, adorned in saffron attire, offering prayers at the Mahakaleshwar Jyotirlinga temple in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, last December, alongside defence minister Rajnath Singh.

While the event drew criticism from several Opposition leaders and commentators,  the BJP defended it vociferously. “Nobody should have a problem with the Raksha Mantri or the Army Chief, or anybody celebrating their own faith," former BJP MP and central minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar told Times Now television. Anyone who has a problem with that should look for a hole and bury themselves in it, he contemptuously added.

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A few months later, shortly after Operation Sindoor in late May, Gen. Dwivedi visited the spiritual leader Jagadguru Rambhadracharya at his ashram in Chitrakoot – also in Madhya Pradesh and just 130km north of the Army Chief’s hometown of Rewa – once again publicising it and prompting questions about undertaking a personal religious visit in uniform.

Following the meeting, Rambhadracharya told PTI that he had initiated the Army Chief into the Ram Mantra, “the same mantra Hanuman received from Sita before his victory over Lanka.”

“When the matter of dakshina arose,” the priest said, “I told him I would ask for a dakshina no teacher has ever sought. I said I want PoK – Pakistan-occupied Kashmir – as my dakshina. The Army Chief, he said, accepted his request, saying that India was prepared to give Pakistan an ‘appropriate response’.

The Army Chiefs' high-profile, majoritarian display of faith, along with Lt. Kamalesan’s earlier case of sectarianism illustrates that both ends of the spectrum – public alignment with a religious narrative or personal denominational actions – have contributed to the Army’s growing institutional tension.

The Supreme Court may have declined to reinstate Kamalesan, but its order will matter little unless the Army itself reasserts its professional centre and separates personal or political beliefs from its institutional role. Without this, judicial interventions remain symbolic rather than transformative. In the final analysis, the Army’s credibility depends on whether service, skill, and loyalty to the nation – not religious or cultural displays – define what it means to wear the uniform. 

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