Chandigarh: Senior military veterans and serving officers reacted with disbelief and disquiet to Lieutenant General Neeraj Varshney’s lecture on the Bhagavad Gita and its relevance to modern warfare and senior military leadership, delivered during the Higher Defence Management Course in Secunderabad on Wednesday (March 25).Many saw it as an ‘unwarranted’ merging of personal religiosity – drawn from India’s majority faith – with the professional and secular ethos that underpins India’s military education system. The session was widely regarded as a ‘highly imprudent’ gesture, risking the intrusion of personal religious belief into formal military doctrine and institutional practice.Veteran concern intensified when Gen. Varshney, Commandant of the Military College of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering (MCEME) in Secunderabad, had his lecture formally publicised on X by Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) in New Delhi. He was addressing the 21st Higher Defence Management Course, a 44-week programme for mid-level officers – Indian Army Colonels, Indian Navy Captains, and Indian Air Force Group Captains – along with officers from friendly countries attending Indian military training institutes.“Far from being an isolated lapse in judgment, such a religious discourse carried the weight of institutional endorsement”, said Major General A. P. Singh (Retired). This shocking episode also signals a deliberate blurring of boundaries, where personal belief is being woven into official military training, actively undermining the integrity of professional standards, the former two-star Armoured Corps officer added.The IDS tweeted that Gen. Varshney’s ‘inspiring lecture’ eloquently connected the ‘timeless wisdom’ of the Gita with contemporary challenges of military leadership. It went on to declare that it highlighted how the principles of Karma Yoga, steadfast focus on duty, clarity in decision making and detachment from outcomes, served as enduring guides for commanders for operating in uncertainty. His emphasis on emotional balance, composure under pressure and sound judgement offered profound lessons for officers preparing for higher responsibilities in the service of the nation, the IDS added.An inspiring lecture by Lt Gen Neeraj Varshney on “Bhagavad Gita and Its Relevance to Senior Level Defence Officers” was delivered for participants of #HDMC21 at #CDM.The General eloquently connected the timeless wisdom of the Gita with contemporary challenges of… pic.twitter.com/vTasKXVqAA— HQ IDS (@HQ_IDS_India) March 25, 2026Veterans argued that officers like Gen. Varshney, tasked with preparing the next generation of military leadership, should focus less on metaphysical and religious abstractions and more on the real, unresolved challenges confronting India’s armed forces.“The College of Defence Management, Secunderabad (CDM) is not a seminar hall for philosophical reflection,” fumed a three-star Indian Army veteran. It is the apex institution responsible for imparting hard-nosed expertise in strategic management, logistics, defence acquisition, and joint operations, he said, declining to be identified. Diverting that space towards Hindu religious texts risked eroding both focus and professional credibility at the highest level of military training, he added.The 21st Higher Defence Management Course, like its predecessors, is specifically designed to prepare mid-career military officers for higher command and staff roles in an increasingly complex security environment, making the religious content and tenor of such formal lectures particularly consequential.Moreover, Gen. Varshney himself is no marginal figure; as a highly decorated Commandant of MCEME and Colonel Commandant of the Corps of Electronics and Mechanical Engineers (EME), he occupies a position of considerable influence within the Army’s technical and training ecosystem. And, it is precisely because of this stature that his remarks assume significance, extending well beyond the confines of a routine instructional engagement for mid-career armed forces officers.A highly experienced officer, Gen. Varshney had alternated between field and staff postings, including command of an EME workshop in Srinagar during the Kargil War, leading a battalion in Rajasthan, and serving as Managing Director and Commandant of a Base Repair Facility for Armoured Fighting Vehicles. As a Brigadier, he also held a tri-service appointment overseeing space-based technical intelligence and took over as the head of MCEME in April 2024.Given his extensive experience, veteran critics argued that the optics of Gen. Varshney’s Wednesday lecture were ‘deeply problematic.’ At a time when India faces mounting operational challenges – from contested borders to rapid technological shifts in warfare – the focus, they contended, should remain on capability building, doctrinal clarity, and institutional reform. Instead, by projecting themes from the Bhagavad Gita in a formal military training setting, the three-star officer risked turning the session into an ‘intellectual indulgence and diversion,’ potentially diluting the seriousness of professional military education.Veterans’ criticism has been particularly sharp, given the composition of the audience, many of whom will go on to occupy key operational and administrative appointments. Their training is designed to sharpen decision-making skills for real-world challenges, including multi-domain operations, complex logistics, and procurement dynamics. In that context, they argued, reliance on philosophical analogies, however seminal, offers ‘limited practical utility’ for the demands of 21st-century, technology-driven stand-off warfare.Such an approach, they warned, risked blurring the line between intellectual reflection and the hard-edged professional rigour that modern military leadership demands. More pointedly, some warned that drawing on ancient Hindu texts could be seen as deliberately aligning military training with the BJP government’s ideological preferences – something that sits uneasily with the armed forces’ secular and apolitical ethos.‘Any blurring of the line between religion and professional education is dangerous’Furthermore, the episode has deepened a broader unease over the direction of present-day Indian military leadership, with veterans arguing that it was no longer an isolated instance, but part of a pattern in which symbolic or ideological gestures are increasingly entering professional military spaces. For an institution that has long prided itself on its apolitical and secular ethos, this trend raises troubling questions, especially when this appears aligned with the BJP’s ideological preferences.“In military institutions that train future leaders, blurring the line between religion and professional education is not merely misplaced is dangerous,” said Maj Gen. Singh. Once that balance is compromised, the consequences are real and far-reaching: it skews judgment, warps priorities, and corrodes the professional ethos of officers destined for high-level defence management.Gen. Varshney’s defenders argue that leadership in war is not purely technical but also moral and psychological, and texts like the Bhagavad Gita offer enduring insights into human behaviour under stress. They point out that military academies worldwide integrate philosophy, ethics, and history into their curricula, and contend that selectively drawing on such texts is meant to complement – not replace – core professional training, though critics remain unconvinced.This line of reasoning does not emerge in isolation but reflects a broader institutional trend in recent years of formally integrating elements of India’s Hindu classical intellectual tradition into military thinking – an effort that has itself been both endorsed and contested within strategic circles. Proponents, however, claim it only strengthens strategic thinking by drawing on ancient Indian ideas, while supporting existing doctrine and modern operations.Consequently, in late 2023, the Army launched Operation Udbhav (Evolution) – a programme to study ancient Sanskrit and Tamil texts, from Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Kamandaka’s Nitisara to Thiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural. Conceived in collaboration with the United Service Institution (USI) think-tank in New Delhi, it was aimed at “rediscovering” India’s heritage in statecraft, warcraft, and strategy, and integrating this with contemporary military pedagogy.The Army’s senior leadership justified Udbhav by claiming that revisiting such texts would further ‘deepen strategic understanding’ and offer insights into modern challenges, including a complex regional nuclear environment. At the time, the Ministry of Defence somewhat incredulously stated that introducing these texts into contemporary military and strategic domains would engender a ‘more profound understanding of international relations as well as foreign nations.Veterans also warned against the proliferating influence of personal religiosity within the armed forces: the increasingly public display of religiosity by serving officers in their uniforms. What was once a strictly private matter of faith, they argue, had over the past decade or so edged into the institutional domain, carrying potentially corrosive consequences for the military’s apolitical and secular character.The issue for them is not belief, but perception: when officers and jawans attend events led by godmen or controversial religious figures – often linked to the majority community – it creates the impression that the military is endorsing them. Senior officers participating in such ceremonies or accepting honours risk turning the uniform into a prop rather than a symbol of service. In doing so, veterans say, the line between personal faith and official sanction blurs, and the dignity of the uniform is steadily eroded – a process amplified by social media, where images of such appearances spread quickly and widely.But that being said, many veterans hesitate to speak out openly, aware that criticising such practices is politically sensitive and carries the risk of harsh official retaliation. It is precisely this climate of silence and quiet acquiescence that allows acts like Gen. Varshney’s invocation of the Bhagavad Gita in a formal training setting to appear not as isolated incidents, but as part of a broader, normalised pattern.