Many well-meaning veterans and civilians have been dismayed by the overt display of religiosity by serving officers, including chiefs, through publicised visits to religious sites in uniform or use of religion infused language in public discourse. They quaintly rue this as politicisation of the Indian armed forces. I regard it as communalisation, which to my mind preceded politicisation.However, both these terms, being reductive in nature, do not fully explain the competitive expression of bigoted/ politicised behaviour by the senior officers. And it is not only to win favour with the government of the day either, though it may be an overriding factor for some. The truth is, since 2014, bigotry and blind allegiance to one political thought has crept in, in the garb of Indianisation of the military, which is increasingly indistinguishable from Hinduisation. Of all its various projects, the one in which the Rashtra Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), which ideologically steers the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been extremely successful in is conflation of Indian with Hindu; to the extent that even the Supreme Court of India in a 1966 judgement observed that ‘Hinduism is a way of life and nothing more.’ Implicit in that was the idea that the Indian way of life is the Hindu way of life. So, today when senior officers publicly embrace their Hinduism or try to reorient their service ethos according to Hindu scriptures, they are merely taking pride in asserting their Indianness, shedding the colonial baggage.But before going any further, a brief recap of the legacy of civil-military relations that the present BJP government, now in its third term, inherited. For 67 years, one institution that all independent Indian governments did not tinker with – barring a few exceptions of political interference in promotions – was the Indian military.The Jawaharlal Nehru and George Fernandes episodes: Not attempts to ‘Hinduise’ the military All governments accepted the sanctity of the British inherited military ethos, traditions, uniforms, training principles and even history. And except on a couple of occasions, it allowed seniority to determine promotions at flag ranks, including chiefs.Of the two major incidents of political interference, the first one occurred in 1961, when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru accepted the appointment of Lt. General B.M. Kaul as chiefs of staff on the recommendation of defence minister V.K. Krishna Menon. This was against the advice of the outgoing Chief of Army Staff, General K.S. Thimayya, who deemed Kaul unfit for the role, given his non-combat experience. Nehru ostensibly agreed with Kaul’s appointment because he was a fellow Kashmiri. The immediate and the long-term consequences of this are too well known – the 1962 calamitous war with China and its permanent shadow upon the relations between the two countries. Over the years, this one uneasy relationship continues to determine India’s foreign policy.The second incident was in 1998, when A.B. Vajpayee government’s defence minister George Fernandes overruled Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat’s recommendation for deputy of chief of naval staff – VAdm. Madanjit Singh – and imposed his own choice, VAdm. Harinder Singh. The government favoured the latter, despite several adverse reports against him, including charges of dereliction of duty and corruption, because of his religion. The Sikh political party Akali Dal was part of the ruling coalition – National Democratic Alliance (NDA) – that the BJP had built to form the government. Harinder Singh had been lobbying with the Akalis for his elevation, another factor that went against him as far as Bhagwat was concerned. Subsequently, Singh went to court against Bhagwat, citing religious prejudice as one of the reasons why he was being overlooked for promotion. When Bhagwat dug his heels and refused his candidature, the government dismissed him from service – the only incident of sacking of a serving chief in independent India.Despite these terrible incidents, the governments then did not try to ‘Indianise’ the military in terms of its training (and education), operational ethos, traditions and so on. In fact, they preferred the military staying insulated in the cantonments away from the mainstream, still adhering to the British inherited social behaviour in the name of military tradition, which the military leadership believed was essential for regimentation and discipline.One of the reasons for this was deep-rooted religiosity of the Indian society, and a very delicate dividing line between it and bigotry. With the legacy of the Partition, which divided even the military on the religious lines, and the subsequent wars with Pakistan, the successive governments seemed to believe that a ‘western’ oriented, hence ‘elitist’ force was less likely to become communal, at least overtly. Indianisation of the military would have involved some degree of ‘Hinduisation’ as Indian public spaces were progressively becoming Hindu because of the sheer population size, and the nature of politics which had started to subvert constitutional institutions, including the judiciary, as mentioned earlier.How the situation changed in 2014The situation changed in 2014. BJP came to power with complete majority, creating for the RSS a hospitable environment to work towards the realisation of its primary objective – turning India into a Hindu nation. Since the time the RSS came into existence in 1925, its goal was to build Hindu capacity for the future. This meant that it should have deep presence in all instruments of State power. Before independence, it started small – working upon and influencing lower-level constabulary in the police and the intelligence forces. After independence, it spread its network to the middle levels in the police and civil bureaucracy. At that time, when the governments were not too friendly to the RSS, it was important to have sympathetic personnel in the police and intelligence forces – both were useful during communal violence.The armed forces were the prize beyond its reach, because of their insulation. Though it continued to try. Since the RSS came in the garb of a nationalist force, it had many opportunities of working with the military during the times of natural disasters, as the military was always the first responders. And during such disasters, the RSS cadre carried out rescue and relief work. The first such disaster was the Partition, the aftermath of which brought in the flood of Hindu and Sikh victims of Muslim violence. It was in these circumstances that Major General Thimayya met RSS chief M.S. Golwalkar in September 1947, seeking help in restoring law and order in Delhi.The RSS was also successful in engaging with the first army chief of independent India, Field Marshal K.M. Cariappa, after his retirement. His first meeting with Golwalkar in 1956 led to both publicly expressing admiration for one another, something that infuriated Nehru. But given RSS’s public profile of a socio-cultural, nationalist organisation, many could not understand why engaging with it was not right. Thereafter, there is public record of Cariappa participating in a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (an RSS sister organisation) event in Udupi in 1969.However, despite this outreach, and running a couple of coaching centres for the military entrance examinations, such as SSB, the serving officers maintained a distance from the RSS, or at least, kept it under wraps.Also read: Indian Army’s New Found Love for Hindi and Hindutva Has Serious ConsequencesThis changed in 2014. While the government itself started facilitating engagement in the name of Indianisation of the armed forces, the larger objective is an indoctrinated force, ideologically aligned with the RSS’s vision of India. This has been easier to achieve because the military itself is no longer an elite or anglicised service. In many cases, the officers and the men come from roughly similar socio-economic backgrounds, with similar exposure to social divisiveness and casteist-communal politics. While the nature of the politics has been the same earlier too, but training, education and insulation of the officer cadre ensured that their community experiences were either wiped clean or coated over. This is not the case now. The government is systematically ensuring that the education that impressionable minds get before joining the military, conflates Hinduism with nationalism. The largest feeder pipeline to the Indian armed forces is the network of Sainik Schools. In 2022, government approved establishment of 100 additional schools under a public-private partnership model, in addition to 33 existing government run schools. Among the successful private bidders for the new schools were RSS’ educational organisation Vidya Bharti as well as the Adani Group, which is infamous for its proximity to the present government.But this is not enough to create an indoctrinated force. As in other domains, in the military too, history is being employed to create a sense of Hindu nationhood to subtly reinforce the idea of insider-outsider; that is, natives and invaders. This programme, under Project Udbhav was initiated by the tri-service ministry of defence run think-tank United Services Institute in 2021. Ostensibly to study ancient Indian military/ strategic texts like Kautilya’s Arthashastra and finding ways to incorporate that wisdom in modern military pedagogy, the project also establishes the idea of who was Indian, and which military history needs to be remembered and studied.For example, under Project Udbhav, apart from Arthashastra, the USI is studying Hindu texts like the Mahabharata, Maratha warrior Shivaji, Rajput warriors like Rana Sanga and for diversity’s sake, Tamil text Thirukkural. The selection establishes the insider-outsider narrative, which has been the basis of RSS’ campaign to establish Indian mainstream as Hindu; and everyone else as a minority, if not always outsiders.The dangerous consequencesHistorians and sociologists understand the objectives and the dangers of such artificial construct, especially in a country like India where the idea of outsiders has been made even more complex after the new genetic findings. Conscious of this, the RSS has built gates on history to create a population – leaving out the tribals on the ancient side and Turks, Tatars, Afghans etc., on the modern side – to create an acceptable ‘native Indian’ population, which is the mainstream. This is a political project with political ramifications. By making the military a part of this, the government’s message is clear – that a certain population group has to be regarded as outsiders whose allegiance to India will always remain questionable. In military parlance, this comprises the ‘half’ of the two and half front threat.The other issue pertains to promotions. The Modi government did away with the certainty of seniority in promotion to the top, by deep-selecting General Bipin Rawat as the army chief. One of the reasons was his ideological congruence with the ruling BJP and the RSS. He also made visiting temples and entertaining Hindu seers in uniform acceptable, paving the way for other service chiefs to follow suit.The long-term consequence of this has been that the moment an officer reaches the flag rank, he starts to publicly demonstrate his ideological alignment, including Sanskritised language, in the hope of attracting either BJP’s or RSS’ attention.Once an idea takes root, it may take some years, but eventually it is internalised by the majority, especially when that idea also appears lucrative. What this means for military professionalism is anybody’s guess.Ghazala Wahab is the editor of FORCE magazine. She has written Born A Muslim: Some Truths About Islam in India (winner of Book of the Year Award, non-fiction, at the Tata Literature Live and Atta Galatta), edited The Peacemakers, and Dragon On Our Doorstep: Managing China Through Military Power (with Pravin Sawhney). Her new book The Hindi Heartland: A Study has just come out.