New Delhi: The online spectacle of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh presenting religious medallions and certificates to a trio of three-star military officers for their respective services’ role in Operation Sindoor at the Maha Shivratri gathering hosted by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev at his Isha Yoga Centre in Coimbatore on Sunday, has triggered pronounced disquiet in veteran military circles. According to video clips in circulation on social media, these senior commanders from the army, navy and air force were called up individually before a festival crowd of thousands, handed non-statutory medallions created outside the formal honours system, and decorated under religious iconography rather than regimental or unit colours, as is the norm.Veteran critics said such a format effectively relocated military recognition from a service institution to a guru-led platform, shamelessly inserting devotional imagery and political presence into what was exclusively a military operation. And, in doing so, they said Singh and the military had bluntly converted operational credit over successfully executing Operation Sindoor into little more than televised religious pageantry.Event footage portrayed these three military officers being individually summoned on stage to be conferred with their ‘presentations’, which were handed to Singh by Vasudev in the midst of a large, grand gathering, also attended by senior political figures. These included Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, junior parliamentary affairs minister Dr L. Murugan and assorted film actors from Bollywood and beyond.Thereafter, video clips captured all three officers preening proudly with medallions around their necks and their framed Bhavya Bharat Bhushan – “Glorious Pride of the Nation” – scrolls held prominently before them. Reportedly conceived and designed by Vasudev, these awards supposedly symbolised national grandeur and distinguished service, recognising the Indian military’s collective operational role in last year’s operation against Pakistan.In his address at the event, Singh drew an explicit line between spirituality and soldiering, invoking Lord Shiva as both humanitarian guide and destructive force – benevolent in relief work, Rudra or destructive in combat. According to TV News 18, he spoke of cultural inspiration, divine presence and sacred blessing attached to the venue itself. For many veterans, however, such rhetoric crossed an unwritten line by recasting professional military achievement in overtly devotional and religious terms.Also read: With Ideological Fusion, the Military Marches from National Defence to Regime SecurityTV News 18 further reported that Singh credited the armed forces with providing humanitarian assistance during times of crisis with the spirit of Shiva. But when duty demanded, they executed missions like Op Sindoor with the intensity of Rudra, associated in the Hindu pantheon of gods with fierce destruction. “The spirit within our soldiers comes from our culture, from the inspiration of Lord Shiva,” Singh was reported as having said by the television news channel.“The divinity I am experiencing here makes it clear, even without anyone telling me, that this place is blessed by Mahadeva, the Lord of Lords,” he added in reference to Vadudev’s ashram.Meanwhile, a retired three-star Army officer said such honours as were doled out by Vasudev were traditionally bestowed within military spaces shaped by service ethos and chain-of-command legitimacy, not at religious mega-events. He stressed that these were nothing more than “privately created awards, amounting to a parallel recognition track” outside the armed forces’ formal honours architecture, and needed to be strongly challenged, if the services’ ethos was to be maintained and perpetuated.Another two-star Indian Navy veteran said the deeper concern was perception. India’s armed forces, he added, requesting anonymity, have long guarded their apolitical and non-sectarian character with painstaking care. While officers remain free to practise personal faith, senior commanders appearing at personality-driven religious platforms risk projecting institutional endorsement of the individual, the ritualised ceremony and the public spectacle – rather than expressing private belief.Jaggi Vasudev in September 2025 in Bengaluru, Karnataka. Credit: PTI.“Optics at these levels can easily be read as institutional endorsement of such platforms,” he caustically added. Beyond the optics, he warned, the longer-term consequences for morale and public trust are profound: when the line between personal devotion and the uniform blurs, the services risk politicisation, and decades of painstakingly built professional neutrality begin to erode.Moreover, this gradual erosion of professional distance set the stage for the military’s visible acquiescence in Sunday’s episode at Vasudev’s Isha Yoga Centre. Veterans noted that the service headquarters maintained total, deliberate silence: no public clarification was offered on the status of the medallions, no institutional note drew a boundary between official honours and privately instituted awards, and no senior military spokesperson invoked the long-standing norms governing where and how operational recognition should properly be conferred.Also read: When Cohesion Becomes Coercion: The Indian Army’s Case Against Conscience“By appearing on stage while Singh and Vasudev conducted the honouring ceremony, all three senior military officers effectively lent uniformed legitimacy to a privately framed religious event,” said a retired senior Air Force officer. He added that no protest was voiced by any of the three service headquarters, and no institutional line was drawn. In doing so, the armed forces quietly allowed a stage-managed religious endorsement to take place under the guise of official recognition.What is equally striking is that such episodes are no longer isolated.Over the past decade, highly public religious participation by senior uniformed leadership – including serving chiefs and their commanders – has become more frequent, more visible and more publicly celebrated.Temple visits, ritual observances, televised blessings of new platforms, ceremonial offerings before materiel inductions and participation in sectarian spiritual gatherings are now routinely photographed, amplified and circulated as institutional moments, rather than private acts of faith.Individually, none of these actions is unlawful or unprecedented. Armed forces everywhere accommodate personal belief and regimental religious tradition. But what was once low-key and inward-looking is now stage-managed, publicly flaunted and officially encouraged by both the administration and the services hierarchy.Senior commanders are no longer merely present at such events; they are active participants –performing rituals, receiving blessings and delivering remarks that merge religiosity with operational identity. Such a cumulative effect erodes the principled separation between uniform and faith, transforming the military’s apolitical stature into a spectacle of performative devotion to India’s majority religion.In conclusion, the risk is not that military officers are religious, but that the institutions they man are beginning to look religiously positioned. By stepping onto a stage to receive medallions and Bhavya Bharat Bhushan awards at Vasudev’s centre, senior commanders have allowed ritual and spectacle to dominate their uniforms.If left unchecked from within, the uniform risks being hollowed out – turned into a ceremonial prop for devotional pageantry, its authority stamped not by duty or discipline, but by devotional blessing and amid priestly applause.