“The whole earth is a sepulchre of famous men” – Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.

“The whole earth is a sepulchre of famous men”

An army is a strange entity. It is an organised institution, deliberately trained, equipped and structured for one fundamental purpose: to impose its will upon a defined enemy through controlled violence.

Its success is measured not merely in territory gained or objectives captured, but in the destruction of the enemy’s capacity to fight — through the loss of life and limb, the destruction of equipment and infrastructure, and the disruption of its ability to continue the struggle. In almost every other human institution, causing such destruction would be a crime. In an army, when directed against a lawful enemy and within the rules of war, it is the very purpose for which the institution exists.

The paradox, therefore, is that an army is not inherently a violent organisation gone wrong. It is a violent instrument deliberately created by the state and constrained by law, discipline and command precisely so that violence can be applied in a controlled manner. And therein lies the real question: if the instrument is designed to destroy an external enemy, what happens when the institution itself becomes part of the political contest within the state? Or worse still, turns upon its own.

That is where the distinction between the army as an institution and the system in which the army operates becomes critical. To draw simplistic conclusions from the colonial period and then somehow blame “colonial values” for the madness that followed makes little sense.

First, the environment of the time matters. Serving in the British Indian Army did not make a man a traitor or a collaborator; in the legal and political reality of the time, we were British Indian subjects and, after 1947, citizens of Pakistan. Until 1956, Pakistan itself was a Dominion of the British Commonwealth. To judge people retrospectively by standards that did not exist at the time is simply unfair. Colonial Legacy and Historical Pride

In the colonial setting, names such as Warburton, Olaf Caroe, Nicholson and Alexander Keppel belong to a history that cannot simply be dismissed because the political system of the time was colonial. They were products of their age, but they were also individuals whose courage, leadership, scholarship, administration and service left a lasting mark on the region. To acknowledge that history is not to endorse colonialism; nor is it to surrender the right to be proud of the institutions, traditions and people that formed part of our inheritance.

History does not become dishonourable merely because the flag under which it was made was foreign. The courage of a soldier, the integrity of a commander, or the achievements of an institution are not erased by the politics of the sovereign. We can condemn colonial rule where it deserves condemnation while still recognising extraordinary individuals who served in that era. Indeed, a mature nation does not inherit history selectively: it examines it, owns it and draws from both its virtues and its failures.

That is precisely why a regiment such as Sam Browne’s Own need not apologise for its colonial heritage. Its history belongs to the regiment, and subsequently to Pakistan, as much as to the empire in which it originated. Universally recognised by almost every army of the world, which chooses to wear the belt the regiment invented, to display it as a badge of honour and courage – not colonialism. The men who served in it were not abstractions of colonial policy; they were soldiers, with their own courage, loyalties, sacrifices and traditions. Their history can be examined critically without being reduced to the single word “colonial.”

The past is not a stain to be washed away. It is an inheritance to be understood.

And what exactly are we supposed to call these soldiers—patriots or collaborators, over the subcontinent’s history of thousands of years? Will each era, every decade, any age, produce its separate sets of heroes, soldiers and warriors – who will define what values are kosher and which are not during these varying periods of history? Who has the right to judge others for the lives they lived in honour, loyalty and dedication to a sovereign they believed they were a part of? India had been invaded repeatedly from the north, the west and the south throughout its history. Armies changed allegiance, rulers changed, empires came and went, and the political meaning of loyalty changed with them –........

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