Indian Army Chief Gen. Upendra Dwivedi’s recent threat to “erase Pakistan from the map” and IAF Chief A. P. Singh’s exaggerated claims of destroying “Pakistani F-16s and radars” during Operation Sindoor are not isolated episodes of election-time rhetoric. They are symptoms of a deeper rot, the saffronization of India’s armed forces, where military professionalism has been replaced by Hindutva zealotry. What was once a disciplined, secular force is fast becoming a political loudspeaker of the BJP-RSS nexus? This transformation did not happen overnight; it has been a century in the making.

The origins of Hindutva influence in the Indian military predate even the creation of the RSS. In 1909, Lt. Col. U. N. Mukerji’s essays titled “Hindu: A Dying Race” became the first articulation of false Hindu victimhood in colonial India. The idea of an “exclusively Hindu army reclaiming lost glory” became a central theme of later right-wing nationalism.

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By the eve of independence, the ideology of Hindutva had fully taken shape. It had two powerful organisations, the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, ready to enforce its vision of ethnically cleansing India, both systematically and overtly.

Its influence quietly seeped into the state and the military. Under the shadow of the RSS and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Field Marshal K. M. Cariappa, the first Indian Commander-in-Chief, carried this bias forward. Yet, unlike his ideological mentors, Cariappa chose subtlety over open aggression. He masked ideology behind the discipline of uniform, but the seeds were 

already sown.

He was known to favour reduced Muslim representation in the armed forces and reportedly maintained........

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