Recently, Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi claimed that 10% of India’s population has control over the military, saying, “They (forward castes) have control over the army…And the 90% population (the rest) — you will not find them anywhere.”

While he may be wrong in the details, he is right – if prematurely so – on the essentials, since such ‘control’ is a work-in-progress, set to culminate when Agnipath changes the complexion of India’s army.

The Agnipath scheme is designed to get two birds with one stone. It has in its sights a deflation of the ‘martial races’ and ethnic groups of marginalised communities that have been advantaged by the class proportions (single or fixed) incident in some regiments.

The Agnipath scheme enables a rewind to the halcyon days of the purabiya sepoys, when forward castes formed the mainstay of the army prior to the upheaval of 1857. It will also re-affix the martial races into their place lower down in the social pyramid, while reinserting the marginalised back at the bottom.

Ideally, the federal polity of an ethnically diverse democratic state ought to have equitable representation of all its constituent regions and communities. Though India has been well served by a democratically subordinate professional military thus far, for the army to reflect India’s diversity would only be healthy way into a fraught future.

For now, there is a regional, ethnic and religious imbalance in numbers within the army. On this the Agnipath scheme, now facing its first turn-over in inductees from four years ago, only flatters to deceive.

Agnipath moves the recruiting paradigm from ethnically based recruiting to an ‘all India, all caste’ system. This undercuts the advantages the communities that had an ethnicity-based pass to enter the army, either as so-called martial races or as carve-outs for the marginalised groups, which were also accorded space within the army, such as Muslims, Ahirs, Mazhabi Sikhs and Mahars.

A second feature of Agnipath, brought in after its advent, is that the recruitment process now features a written test to be taken by candidates prior to their physical examination. This advantages the educationally forward communities, while downgrading the prospects of those who have been traditionally signing up for the military.

Regional diversity in the army is only in token proportions. It is well known that north India is well represented while the south and east are under-represented. Of the 331 commissioned in June 2023, 153 were from the cow belt, while only 28 were southerners. Curiously, of 11 from the northeastern region, eight were from Arunachal. It is the relative absence of marginalised ethnic and social groups from the military that is concerning.

As for religious diversity, the relative absence of Muslims in relation to their countrywide presence and proportion in the total population is evident. The numbers of Muslim officers once

© The Wire