Uniform as Assertion: The Politics of Caste Reservation in Colonial and Post-colonial Armed Forces of India (1930

Abstract

Recruitment of lower and middle castes remained a much-debated topic in Indian electoral politics till now. On the one hand, there was intense political debate between various castes, and on the other, there was judicial and administrative debate about social justice. Even though Ambedkar tried to use it as a method of social justice and state-sponsored social alleviation, because of its connection to identity politics, it quickly became a matter of electoral mobilization. Various parties that were attempting to win over various communities with their call for military recruitment eventually strayed from the real motivation behind that Ambedkarian demand. Lastly, since the turn of the twentieth century, the new political rhetoric of Hindutva has intriguingly transformed this call for military recruitment into a different cause. This article discusses how the demand for the Chamar Regiment and the Ahir Regiment in particular became the focal point of this debate for nearly a century.

Keywords

Military participation ratio military recruitment Indian Army caste regiment Chamar Regiment Ahir Regiment

Contrary to the widely held belief that war impairs welfare, sociologists like Richard Titmuss asserted that war ‘determined at least to a substantial extent’ the goals and contents of social policies because ‘cooperation of the masses’ was required for wars to be won (Titmuss, 1958, p. 86). The era of ‘total war’, which engulfed society, economy and population in the vortex of war effort, exacerbated the war–society interrelationship. Because of the growing need for civilian support for the twentieth-century war effort, wars became a more prominent locomotive for social policies in both war and peacetime. Because of this need for manpower, both at home and abroad, underprivileged groups such as the working class, women and ethnic minorities achieve ‘the possibility of social gains’ or, at the very least, ‘the possibility of developing new consciousness and self-esteem’ (Marwick, 1988, p. xvi). Similar examples of collective material and ideological assertion among the underprivileged lower caste population in India can be seen both during and after the total war period. Stephen P. Cohen, a pioneer in the study of the Indian armed forces and their relationship to society, claimed that the depressed classes’ military training helped them to revise ‘their image in the community’ (Cohen, 1969a, p. 13). As argued in this article, the caste reservation policy, which developed in India as a form of social policy of the welfare state to ensure proper representative equality and launch social justice, has a military history. Following World War II, ‘Welfare States’ discovered that public support was the single most important factor in achieving military success (Adams, 1977, p. 420). The backward castes were able to join the military due to the demands of the colonial state during the war and pressure from caste organizations. However, after independence, a protracted political and bureaucratic debate about the reservation policy within the army began, frequently yielding to the popular politics of the parliamentary democracy.

According to Stanislav Andreski’s work ‘Military Organization and Society’, with a high military participation ratio (MPR), the ruling power was able to muster more mass support for the war effort, and as a result, social inequalities narrowed. However, with lower MPR, the masses were pushed out of the military arena, and the military elite emerged. Inequality rises as a result of the second scenario (Andreski, 1968, pp. 68–70). We can effectively address the issue of caste reservation and military organization by using Andreski’s model of the cyclical rise and fall of MPR and the ensuing growth and decline in social equality. We can observe that the colonial state historically adopted different recruitment practises, beginning with high-caste recruitments (Rand & Wagner, 2016), switching to martial caste recruitment after the rebellion of 1857 and only changing after the push for wartime recruitments during World War I, where various non-martial castes were included (Bopegamage, 1969, p. 148). Since the initial phase, military recruitment was a related issue to the movements of caste assertions; the MPR of the lower caste population has been steadily growing. Lower caste assertion in India could be a useful example, if we accept Arthur Marwick’s contention that war, at the very least, increased the chances of an increase in the collective self-esteem of a community (Marwick, 1988). This subject evolved into one that involved significant political debate between various castes on the one hand, and judicial and administrative discussion of social justice on the other. Finally, the new political rhetoric since the turn of the twentieth century has intriguingly changed this call for military recruitment into a different cause. Particularly, the demand for the Chamar Regiment and the Ahir Regiment became the epicentre of this debate and are discussed in this article. A thorough historical understanding is required to fully comprehend the issue of lower caste recruitment in the armed forces and its ongoing tempo shift.

Colonial Politics of Caste Regiment Till Independence

When Europeans first arrived in the Indian subcontinent to fight for territorial conquest in the eighteenth century, they lacked sufficient manpower. Many Indians from the lower strata of Indian culture who lacked martial skills had to be recruited. Because of European training and discipline, these people evolved into a different breed of martial man than their upper-caste counterparts. Pre-modern Mughal–Maratha forces were mostly cavalry, with subsidiary matchlock-carrying infantrymen typically drawn from lower tier populations (Roy, 2011). Chhatrapati Shivaji was the first ruler to permit members of the Mahar caste to serve in the armed forces (Constable, 2001). Ranjit Singh attempted to integrate the Mazbis just like Shivaji incorporated Mahars in the army, but they were less successful compared to their colonial successors (Griffin, 1892). However, high-caste participation soon led to a gradual decline in the army’s lower caste population (Roy, 1997). Despite the ‘high caste’ trend in the military, there were a sizable number of lower caste sepoys, especially Mahars (Basham, 2008). Military recruitment began to classify different castes as ‘martial’ or ‘non-martial’ based on their ethnic characteristics like eating habits, daily activities, and so on after 1857’s racial turn in the colonial administration (Streets, 2004). As a result, much recruitment from lower castes was halted. Cohen argued that the British political necessity of ‘balancing classes against each other’ was the reason why segregation in the army ‘was greater than in civil society’ (Cohen, 1969a, p. 14).

When World War I broke out, it was obvious that recruiting based on the martial race theory would not be enough to meet the demand of war. Mahars once more began to swell the ranks of the army in 1914–1918 (Sundaram, 2019). In this way, World War I altered the army’s hierarchical cohesion, liberalizing it and changing the way it influenced its primary group solidarity. Caste hierarchy was being liberalized even at the level of the subaltern sepoys, as evidenced by David Omissi’s collection of letters from Indian soldiers who served in World War I. This was done in response to the importance of group solidarity on the battlefield. A Muslim from Punjab named Buali Hasan Khan wrote to his brother Rahimdad Khan of the 38th CHI stationed in France saying that the government was hiring a lot of people without taking their caste into account, including ‘sweepers, oil sellers, and dancing girl’s attendants’ (Omissi, 1999, p. 162). However, although letters would gradually begin to explain why casteism is bad for group solidarity, circumstances would still change things. A number of Hindus in Egypt who would have ‘rejected their food if only the shadow of a passer-by had fallen on it’, according to M. L. Tilhet, willingly ate from the hands of sweepers to survive from hunger (Omissi, 1999, p. 155). In one such letter, Tara Singh wrote about interdining between various castes to his teacher Sardar Karbar Singh in Rawalpindi. Three Sikhs, two Muslims, two sweepers and three cooks all ate at the same table with the company, according to Tara Singh (Omissi, 1999, p. 208).

During World War II, incorporation of Mahars, Mazbhis and Ramdasia Sikhs (Chamars by caste) increased (Cohen, 1969). In contrast to WWII, where caste politics emerged as a factor, the drive to increase the recruitment base in WWI was motivated by necessity. Babasaheb Ambedkar first took the initiative to convince people from lower caste groups to join the military because he thought that being included in the army was crucial for untouchable people’s social mobility. He claimed that the army of the East India Company, which was responsible for the subcontinent’s conquest, was an ‘army of untouchables’ (Moon, 1991, BAWS, vol. 9, p. 189). The education that the Untouchables in the army received while it was available to them, he claimed, ‘gave them an advantage which they had never before … a new vision and a new value’ (Moon, 1991, BAWS, vol. 9, p. 189). Babasaheb was aware of this specific revolutionary aspect of the colonial army’s recruitment as an agent of lower castes’ social and economic advancement because he came from a Mahar family and his father served in the military. He even intended to write a book on the history of the Indian Army because he was always interested in this subject, but he never got around to it (Moon, 1987, BAWS, vol. 4, p. xi). Ambedkar even had plans for teaching Dalit youth military discipline and courage. In addition, he established the Samata Sainik Dal (The Social Equality Corps) in 1927. This organization and structure resembled that of a regiment, and it gained notoriety when it guarded B. R. Ambedkar upon his return from the Round Table Conference in 1932 (Vundru, 2017). Even though Ambedkar intended for caste assertion to be based on education and employment, his initial conviction that martiality would increase caste mobility persisted.

Ambedkar shared the same aspirations for a lower caste assertion based on martiality as his fellow Dalits. A resolution regarding the enlistment of Scheduled Castes (SCs) in the military was proposed by Mr Piare Lall Kureel, a leader of the Jatva Chamar, in his capacity as a member of the Central Legislative Assembly. Piare Lall Kureel was the son of an ex-sepoy, like B. R. Ambedkar. In the British Indian Army, his father Manuva Ram Kureel served as a subadar-major and was given the Imperial Service Order (Kshirasagar, 1994, p. 156). Kureel’s demand was more radical. Kureel stated in Legislative Assembly debates that provincial bodies dominated by upper caste leadership constantly demoralized and discriminated against Dalit recruits (Government of India, 1944a, p. 564). Ambedkar proposed including Chamars in a newly formed regiment at the Round Table Conference (Singh, 2015, p. 256). Ambedkar joined the Defense Advisory Committee in July 1942 and at first promoted the reinstatement of the Mahar Battalion and the elimination of the politics surrounding the ‘Martial’/‘Non-Martial’ divide (Namishray, 2010, pp. 10–11). The first battalion of the independent Chamar Regiment, which served in Assam and Burma, was raised in March 1943. However, Kureel and Ambedkar’s opinions on the purpose of military reservations would eventually diverge. Kureel, a prominent leader of the dominant Chamar group, believed that caste battalions like the Chamar Regiment were still important despite Ambedkar’s support for a unified SC and Scheduled Tribe (ST) reservation in the army. Later, this conceptual discrepancy would become a political breach.

In the 20th Session of the Legislative Assembly, when P. L. Kureel asked the War Secretary C. M. Trivedi about the number of SC/ST regiments in British India. Trivedi would provide a list of five lower caste regiments: the Mahar Regiment, the Chamar Regiment, the 17th Dogra Regiment, the 3rd Madras Regiment, and the Bihar Regiment (Government of India, 1945, p. 902). Ambedkar and Kureel won, so it became a success. Lower level caste assertion was influenced by the tales of bravery on the battlefield. The Chamar Regiment’s new recruits were said to have the potential to ‘becoming first class soldiers’. The 27th Battalion of the 2nd Punjab Regiment’s Lt. Colonel Commandant reportedly stated that the recruits’ ‘aptitude for the profession of arms’ was amazing and that they were ‘avid for education very keen in sports and games’ (Government of India, 1943). However, things started to deteriorate after 1944. Chamar sepoys, like other people, became uneasy when they learned about the difficulties the families were having as a result of the steep price increase. Major Lt. Colonel wrote that an intelligence report detailed ‘the difficulties experienced by the families of Chamars in obtaining certain foodstuffs and other essential commodities’. Additionally, he stated that because the majority of the Chamar recruits did not own landed property, they were ‘entirely dependent’ on the bazaars’ supplies and ‘therefore in a different position than the families of other castes’ (Government of India, 1944b). The Chamar Regiment was later disbanded in 1946, and the authorities noted that since Chamars ‘were not enlisted in the pre-war army, they lack military traditions and experience’. Both their families and the men themselves seem to believe that serving in the military, even during times of peace, entails frequent family separations. According to additional reports, all recruits realized they would be able to visit their village for at least two months each year once the sepoys ‘returned to India’ and were ‘stationed within a reasonable distance of their homes’ (Government of India, 1946). The Chamar Regiment’s future disbandment ultimately led a long-term political tussle in parliamentary debates and election propagandas.

Aside from the Chamar Regiments, other lower caste regiments have persisted since World War II. Other caste regiments, besides those for lower castes, continued to exist as they had in the past, which led many other castes to demand their own distinct regiments. The government would face a difficult situation as a result of this new conundrum of maintaining caste regiments on the one hand while forbidding other castes from requesting their own separate caste regiments.

Post-Independence Indian Army and the Issue of Caste Reservation

Since gaining independence, the Indian army has begun to shed its provincilized, colonial nature. In an interview, Commander-in-Chief General K. M. Kariappa stated that since India was ‘the only province for the Indian Army’, there was ‘no question of provincialism in the Indian Army’ for recruiting candidates (United Press, 1949, p. 5). The demand for a caste regiment was hampered by this tendency. Similar to Kariappa, later military generals frequently voiced their opposition to the creation of caste regiments. Officials in the army had a typical perception of caste in relation to the army and were constantly ready to question the significance of social justice while presenting the caste regiments as a barrier to the foundation of group solidarity.

Following independence, Ambedkar raised the issue of incorporating SCs into the army once more. The Chamar Regiment and its disbandment were debated in the Lok Sabha for the first time on 13 December 1952 (Singh, 2015, p. 261). From this point forward, the issues of SC/ST reservation and caste regiments began to diverge in opposite directions. The first gradually evolved into a social justice issue, while the second became a sensitive issue of identity politics. During a parliamentary debate on the ‘Report of the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Tribes for 1953’, Ambedkar raised the issue of SC representation in the army, as well as other positions of authority in the government. Babasaheb mentioned an interesting statistic in his response to Dr. K. N. Katju, who was opposed to caste reservation in the army. According to the facts provided by him, in 1952, there were two Second Lieutenants from the SC population, but in 1954, there were none. Similarly, the number of SC Junior Commissioned Officers decreased from 601 to 435, Non-Commissioned Officers decreased from 3,273 to 2,533, and other rank and file decreased from 22,288 to 18,666 (Moon, 1997, BAWS, vol. 15, pp. 904–905). Ambedkar chastised the government officials who tried to use the justification that members of the lower classes were not able to fill such positions because of their poorer abilities. However, he went on to say that the diminishing percentage of SC representation, regardless of the so-called merit-based selection process, demonstrated that the recruitment process was oppressive because army occupations required a considerably lower level of intellectual exertion. He criticized the government’s ‘stepmotherly’ measures while calling for a positive compromise in the SC population recruitment for the army and police (Moon, 1997, BAWS, vol. 15, pp. 904–905).

While Ambedkar persisted in fighting for SC/ST reservation in the armed forces, other caste leaders persisted in speaking out in favour of the caste regiment in the parliament for their own vote bases, not even the slightest bit caring about Babasaheb’s plans. The Deputy Minister of Defense, Sardar Majithia, responded the same way when Shri Ganapati Ram questioned the Minister of Defense about it on 27 March 1953 (Parliament Secretariat, 1953, p. 1494). Similarly, on 17 April 1956, P. L. Banrupal questioned Minister Majithia, asking why caste regiments like the Rajput, Jat, Sikh, Maratha, Dogra and Gorkha Regiments still existed if the Chamar Regiment had been disbanded because of their connection to a particular caste. Majithia responded that the Chamar Regiment had not been disbanded because it was a caste regiment and that everything would continue as before (Parliament Secretariat, 1956, pp. 2426–2427). A few members of the Lok Sabha from the SC community demanded the Chamar Regiment’s return in 1964, during Y. B. Chouhan’s tenure as defence minister (Cohen, 1969b, p. 463). Some assert that Babu Jagjivan Ram was the one who made this demand, while according to other opinions, it was Hiralal Parmar, the Chamar leader of the Congress Party in Gujarat. A few other Chamar leaders were included in this group, including B. P. Maurya from the Republic Party of India. During the Republic Party era, B. P. Maurya enjoyed a sizable following among the Chamars of Uttar Pradesh, and it is likely that this was the case when he requested the Chamar Regiment. He later joined Congress (I) after leaving the Republic Party, and even later switched from Congress to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) (Jaoul, 2007, pp. 194, 199, 205).

The Ahir community organization pressurized for the creation of its own caste regiments after the 1962 Indo-China War when the Ahir caste-dominated 13th Kumaon Company bravely fought the numerically superior Chinese forces at the Indian garrison of Rejangla (Rao, 1964, p. 1440). The All India Yadav Mahasabha, inaugurated in 1924, took the opportunity to demand a separate Ahir or Yadav Regiment as the battle claimed the lives of 14 Ahir men. After 1857’s change in the recruitment doctrine, the Yadavs started to enter in the armed sources since 1904, they soon started to refashion themselves as Kshatriyas. The memorandum was presented to the Prime Minister by Yadav Members of Parliament, and this demand would continue even later. Just like the fact that Chamars started to claim Kshatriya status, the Yadavs followed the same path. Just like Chamar reinvention of their genealogical tradition as Chambar warrior clan, Yadavs under the new masculine ethos as radicalized under the All India Yadav Mahasabha became a ‘tool’ to manifest a ‘self-respective’ identity through the lens of the heroic past of ‘Abhira’ (Rao, 1979, p. 136–140). These gendered discourses of caste martiality and masculinity, soon took the political turn (Prasad, 2019, p. 118). From All India Yadav Mahasabha’s political demand, soon it would be various political parties’ issue for influencing community votes.

In 1969, the Elayaperumal Committee or The Committee on Untouchability, Economic and Educational Development of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes submitted its report which stated in the Ambedkarite way that ‘those who wield military power from invariably the dominant stratum of society’ (Government of India, 1969, p. 273). The Committee mentioned about the MPR and pointed out that the low MPR due to restriction of the military services to lower strata of the society as ‘the root cause for social inequalities in view of the fact that armed forces constitute a privileged stratum in the society’ (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1984). The Elayaperumal Committee mentioned about previous SC/ST Commissioner’s query regarding the declining number of SC/STs in armed forces. The figures of 1953–1958 show only marginal improvement in the MPR of SC/ST communities (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 2001). The committee further demonstrated that, between 1950 and 1965, 8,000 UPSC qualifiers were recommended for cadetship in the armed forces, with nine and five, respectively, coming from the SC and ST communities. These numbers represent a meagre 0.1% of the SC communities and 0.06% of the ST communities (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 2016). The Ministry of Defence was chastised by the committee for its justifications about the applicants’ poor academic performance and physical fitness because the UPSC admissions tests were regarded as being more difficult academically (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 2016). Because they attempted to support what Ambedkar had been arguing since the 1920s—that serving in the armed forces serves as a form of social mobility—by using sociological statistics methods, this committee’s argument regarding representation in the armed forces is significant. Interestingly enough, Stanislav Andreski about whose MPR theory we have already discussed, during the time of creation of the Elayaperumal Committee, wrote the book Military Organisation and Society where Andreski argued that the proportion of population’s participation in the armed forces tends to influence the formation of the social strata (Andreski, 1968, p. 33). While the legal bureaucrats continued in the line of Babasaheb, the battle for identity politics continued on the other side. After the 1969 Elayaperumal Committee topic acquired control of the parliamentary proceedings, the subsequent Chamar leader, Babu Jagjivan Ram, was appointed as the defence minister in 1970. Sam Manekshaw applied pressure to thwart his endeavour to build the Chamar Regiment (Kodian, 1990, p. 39). Manekshaw prevented the defence minister from raising the caste regiment issue within the army, much like Kariappa did. Jagjivan Ram was the Defence Minister for the second term of the Cabinet; however, he was unsuccessful again (Singh, 2015, p. 259).

In 1984, the Committee on the Welfare of SC/ST (1984–1985) headed by A. C. Das presented a list of representation of SC/STs in three wings of armed forces, that is, army, navy and air forces, which shows the excessive underrepresentation of these backward communities as a whole. The proportion of SC/ST individuals in the officer ranks ranged from a maximum of 2.8% to a minimum of 0%. At the regular subaltern level, the representation ranged from a high of 6.52% to a low of 0.2% (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1984). The committee asked the defence ministry about the low rate of representation, in whose answer the ministry pointed out that for the aim of increasing the SC/ST participation in the National Defence Academy, the place of raising future officer corps, the authorities planned for comparative liberalization of the admission system as well as providing special care to the aspirants from SC/ST communities by providing special coaching (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1984). For recruitment in officers and other ranks, the defence ministry reported that the authorities in various sainik schools providing 15% reservation for SCs and 7.5% for STs in admission (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1984). The Committee mentioned that the stress should be more on maintaining proper reservation criteria for the SCs/STs. Providing the examples of the Assam Rifles and the Border Security Force the Committee mentioned that the reservation system could be used without suffering the defence capabilities (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1984). But regarding the reservation in the armed forces, the Committee and the Ministry of Defence argued against each other. While the committee argued that the reservations in the armed forces should be introduced and maintained because the exclusion of defence services from the purview of reservations for the SC/STs was ‘contrary to the letter and spirit of the constitution’ (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1984). In defence to that, the Ministry of Defence mentioned about Article 335 according to which the claims of the members of SC/STs should be ‘taken into considerations consistently with the maintenance of efficiency of administration in the making of appointments to services and posts in connection with the affairs of the Union or of a state’ (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1984). This rhetoric of efficiency and merit would be the most important catchphrase for denying social justice, although the ever-subjective concept of ‘efficiency’ remained legally undefined. Anurag Bhaskar showed that the ‘exclusionary’ notion of efficiency as persisted in the precolonial and colonial times, despite assumed and repeated by administrative and legal bodies, had been ‘rejected during the framing of the Constitution’, and even criticized by Ambedkar (Bhaskar, 2021). However, the Committee further warned the Ministry of Defence’s attitude regarding the reservation policy. The Committee summarily mentioned that this ‘touch-me-not’ policy of the armed forces would create discontent. Further mentioning about the Chamar and the Mahar Regiment’s bravery, the Committee debunked the Ministry of Defence’s argument that the SCs and STs have no efficiency and merit for being recruited (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1984). This was where the Committee recommended the restoration of the Chamar Regiment and asked the Ministry to submit the necessary causes for disbanding the Chamar Regiment (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1984). The Ministry of Defence stated that it was not yet possible to determine the precise grounds for disbanding the Regiment, as no document regarding the causes of this disbandment has been available (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1984). Again they answered that reservation for SC/STs along with acts like raising a special Chamar regiment would encourage a policy of ‘preferential treatment to certain classes for recruitment’ which was a British policy and discarded by the Indian Republic. The recruitment had been thrown open to all castes, creed, community and religion (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1984). So, this bureaucratic contestation continued even after so many days.

Caste Martiality and Electoral Politics: Transformations of the Twenty-first Century

Later on in 2001–2002, Justice Shri Kariya Munda Committee on the Welfare of SCs and STs submitted its 17th report on the MPR of the SC/STs. During this time, Atal Behari Vajpayee government took up the issue of SC/ST representation in the army with utmost importance. There is another cause to this sudden growth of interest. In an attempt to recast the Dalit tradition in favour of Hindutva unity, Mr Ashok Singhal of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad said on 14 June 1995 that modern Dalits are the successors of renowned fighters of ancient Hindu India by invoking the traditions of monarchs like Suheldev Paswan and Satan Pasi (see more, Ghosh & Mondal, 2022). The Munda Committee cited Singhal’s speech from 1995 (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 2001). By incorporating them into the larger Hindu myths, the new Hindutva forces sought to assert dominance over the Dalit past and the Dalit identity politics, according to Badri Narayan (Narayan, 2009, pp. xi–xii). Based on the findings and recommendations of the previous committees, the Munda Committee has since reviewed the situation. The Government’s argument was flatly rejected by the Munda Committee. The Committee ruled that the ‘recruitment monopoly’ of high, privileged, and so-called material classes must be broken in order to rationalize and streamline the existing infantry regiments’ (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 2001, p. 5). The Munda Committee came to the conclusion that if casteism is prevalent in society as a whole, it will also reflect in the armed forces, which was in line with the earlier Das Committee’s finding that the Indian armed forces cannot maintain their ‘touch-me-not’ policy, as it has its duty to indulge in the eradication of casteism. This is because ‘the Armed Forces cannot be divorced from society as a whole’ (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 2001, p. 6). Additionally, it chastised the government for its ‘parrot-like refrain that there are no reservations for SCs and STs’ because ‘recruitment is open to every citizen of India, and that system should not be disturbed nor should any structural alteration be permitted’ and drew attention to it as ‘a justification for maintaining the existence of a “very strong vested interest in the present system”’ (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 2001, p. 6). The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)’s vice president and former Lok Sabha representative, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, raised the issue of the Chamar Regiment’s restoration in Lok Sabha once more. Raghuvansh Singh proposed the Chamar Regiment on 30 August 2011, during the Lok Sabha’s second session. Originally, the RJD’s attempt to establish a caste regiment was an untimely prelude to the ‘Dalit Hindutva’ politics that have gained popularity since the Narendra Modi government took office. Well-known Dalit leader, Ram Raj or Udit Raj led some smaller Dalit organizations like the Lord Buddha Club (1996), the All India Confederation of SC/ST organizations (1997) and the Indian Justice Party (2003). This Ambedkaraite turned Dalit Hindutva leader Udit Raj of the Khattik-caste of Kanpur region, on 1 December 2016 pursued for the Chamar Regiment demand in the Lok Sabha. This is when the demand for the Chamar Regiment far from being a demand of Dalit martiality, took the form of Hindutva’s reinvention of tradition where the Chamar martiality was incorporated in the long string of mythological reinterpretation. Untouchable Chamars became ancient Hindu warriors. Udit Raj argued differently compared to his predecessors. He contended that if a multitude of caste-based regiments like the Rajput and Jat Regiments persisted even now, only disbanding the Chamar Regiment would be an injustice. He further requested that the government either dismantle the existing caste-based regiments or guarantee the re-creation of the Chamar Regiment, Khatik Regiment, Valmiki Regiment and Dhankar Regiment (Lok Sabha Secretariat, 2016). Just like the Chamar Regiment agitation, the demand for the Ahir Regiment continued to churn the local political situation. A few days ago, Akhilesh Yadav in 2019’s the Swamajwadi Party’s (SP) election manifesto asked for the establishment of the Ahir Regiment, echoing the decades-old demand (IANS, 2019). Now, SP has always been a Yadav dominated party, but their once staunch rival the Bahujan Swamajwadi Party (BSP) tried to muster Yadav votes by including the same demand. In recent days, BSP’s MP, SS Yadav demanded for the Ahir Regiment during the zero hour of parliamentary debates (Ghildiyal, 2022). BSP is well-known for their demand for the Chamar Regiment, but their recent support for the Ahir Regiment demand demonstrates the importance of communal vote banks. Beforehand, the demand for the Chamar Regiment and the Ahir Regiment were thought to be antithetical. During SP’s 2019’s demand, Chandrasekhar Azad of the Bhim Army made a counter-demand of the reintroduction of the Chamar Regiment (Prakash, 2020). Despite the demands, counter-demands and protest demonstration, the BJP government strictly mentioned that no caste regiments would be created in future. But despite the Modi government’s strict policy of not creating further caste regiments, local BJP leaders periodically kept on fanning the flames of such demands. Recently, BJP MP from UP, Dinesh Lal Yadav (Ranjan, 2022) demanded for the Ahir Regiment again, which shows that the issue of caste regiment remained an emotive issue at the lower level political mobilization in particular areas like UP, Haryana, etc. So, the traditional problem between politico-bureaucratic central authorities, representing state continued their contestation with the socio-communal demands of the regions where party affiliations often got unstable during electoral seasons. This issue of caste regiment even came into play in the 2021’s election of West Bengal. Bengal has a long tradition of ‘Kshatriyaization’ among lower caste communities like Rajbangshis and Poundra-Kshatriyas, which the new West Bengal state BJP leadership tried to use during the election-time community mobilization. In 2019, BJP MP Nisith Pramanik based on 1949’s demand made by then Coachbehar’s king Sir Dipendra Narayan regarding the creation a Narayani Battalion with Rajbangshi population, asked for the creation of it (India Kanoon, 2019). Trinamool Congress and BJP contested for their control over the Rajbangshi population and the former formed a Narayani Battalion within the state police forces but despite BJP’s promise of one Narayani Battalion in the Indian Army before 2019’s Lok Sabha Election in Bengal, have done nothing till now (Nath, 2020). So we can see how the question of caste regiment periodically caused upheaval in the electoral politics which often went against the Ambedkarian plan of increasing the SC/ST representation within the army and periodically destabilized the main objective of social welfare for the marginal communities.

Conclusion

Caste assertion through military representations became a topic of political rhetoric and social welfare. While Ambedkar attempted to use military recruitment as a process of social justice and state-sponsored social alleviation, its unbidden association with identity-based parliamentary politics quickly converted the nature of the demand into a matter of electoral mobilization. Various parties trying to woo different communities with their demand of military recruitment, sooner or later shifted away from the real objective of that Ambedkarian demand. The Hindutva politics at the lower level easily incorporated this identity politics by reinventing lower and middle caste identities as Kshatriyas. The military bureaucrats have continued to oppose demands for caste regiment, while judiciary kept on demanding for the increase of SC/ST representation in the armed forces for the sake of social mobility. Both these bureaucratic tendencies made the issue even more complex, beyond the purview of electoral politics. This tripartite struggle between popular politics, judicial necessity, and military bureaucracy made that issue a perennial dilemma for the Indian democracy.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

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Uniform as Assertion: The Politics of Caste Reservation in Colonial and Post-colonial Armed Forces of India (1930–2020)

Abstract

Keywords

Colonial Politics of Caste Regiment Till Independence

Post-Independence Indian Army and the Issue of Caste Reservation

Caste Martiality and Electoral Politics: Transformations of the Twenty-first Century

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

References