Another head count

With the army arresting two soldiers in Kashmir and official confirmation coming that there8217;s enough prima facie evidence to conduct an inquiry into 8216;terrorist links8217;, there will be a barrage of questions in the government but not the one that should really be asked. If you want to improve the army by counting how many Muslims it employs can you really be surprised if the 8220;other side8221; tries to subvert the forces by performing a different kind of headcount? The point here is obviously not a mechanical cause and effect relationship between the thankfully aborted efforts of the Sachar Committee and subversion attempts by terrorists. The issue is that if the government appears to measure institutional secularism by prioritising religious identities over professional ones, the state loses its most important argument against men who murder in the name of God.

One need not have access to official secrets to understand why the armed forces are a potential recruitment pool for terrorists. But do all politicians currently in power understand why taking the Sachar Committee exercise to its conclusion would have made the army several times more vulnerable to infiltration? It is important that the country knows the answer because there8217;re enough indications that grand follies masquerading as social engineering continue to attract votaries in this ruling dispensation.

As for the specific attempts to infiltrate the army in Kashmir, if we were to take information available so far at face value, terrorists8217; ambitions would seem to be fairly low-key. That8217;s no reason for comfort, of course. But it is a good context in which to remember that our forces have been firefighting in Kashmir for years now without sectarianism infecting its professionalism. This is a remarkable record in the midst of a conflict that took identity politics to violent depths long before the world recognised there was a war against terror to be fought. And it was only made possible because the army had always been left out of mainstream politics8217; not infrequent attempts to define national identity as an ugly sum of many parts. The army has to be, and we have confidence it will be, vigilant and ruthless against infiltrators. But it would help if it doesn8217;t get a certain kind of help from politicians.