Job scarcity: Why 51 Haryana men tried to join the Army by posing as Sikhs

Call it desperation to get employment or taking a short-cut to realise their dream of joining the armed forces, some young men in Haryana have been caught faking their religious identity.

While officers in the Indian Army say that such instances have been coming to light from time to time on a small scale, the dangerous trend needs to be curbed as it also has a bearing on the social fabric.

Lack of jobs in rural Haryana along with shrinking land holdings is the prime force driving the youth to look for such shortcuts to land dignified employment.

51 FIRs

The matter has once again come into the public eye with media reports claiming that as many as 51 FIRs have been registered in the last two years against youngsters from Haryana who tried to pass themselves off as Sikhs to join regiments like the Sikh Regiment, the Sikh Light Infantry and the Punjab Regiment.

These men reportedly got selected and it was only during the course of their training that they got exposed. 

Sources say that these youngsters have adopted two types of modus operandi. The first is to actually convert to Sikhism before registering for enrolment. This is done through a very convenient baptism ceremony where the person concerned takes Amrit at a local gurudwara.

Community specific regiments

Sources disclosed that since the Indian Army has certain community specific regiments that have been in existence since the British era, these youngsters take the religious route for enrolment.

For example, the Sikh regiment, which mainly recruits youngsters from Punjab, also recruits young Sikh boys from the adjoining states that have a sizeable Sikh population.

It is this quota that is being targeted by non-Sikhs desperate to join the Army.

The idea behind the British having community specific regiments like the Maratha Regiment, the Sikh Regiment, the Jat Regiment, and the Gurkha Regiment etc. was to play up the cultural homogeneity that worked as a force-multiplier in action. With community specific war cries like ‘Jai Mahakali' or 'Aayo Gurkhali’, the homogeneity can still be seen in these regiments.

But this practice of having such community specific regiments was discontinued after Independence.

“Former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda had come in for criticism when he had sought a Karnataka Regiment,” recalls Lt Gen KJ Singh who recently retired as the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Western Command.

“Such incidents keep on cropping up from time to time. They are not the norm, but whenever they get highlighted there is a lot of noise about this,” he said, adding that he himself had once come across a youngster who had got enrolled as a Sikh despite having the surname of ‘Sharma’, a name generally used by Brahmins in north and central India.

He expressed his perception that since the youngsters in Punjab are now keen on either going abroad or are falling more and more into the trap of rampant drug menace, their counterparts in neighbouring states are exploiting the opportunity.

He explained that the normal recruitment in the Indian Army is now being done on the basis of the quota allocated to every state of the recruitable male population.

“But there are certain states that have to surrender their quota as the residents do not show interest in joining the armed forces,” he says.

The nationalism angle

Recently, former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav had created a controversy when he spoke of how only a few Gujaratis join the Army.

Ever since Narendra Modi became the chief minister of Gujarat, there has been emphasis on attracting the youth, particularly from communities like Darbars, to the Indian Army. Observers say that this effort is being made to dispel the criticism about a lot of noise being made about the BJP’s narrative of nationalism while very few people from the state known as the 'laboratory of Hindutva' join the Armed forces and actually go out to ‘fight the enemy’.

There have been occasions when the Modi government in Gujarat had requested the Army to park tanks and field-guns outside cinema halls or at exhibitions whenever Bollywood films on nationalist themes were being screened. One such occasion was the screening of the film ‘LOC Kargil’ in multiplexes of Ahmedabad. The Indian Air Force too has organised air shows in the state, which shares a long border with Pakistan.

The impostors

Coming back the instance of Harayanvi boys posing as Sikhs, sources say that such elements get exposed during the course of training on various counts like their inability to speak in fluent Punjabi or to read the Gurumukhi script. They are also unable to explain the tenets of Sikhism when asked to do so and also have problems tying the turban.

The most recent reported instances are of four boys from non-Sikh families in Kaithal who had contrived to get certificates showing them as ‘Amritdhari’ (baptized) Sikhs from gurudwaras in Patiala and Sangrur districts of Punjab along with Pehowa in Haryana. They had reportedly enrolled in the Sikh Regiment through a recruitment rally in 2015.

Reports say that a FIR was lodged in February in Ambala and two of the four have been arrested. One is expected to be caught soon while the fourth one is absconding. The address proof given by him has also been reportedly found to be fake.