Army asked how many muslims you have in army. Last year it had only 30,000 out of its 1.3 million strength. The highest ranking muslim was the brother of noted Film actor and theatre personality Naseruddin Shah - he is a Lt. Gen - one rank below the Amry chief - locateb in Dimapur- North East India.
Sometime babck Suraj Bhan - Chairman of Scheduled castes and Scheduled Tribes Commission had asked for reservation in the army based on caste and tribes -since few are chosen - esp. in the largely corrupted recruitment of privates (the lowest ranking soldiers) where the pass rate is about 1% only -and recruitment done without higher level scrutiny. As tradionally only uppercastes were in the army besides Gorkhas and Sikhs - thru corrupted system they only hire their relatives and friends or
their kids etc. http://www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20040118/haryana.htm#4
Example: The security guard (a Rajput) at Jaipur School earlier was a conduit - since his brother-in-law was the head of an army recuiting center. He took Rs 30,000 from each candidate -half of which he pocketed. Before his brother-in-law retired two years back - he got his own son selected (of course for free- the uncle would surely be considerate of his nephew) . His son had recently completed grade 10 - the minimum requirement. The school guard got about Rs 2,400 pm from the school besied his army pension. his son got a job paying about Rs7,000 pm (US$150) in the army. Satisfiedthe security guard left the school job and went home. BTW: He had also worked for long as guard in Assam Tea estates and in Kuwait (and mentioned its 'forward", jeans clad, car driving girls who came to
his industrial camp every weekend to pickup Indian guys)
Despite eveything I said - Indian army is the most secular and bias free body - in India govt.
Further, it is difficult to turn the other cheek -when you are under attack from ULFA etc in NE or Kashmiri terrorisists or Naxals in Bihar and Central India .
So it is very likely, that many uppercaste soldiers do not empathise with tribals and poor and attack at the slightest provocation - on the battle front - trigger happy soldiers might be taken initiative rather than wait for the commander to give firing order --perhaps.
Any comments?
Umesh
Umesh Sharma
5121 Lackawanna ST
College Park, MD 20740
1-202-215-4328 [Cell Phone]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
Yahoo! Cars NEW - sell your car and browse thousands of new and used cars online search now
_______________________________________________ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
