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How many Muslims?

Think. And if the answer surprises you, think again. Think of the biggest communal riots of the past two decades. The massacre of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere. What happened the moment the first army columns appeared on the scene? The mobs simply disappeared.

The very next moment, the killings, the pillage, the arson, which had seemed so unstoppable, was over. Those of us who lived in Delhi then, particularly those like this writer who covered those riots, saw the first army units roll out in strength, even in armoured personnel carriers. But we never saw them fire a shot in anger, or punishment. The same mobs that saw Delhi police as silently complicit allies and us reporters as an easily squashable nuisance, now melted away.

Where was the passion, the vengeance, the anger, we all wondered for a long time. No subsequent inquiry even talked about whether or not the army had used adequate force. In fact, most inquiries were on the issue of why it took so long for the then government to call out the army.

Cut to other major communal conflagrations. Bhiwandi, Meerut, Mumbai, Moradabad and Varanasi after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992-93. Ahmedabad, several times, and then all of Gujarat under Narendra Modi. How come the killings stopped the moment the army appeared on the scene? And remember that question again, how many bullets did the army fire in each case, how many rioters did it kill or wound? If the answer is none, or almost none, we have something to think about.

That something is a fact all of us need to be proud of. The moment the word goes around that the army is going to appear on the scene, it has the effect of cooling these murderous passions. Rioters are cowardly thugs.

They are intoxicated partly by religion and partly by the prospect of a riot (usually with a police seen to be complicit with the majority community in that particular setting) resulting in loads of "fun" of murder, rape, and, most of all, loot. In the Gujarat riots of 2001 we saw well-to-do families arrive in nice cars to loot shops in riot-hit areas. The basic fact is, these types have no intention of doing any of this in defiance of an impartial authority that means business. They are not so blinded by passion as to risk taking on a force that is seen to be impartial, tough, and professional.

How else do you explain the facts described above? Why else would just the arrival of the first columns of the army have such a salutary effect on communal riot situations? Why else do riots that police forces cannot control by firing bullets and tear gas shells fizzle out at the very sight of olive green even though the army, under our Constitution, is only called out "in aid of civil power" and has to await a civil magistrate’s orders before opening fire (except in a few regions under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act)?

The short answer is, that is because the army is also seen as a totally impartial, non-communal, apolitical force. Even rioting thugs fear its professionalism and respect its impartiality. That is why they do not wait for army columns to open fire. It is exactly the opposite with the police and that is also because, additionally, they see the police much as a handmaiden of the local political establishment they usually hold in contempt. That is why after so many communal riots (including, notably, Gujarat) the question often asked later is about the delay in calling out the army.

During the massacre-a-day Assam election of 1983, the question everybody asked was: why isn’t the army being called out? For those who may have forgotten, 21 days of this election cost 7,000 lives, twice as many as in the anti-Sikh riots the following year and nearly ten times as many (as per the figures given to Parliament by the UPA government’s home ministry) as in Modi’s Gujarat. I remember the morning-after Nellie, where 3,500 Muslims had been butchered in a few hours and the question from the survivors was the same: where is the army? The army, then, could not be called out because the election commission had put a bar on that during the campaign which a large majority of the Assamese boycotted, often violently. The moment the election was over, and the army was out, sanity returned. Almost overnight.

Now let me ask you one more question. In any of these cases, do you ever remember anybody asking which community the officer commanding that particular column belonged to? He could be Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Muslim, but both the rioters and the victims believed instantly that he meant business. Never in the history of independent India has a unit of the army faced even a fraction of the kind of distrust that a column of state police, even paramilitary forces and most notably UP’s PAC, evoke. Once again that’s irrespective of which regiment the column comes from, what community, ethnic composition it might have and which god its commander may be praying to.

That is where the Sachar Committee and its backers lost the plot when they asked for a Muslim headcount in the armed forces, first brought to light by Shishir Gupta in The Sunday Express last week. The armed forces are today the only institution in our establishment where such considerations do not work. A Muslim who rises in the armed forces is not identified by his community —it didn’t happen with Lt Gen M A Zaki, who commanded with such distinction in the Northern Sector during one of the most critical periods of the insurgency in Kashmir, nor in the case of Air Chief Marshal I H Latif.

Before he became president, A P J Abdul Kalam was never seen as a Muslim scientist in the defence establishment. The armed forces’ unease at being dragged into communal-secular politics is therefore logical. One of the most traumatic periods in the Indian Army’s history was its involvement in Operation Bluestar, which led to its first, and only significant mutiny since Independence. The army learnt, at great cost, the risks in cut-and-dried soldierly involvement in such sensitive communal situations.

Mind you, the two generals in control were Sikhs, the first columns of assault troops (from The Guards), were led by a Muslim commandant, and the casualties included a large number of Sikhs. Yet the army ended up damaged because it was seen to be fighting one particular community as an instrument of state power.

The army and India’s leaders learnt and absorbed many lessons from that tragedy. One of these was to stay completely clear of any communal mess. That is why it was tragic that the NDA government tried to give the army’s Kargil success a communal-political colour. That is why it was doubly preposterous that Hindutva storm-troopers planned to take the radioactive ash from Pokharan for "darshan" through the country. You communalise issues of national security, and its armed forces, only at our collective peril.

Instead of sending out completely idiotic —and communally loaded —memos, the Sachar Committee should visit some army units and see the exemplary manner in which they manage communal harmony. In mixed units, a temple, gurudwara, church and mosque are always found under the same roof and nobody seems to complain.

More, the armed forces take their secular identity so seriously that in January 2004, the then Army chief, NC Vij, had ordered that soldiers cannot display religious symbols overtly while in uniform. Only the Sikhs were allowed to wear kadas (steel bracelets). But kadas are also worn by officers of other communities commanding Sikh troops. It is because the army is so secular that the propaganda by Pakistan, after its 1971 defeat, that India’s General J F R Jacob-to whom General Niazi surrendered-was a Jew had zero effect.

The Pakistani intention was to create a Jew versus Muslim controversy. But who remembers General Jacob as a Jew? Who remembered it when he was appointed Governor? Nobody has ever accused any Indian Muslim soldier of deserting or showing cowardice. The Sachar Committee should go carefully over the Kargil casualties list and the answers to some of its questions are buried there: the number of Indian army’s Kargil martyrs who happened to be Muslim is way above, more than five times above, their percentage in the army.

There’s another point: if official concerns about proportional representation of Muslims take root, there can be questions why other minorities, Sikhs and Christians, for example, are "over-represented" in the armed forces. Then you are sucked into a never-ending divisive spiral.

Yes, the number of Muslims is still way below their percentage in our population, but so is the case in the IAS, in our scientific and medical institutions, and certainly in the corporate world. But that is changing. The numbers in the armed forces are increasing, because more educated young Muslims are entering the armed forces as officers.

As the increasing enrolment of Blacks and Hispanics in the US military demonstrates, for communities that feel backward or victimised in democracies, entry into the armed forces brings the three things minorities need most of all: equality, respect and pride. Are the minorities able to access that great equalising opportunity in a democracy or not, is a very legitimate concern for which a government is perfectly justified in setting up a committee.

But it needs modern, open, constructive minds that produce solutions for the future, rather than tired, cliched, lazy questions that merely communalise a genuine concern and mostly do harm to the army, India —and most notably the minorities themselves.

Justice Sachar’s committee asked the armed forces: Kitne Musalman hain? (How many Muslims are there?) What happens, when after an Army unit has spoiled his riot party, a communal thug asks: Kitne Musalman the? (How many Muslims were there?)

Veteran journalist Shekhar Gupta is the editor-in-chief of Indian Express. Write to him at sg@expressindia.com