http://www.asianage.com/columnists/sat-sri-akal-britain-326
Mar 18, 2015
The proposal of creating a Sikh Regiment in the British Army is partly due to the manpower shortage. Also, Britain wants to use the new regiment to tap into the political potential of British Sikh voters.
Reports in the British media indicate that a minister in the British government, “speaking on the sidelines”, touched upon a proposal under consideration in the British Army to raise a Sikh Regiment. The Indian Army is, of course, proud of having a Sikh Regiment (of 19 battalions), with a history going all the way back to the 19th century. The regiment has a proud record of valour, both pre- and post-Independence (including two winners of the Param Vir Chakra, India’s highest gallantry award). It can be reasonably assumed that proposed British Sikh Regiment would be basically of the same stock, raised from the manpower pool of the Sikh community domiciled in Britain, sometimes referred to as “British Sikhs”, all presumably British citizens and permanent residents of that country.
It can be further speculated that the new regiment might initially be a single active duty infantry battalion, after which the regiment would be progressed and expanded according to British government policy and availability of suitable manpower and finances. Not unnaturally, the news of a Sikh Regiment in the British Army has aroused interest and curiosity in India, because the Sikh faith is essentially of Indian origin, and India is historically the original habitat of the Sikhs.
A large number of Sikhs migrated mainly to Western countries like England, the United States, Canada, Australia, and other Commonwealth countries while many Sikhs living abroad have close family connections back home in India. This has created its own distinct social culture where the community abroad maintains home links with Punjab and its politics in India, and even replicates them in Britain in their own environment.
The distinctive trademark turbans and unshorn tresses and beards are no longer novelties abroad, but their presence in the armed forces of their adopted countries has not been in proportions to their numbers.
The aim of the British government in announcing the proposal of creating a Sikh Regiment in the British Army at this juncture could be two-fold. Firstly, the British Army is trying to make up for the manpower shortage it has been facing by mobilising recruits from a distinctive British ethnic minority with a historic tradition of soldiering for the British Empire. The British Army itself has become quite unattractive as a prospective employment for the present generation of British youth. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the British government wants to use the new regiment to tap into the political potential of British Sikh votebank ahead of the next British general elections, imminent in 2015.
Whether the overall availability of “military grade” Sikh manpower in Britain will permit raising a classic “pure Sikh” infantry unit remains to be seen, but whatever its final ethnic composition, observers in India, particularly those associated with the Sikh Regiment of the Indian Army, will undoubtedly watch the British experiment with more than a little interest.
In the process, the British government might also revisit a somewhat parallel experience of recruitment of Gurkhas into the Gurkha Brigade of the British Army created post-Independence, by a Tripartite Treaty between India, Britain and Nepal regarding the future of the Gurkha Rifles of the erstwhile British Indian Army.
The Gurkha Brigade experiment has dwindled to two British Gurkha infantry battalions, rotating between Hong Kong, later Brunei after the Chinese takeover, and the United Kingdom. Relationships with British Gurkha ex-servicemen have also not been idyllic. They have somewhat soured over the years over demands by the latter for the constitutional right to permanent residence in the United Kingdom after retirement, on par with other British Army ex-servicemen, as also parity in pay and pensions with the rest of the British Army.
The British Sikh Regiment will possibly remain an experimental prototype, until its impact on the milieu of a multi-racial Britain can be adequately assessed. Britain is facing “football crowd racism” and gang clashes involving immigrant communities. Also, there is the increase of Islamic fundamentalism in a radicalised British-Pakistani community as fighters against the West, who vociferously support and actively contribute to the ideology of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Al Qaeda, and international jihad, in Syria, Iraq and West Asia.
The British Army itself has been restrained by an environment of economy, and compelled to downsize and disband or amalgamate many of its cherished historic regiments with long traditions of service to the “Crown and Country” from the times of Waterloo and the Peninsular War, right down to the Cold War and the war on terror. The present British Army could not be a very happy one.
India, too, will have some concerns about the Sikh Regiment of the British Army, and the possibility of linkages developing between its rank and file, and the radical British Khalistani community in Britain, entrenched in the local gurdwara politics of London’s South Hall, which undoubtedly influences opinion in the British Sikh community.
An extreme of this was the knife attack in London by two Sikhs on retired Lt. Gen. K.S. “Bul Bul” Brar of the Indian Army, a decorated war hero of Bangladesh, while he was walking with his wife during a private visit to Britain. As is widely known, Maj. Gen. Brar had been the Indian Army divisional commander during Operation Bluestar in 1984, tasked to clear the Golden Temple in Amritsar of the terrorists who had taken up fortified positions.
For the record, the task had been one of the severest tests faced by the Indian Army since Independence, which was successfully completed and with honour. If the British Sikh Regiment is created, it will be incumbent for the British government to remain alert to the possibilities of Khalistani sympathisers attempting to contact its ranks, in the same manner as did sympathisers of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) the British Army. The potential for mischief does exist here, and the Indian and British governments will have to devise methods to neutralise it. Meanwhile, a hearty “Sat Sri Akal” to the British Sikh Regiment from their country cousins here at home!
The writer is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament
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