The Delhi High Court’s recent judgement upholding the dismissal of a commanding officer of the Indian Army, Samuel Kamalesan, for refusing to participate in weekly religious parades may appear harsh through a civilian lens.
However, in the disciplined structure of the Armed Forces, where duty, hierarchy, and unity take precedence, the decision is both justified and necessary. His refusal was not a one-off act of conscience but a repeated and defiant disregard of orders.
His superior officers had reminded him time and again of his responsibility to lead by example. Yet, he persisted in believing that participating in the unit’s weekly religious rituals compromised his personal faith. This belief stems from a flawed and rigid understanding of religion—one that places ritual over spirit and personal ideology over collective harmony.
The Indian Army operates on a bedrock of secularism—one that is not merely constitutional but functional and deeply embedded in its ethos. Officers are expected to participate in the religious observances of their units, irrespective of their own personal faiths.
This tradition, inherited from the British and maintained post-Independence, serves a vital purpose: it fosters cohesion, mutual respect, and morale among troops drawn from India’s richly diverse religious landscape.
In practice, this means that Christian officers may attend mandir or gurudwara parades, Hindu officers may accompany troops to Sunday church services in Christian-majority regiments like the Assam Regiment, and Muslim officers may participate in Sikh or Hindu festivals alongside their men.
The goal is not religious conversion or endorsement but identification with the soldiers under their command. For the military, such symbolic acts go a long way in building trust and brotherhood.
The Sarv Dharam Sthal model—common prayer halls for all faiths—is suitable only for static or multi-faith units. Field units, often mobile and homogenous in composition, continue to observe specific religious routines.
A commanding officer’s presence in these observances is not optional; it is integral to the military’s secular and motivational framework. Kamalesan had every right to worship in his own way in private. After leading his men in their tradition, he could well have attended the Eucharist or prayed in solitude.
True faith, after all, does not reside in rigid exclusion but in understanding and inclusion. Even Jesus, whom Kamalesan sought to serve, did not found a religion but lived and died a Jew. He moved among people of different beliefs and taught love above dogma.
Tragically, the officer’s rigid view cost him his career. He needed understanding, counselling, and better religious education—not to dilute his faith, but to deepen it. In the armed forces, discipline, duty, and shared identity come before individual insistence. The court merely reaffirmed this enduring truth.
