Letters: Regiment change

This refers to Ajai Shukla’s article “All the chief’s men” (January 14). The British organised the Indian army on the basis of ethnicity to deploy appropriate regiments to quell regional troubles — for example, Punjab regiment in the south, Madras regiment in the north and Gurkhas elsewhere. On the other hand, these ethnic regiments also served the purpose of ensuring communication between soldiers and their families before the telecom boom. Since most soldiers in a unit belonged to the same village or block, when one went on leave he would carry messages home for the rest of the soldiers. It may now take a generation to remove this ethnic regimental system, but the process could have been hastened by mixing the regiments when senior infantry battalions were being converted into mechanised infantry battalions.

 

T R Ramaswami Mumbai

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