A disturbing trend of playing to a liberal gallery is leading a section of the judiciary to give low weightage to rules regarding such a sensitive service as the Indian Army. Recently, the Karnataka High Court dismissed a writ appeal by the Army challenging a single judge order directing it to allow an officer to resign in order to marry a foreigner. On November 21, 2012, a division bench headed by Chief Justice Vikramajit Sen dismissed the appeal, told the Army not to behave like a ‘khap panchayat’, and imposed costs of Rs 75,000 on the service.
Briefly, Major Vikas Kumar, serving in the Corps of Signals and a resident of Koramangala, Bangalore, sought permission to marry Arnila Rangamali Gunaratne, a Sri Lankan national residing in the same area. The Army rejected his application on September 19, 2011 and refused to discharge him from service to facilitate the marriage. He approached the High Court where Justice BS Patil on December 7, 2011 directed the Army to consider his application and relieve him from service. The Army ignored the directions and Kumar again approached the court. On June 18, Justice HN Nagamohan Das quashed the Army order rejecting his application.
The Army challenged this order, but a division bench headed by the Chief Justice held that the Army could not have refused discharge to the Major as directed by the single judge. Counsel for the Union Government said the Army did not consider the Major’s application as the girl had not consented to taking up Indian citizenship, so the Major could lose terminal benefits. Untimely termination of service involves refunding the entire cost of training incurred by the State.
While not quibbling over the legal merits of the case, one feels the bench took an unduly liberal approach to the issue. The Corps of Signals is an extremely sensitive wing handling communications and surveillance activities. Yet the High Court saw nothing amiss in a serving officer of the rank of Major becoming intimate with a foreign national.
The Court showed disdain for the authorities ordering a probe into how the officer came into contact with a foreign national. This is surely the crux of the matter – how the officer was introduced to the lady; how the relationship grew into a desire for marriage; and whether any breach of security had taken place in the interregnum.
When the Army frowned on the relationship and refused to release the officer on grounds of a severe staff crunch (a well known fact), the Chief Justice reprimanded the Army for acting like a ‘khap panchayat’ saying, “We can’t understand the Army’s stand at all. This is most unfortunate for the man. One of India’s Presidents, also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, was married to a foreigner”.
This reference to late KR Narayanan who married Ma Tint Tint of Burma [Myanmar] while serving in the Foreign Office cannot be used to establish a convention or legal precedent that civilian or military officers of the Government of India can marry foreign nationals.
Unfortunately, under the Nehruvian dispensation, IFS officers closely aligned with the ruling elite have been permitted to marry foreign nationals and remain in service, too often holding senior and sensitive posts, something unheard of in other major world capitals. An equal number of serving officers have been denied permission to marry foreigners, on seemingly ad hoc grounds.
It cannot be accidental that all officers permitted to marry foreigners and remain in service were those who married citizens of Western nations, or their known client states. Permission was invariably denied to persons on the wrong side of Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain, despite the supposed socialist leanings of first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Left-leaning intellectuals, who have dominated the public discourse in India, never highlight this anomaly because Marxism (in its varied strains) is a western ideology and they derive their legitimacy from a coterie of academics and activists rooted in western universities.
Thus, secularists, socialists, assorted leftists, human rights wallahs, jholawallahs et al are all creatures from the western stable, with one thing in common – a deep fear and hatred of India’s native civilisation and culture, and its taking its legitimate place in the public arena. Their internal struggles vis-à-vis each other have never been allowed to ignore this reality. In recent years, a section of the Judiciary has begun to seek approval from this gallery. Orders which undermine the famed discipline of the armed forces derive from this tendency.
In a similar recent case, Major Yogesh Chandra Madhav Sayankar of 60 Rashtriya Rifles (Naga), serving in Jammu & Kashmir, took the Chief of Army Staff, Director General of Military Intelligence, and others to court over permission to marry Shruti Kulkarni, a US citizen.
Denied permission to resign and marry a foreigner, he challenged the same under Article 226 of the Constitution. Major Sayankar had met Shruti Kulkarni while on vacation in Pune in 2009, through mutual friends, and they got engaged in December 2009. She was unwilling to renounce her American citizenship, so he sought release from service, presumably to settle with her in the US.
The Army argued in Court that the petitioner was a permanent commissioned officer in a service responsible for protecting the nation, and there is a severe deficiency in the cadre. If an officer is allowed to resign to marry a foreign national refusing to accept Indian citizenship, it may set an incorrect precedent. In future, officers could seek to resign to contest elections or form trade unions, which are unacceptable in the armed forces.
The petitioner in this case expressed willingness to reimburse the cost of his training, approximately Rs. 3 lakh, and finally married against Army advice – a severe breach of discipline. In the circumstances, on March 25, 2011, a bench headed by Bombay High Court Chief Justice SJ Vazifdar asked the authorities to accept the officer’s resignation.
Clearly, our contemporary environment does not favour old fashioned nationalism.
NitiCentral, 1 December 2012
http://www.niticentral.com/2012/12/should-army-officers-be-allowed-to-marry-foreigners.html