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PAKISTAN : WEAKENING OF THE DEFENCES
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the Gurkhas and the Pathans. As Sir George Arthur, his biographer, says :—
“The Government, mindful of the lesson taught by the Mutiny, was alive to the danger of allowing any one element in the Indian Army to preponderate unduly. An increase in the Punjabee infantry had as its necessary sequel a further recruitment of the valuable Gurkha material and the enlistment of more trans-border Pathans in the Frontier Militia.”
That a principle, so unanimously upheld and so rigorously applied upto the period of the Great War, should have been thrown to the wind after the Great War, without ceremony and without compunction and in a clandestine manner, is really beyond comprehension. What is the reason which has led the British to allow so great a preponderance of the Muslims in the Indian Army ? Two explanations are possible. One is that the Musalmans really proved, in the Great War, that they were better soldiers than the Hindus. The second explanation is that the British have broken the rule and have given the Musalmans such a dominating position in the Army because they wanted to counteract the forces of the Hindu agitation for wresting political power from the hands of the British.
Whatever be the explanation, two glaring facts stand out from the above survey. One is that the Indian Army today is predominantly Muslim in its composition. The other is that the Musalmans who predominate are the Musalmans from the Punjab and the N. W. F. P. Such a composition of the Indian Army means that the Musalmans of the Punjab and the N. W. F. P. are made the sole defenders of India from foreign invasion. So patent has this fact become that the Musalmans of the Punjab and the N. W. F. P. are quite conscious of this proud position which has been assigned to them by the British, for reasons best known to them. For, one often hears them say that they are the ‘gatekeepers’ of India. The Hindus must consider the problem of the defence of India in the light of this crucial fact.
How far can the Hindus depend upon these ‘gate-keepers’ to hold the gate and protect the liberty and freedom of India ? The answer to this question must depend upon who comes to force the gate open. It is obvious that there are only two foreign countries