An Indian Army captain completed his helicopter training, walked across the tarmac after the passing out parade, dropped to one knee and proposed to his long-time girlfriend. There was a helicopter in the background. There were cheers and photographs from friends and colleagues. There was, by all accounts, a young couple celebrating a milestone.
But because this is India, a controversy was born.India has a peculiar relationship with its armed forces. The ideal Indian soldier, at least in the public imagination, is to exist in a permanent state of duty. He is brave but never playful. Patriotic but somehow detached from the ordinary joys and anxieties of life. He can stand guard on a glacier, he can fight a war, he can die for the country. But laughing, loving, flirting — that too publicly — is just not acceptable. That will lead to an internet debate and even a reprimand from the Army.
The objections were as old as time. How could a military officer use a helicopter as a backdrop? Was the uniform being “misused”? Has professionalism been sacrificed at the altar of social media?India’s adoration of the armed forces has a curious strain of moral puritanism that elevates military personnel into national icons and then resents them for behaving like ordinary people.We have turned soldiers into stained-glass figures.
