[Combat roles will still be restricted, but female soldiers and sailors will have greater access to the academy that leads to choice leadership positions.]
By Hari Kumar and Emily Schmall
The court ordered the government to
allow women in November, for the first time, to take the entrance exam to
India’s premier defense academy, the pipeline for the country’s top army, navy
and air force commanders. While the court allowed the government to continue to
exclude women from most combat roles, the ruling could encourage more women to
pursue careers in the military.
It “gives a sense of victory,” said
Anju Bala, a former major in the Indian army.
“They have got one more window open
to compete equally with men,” she said.
Women make up a tiny fraction of
the more than 1.3 million people serving in India’s armed forces, among
the world’s largest. They are able to serve as officers, but their upside
was limited because they could not attend the elite military academy. Similar
schools in the United States, like the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy,
began to admit women in 1976.
Now, they can enter the military
straight out of high school and aspire to the top brass. The ruling could also
give them more legal backing as they fight for equal access to combat roles.
Across India, women have been
pushing for greater roles in the workplace. Only 9 percent of working-age women
hold jobs, according to the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy. India pledged
at a Group of 20 meeting of the world’s largest economies in June that it would
do more to reduce gender discrimination in recruitment, wages and working
conditions.
Women have served in India’s armed
forces since British colonial rule. They were deployed as nurses during the two
world wars. In 2007, Indian women officers served in postwar Liberia as the
United Nations’ first all-female peacekeeping force.
Since the early 1990s, in response
to court cases, women have been eligible for short-service commissions in the
armed forces’ education and legal departments. Over the years, women had gained
access to eight additional departments, including engineering, intelligence and
logistics.
In recent years, women’s access to
other areas has broadened, including the Assam Rifles, India’s oldest
paramilitary force, in 2016, and the army police in 2019.
But their tenure largely remained
capped at 14 years, and opportunities for higher leadership were limited. Only
men could enter the armed forces at age 17 by gaining admission to the National
Defense Academy, a four-year program that provides the core of India’s military
leadership. Women were allowed to join through what was seen as a less
prestigious, 11-month training course after graduating from college.
With fewer opportunities to rise,
many had to leave the military earlier than they wanted.
Sowmya Narayani, 34, served in
India’s air force for 11 years, after which her short-term commission ended.
Ms. Narayani briefly worked for Infosys, the Indian technology giant, but would
have considered a career in the armed forces.
Now a stay-at-home mother in
Chennai, a city in southern India, she said the possibility of a long-term
commission would have given her financial independence and the ability to
better plan her future.
“You complete your tenure by your
mid-30s,” she said. “With a young family, resettling at that age is very
cumbersome.”
Women have challenged the limits in
courts for decades. Two years ago, the government agreed to give permanent
commissions to women but only to those officers who had served fewer than 14
years, citing physical limitations of older women officers.
In response, serving female
officers argued to the Supreme Court that the policy was not
only “highly regressive but completely contrary to the demonstrated record and
statistics.”
Ms. Narayani said the physical
training for female cadets was as rigorous as it was for the men.
“There is no such discrimination
once we enter in our training that, ‘OK, you are a lady so you will be given an
excuse from doing this,’” she said.
The court decision on Wednesday
stemmed from public interest litigation, not tied to a specific plaintiff, that
had been filed with India’s Supreme Court. The suit argued that not allowing
women to take the academy’s entrance exam violated India’s Constitution, which
prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.
The court agreed in an earlier
ruling, and the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in early
September that it would open up the academy to women.
“Deliberate planning and meticulous
preparation is called for to ensure smooth induction and seamless training of
such women candidates,” Shantanu Sharma, a defense ministry official and
captain in the Indian navy, wrote in an affidavit filed with the Supreme Court
this week.
The ruling on Wednesday lays out
the timetable. This week, the government said that women would be eligible to
take the defense academy exams starting in May of 2022. But the court insisted
that the process begin this November, when exams for admission to the defense
academy are scheduled to take place.
The justices said that the armed
forces, well-trained to respond quickly to emergencies, should
be able to implement the decision sooner.
Ms. Bala, who now works as a
security consultant in the northeastern city of Shillong, welcomed the court’s
ruling as a “landmark judgment.”
A veteran of postings in the army’s
logistics branch along India’s borders with China, Pakistan and Bhutan, Ms.
Bala said the disparity in the length of commissions for men and women always
weighed on her.
“They should be given equal ground
for succession,” she said.
Nithi C.J., 34, a risk management
consultant who served in the Indian Army’s intelligence corps, said admission
to India’s defense academy, based in Pune in central India, brings women one
step closer to proving their readiness for combat.
“Now the ball is in our court,” she
said, “and it is for the women aspirants to prove their salt.”
