ON 12 JANUARY 2017, three days before Army Day, Lance Naik Yagya Pratap Singh, then posted with the Forty-Second Infantry Brigade of the Indian Army, in Dehradun, uploaded a video on Facebook. It soon went viral, and was picked up by news channels. The mobile-phone footage showed the soldier in camouflage fatigues, facing the camera with squared shoulders, his image blurry but his voice sharp and clear.
In June the previous year, Singh said in the video, he had addressed a letter to the prime minister, the president, the defence minister, the home minister and the Supreme Court. The letter called for an end to the practice of assigning soldiers to officers as sahayaks—attendants. He described the practice as exploitative. Soldiers trained to fight the enemy, he said, should not be made to polish their officers’ shoes or walk their dogs.
Singh said that his brigade had received an official query from the prime minister’s office regarding his complaint. Ever since, his commanders had begun exerting tremendous pressure on him, repeatedly questioning and abusing him. It was enough to make the average soldier kill himself or take some other “wrong step,” he added, “but I will not do that. I am a soldier, and as a soldier, I will not dishonour my uniform by hurting myself or someone else.”
Earlier that morning, Singh had received a charge sheet and a summons for a court martial. “I appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi that all I did was write an application,” he said. “What wrong have I done that they are forming a committee to charge sheet and court-martial me?”
この記事は The Caravan の March 2020 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は The Caravan の March 2020 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Mob Mentality
How the Modi government fuels a dangerous vigilantism
RIP TIDES
Shahidul Alam’s exploration of Bangladeshi photography and activism
Trickle-down Effect
Nepal–India tensions have advanced from the diplomatic level to the public sphere
Editor's Pick
ON 23 SEPTEMBER 1950, the diplomat Ralph Bunche, seen here addressing the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The first black Nobel laureate, Bunche was awarded the prize for his efforts in ending the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Shades of The Grey
A Pune bakery rejects the rigid binaries of everyday life / Gender
Scorched Hearths
A photographer-nurse recalls the Delhi violence
Licence to Kill
A photojournalist’s account of documenting the Delhi violence
CRIME AND PREJUDICE
The BJP and Delhi Police’s hand in the Delhi violence
Bled Dry
How India exploits health workers
The Bookshelf: The Man Who Learnt To Fly But Could Not Land
This 2013 novel, newly translated, follows the trajectory of its protagonist, KTN Kottoor.