Indian government embarrasses itself to keep ban on women in combat

India’s government said early last week it thinks women are not fit to serve in ground combat roles—citing reasons that are embarrassingly regressive. Lawyers told the country’s Supreme Court (which has been urging the government to reconsider the ban on women in combat) that male soldiers are “predominantly drawn from rural background[s], with prevailing societal norms” and are not “yet mentally schooled to accept women officers in command,” The Times of India reported. Aka, men can’t deal.

Military historian Srinath Raghavan told BBC this argument echoes claims by colonial rulers that Indian soldiers would refuse to serve under Indian commanders. “Military training,” however, “is about fundamentally reshaping norms and attitudes that soldiers bring from their social backgrounds," Raghavan said.

Additionally, the government offered up the age-old nonsensical motherhood/childcare reason: Lawyers argued that “it is a greater challenge for women officers to meet these hazards of service owing to prolonged absence during pregnancy, motherhood, and domestic obligation towards their children and families, especially when both husband and wife happen to be service officers.”

Women have been allowed into the Indian military since 1992. They have served as fighter pilots in the air force and will be allowed to serve as on naval ships (as opposed to in land-only posts now) “as soon as ships that can accommodate them are ready,” according to BBC. As of 2014, women made up just under 4 percent of the world’s second-largest army (after China), but women composed 13 percent of the air force and 6 percent of the navy, according to Indian broadcaster NDTV.

The culture that has prevented women from serving in combat roles starts at the top. In 2018, former army chief and the current chief of defense Staff Gen. Bipin Rawat told a news network that “a woman would feel uncomfortable at the front line.” With his seemingly inexhaustible ability to read the female mind, he went on to say: “Our orders are that a lady officer will get a hut in the [operating base], then there are orders that we have to cocoon her separately. She will say somebody is peeping, so we will have to give a sheet around her.”

Rawat also included in his list of why women “can’t” serve in combat: maternity leave, that women need “more privacy and protection,” and that India was not yet ready to accept "body bags of women" killed in combat.

“Women could die in combat, and Indian families are not yet ready to deal with the sight of women’s bodies returning from war zones,” he said.

Rawat’s comments made waves on Twitter, where the backlash was brutal. “When's Bipin Rawat resigning? Like, what's the exact date?” asked one user. “Army Chief Bipin Rawat is worried about soldiers like him being unable to give women privacy,” tweeted another. “Which happens when men with no intelligence or education join the Army as a last resort.”