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Khaki and the Ethnic Violence in India: Army, Police, and Paramilitary Forces during Communal Riots. By OMAR KHALIDI. New Delhi: Three Essays Collective, 2003. xiii, 126 pp. $25.00 (cloth); $15.00 (paper).
The involvement of women and minorities in the human rights abuses and torture of Iraqi prisoners perpetuated by U.S. troops has brought to the surface the question of whether diversity in the composition of security forces necessarily ensures fair practices. Omar Khalidi's book, Khaki and the Ethnic Violence in India, broaches the issue by addressing the causes and consequences of the underrepresentation of certain ethnic communities, most noticeably Muslims, in India's military, paramilitary, and civil police. Approaching a controversial subject on which information is largely classified or missing from the archive, the author weaves together a range of materials, including available official directives, writings of military personnel, literature from academic and media sources, and interviews with officers into a coherent and provocative argument (despite the oddly constructed title).
The book is a collection of two essays. Each essay has a historical narrative, with accounts of the number of Indians employed in British colonial cadres, their drastic reorganization in the wake of partition, and the guidelines for proportional representation that were overtly or covertly established and adopted at key moments and around...