India, Dec. 8 -- The dismissal of Lt. Samuel Kamalesan and the courts' endorsement of it reopen a question India has sidestepped since Independence: Can a constitutional republic continue to run its armed forces on a religious framework inherited from an empire that designed it to prevent unity among its soldiers?

To understand why this question matters, one has to return to 1857. When Hindu and Muslim soldiers fought shoulder to shoulder, the British saw not rebellion but the danger of solidarity. Their response was not moral outrage but administrative precision. They built a military in which every soldier was categorised, classified, and governed through rigid religious and caste compartments. Rituals were instruments of control. Shri...