15 April 2006
ISLAMABAD - One person conspicuous for his presence during a graduation parade on Saturday at the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA), was Hercharn Singh, the first Sikh to join the army in the predominantly Muslim country.
Wearing the traditional Sikh turban and beard, Singh matched the steps of his fellow cadets to welcome Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz at the academy in Abbotabad, 122 kilometres north of Islamabad.
“I am proud to be a Pakistani and to join the Pakistan Army,” the official Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) news agency quoted Singh as saying after meeting with Aziz at the end of the parade.
PMA is the prime training institution of the Pakistan army, which was set up by the British colonial rulers before the partition of the Indian sub continent into independent India and Pakistan in 1947.
Born in the mid 1980s at Pakistan’s Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of the Sikh spiritual leader Guru Nanak Dev, Gentleman Cadet Hercharn Singh is currently in the second term of the PMA’s 116th Long Course and is set to graduate in October 2007.
“More people of our community should have joined the army, I would like to see more of them here,” the visibly excited Singh said.
“Being the first Sikh cadet, I wish and pray also to be the first one to be a ’shaheed’ or martyr in defence of my motherland,” he added.
Non-Muslim minorities make some three per cent of Pakistan’s roughly 155 million mostly Sunni Muslim population. Minority representation in the armed forces is low and only a few Christian officers and soldiers are serving in the forces.