I have always held the beard as a matter of personal choice. Sometimes of the person sporting it, oftentimes mine. Mine obviously when I choose faces with or without stubble — more with than without.

This solemn conviction of mine has recently been shaken, jolted, uprooted, stomped upon, and shattered to smithereens, just as the rest of my less serious convictions about the inviolability of the Indian Constitution, sanctity of civil rights, innate goodness of human beings and equality of citizens.

This was when I had to go through sheets after sheets of paper pronouncing, debating, discussing and reformulating rules and regulations to control the chins and cheeks of Muslim brethren employed with the police and defence forces.

There were apparently a few Muslim rebels who challenged these rules in various courts of law, the unquestioned authorities in deciding over the legality of hair flowing from Muslim chins. The courts too asserted community rights over Muslim beards — not their own community of course!

As far as my understanding goes, beards in armed forces enjoyed more freedom than its masters ever did prior to 1980. The first instance of any sanctions on the freedom came in the guise of a regulation in 1980, but it allowed beards as per religious beliefs. As always, Muslims have to fulfill special conditions.

“…the [Muslim] beard when kept, shall be of such length that when covered by a fist no hair shall be visible outside and help of artificial aids for keeping the beard tidy is forbidden under Muslim religion law.”

Some elaboration on this rule would have been less confusing for the stranded beards plagued by muted questions such as whose fist it would be, whether the master’s or the master’s master’s, and whether it would be vertical or horizontal or diagonal fist. When would the fist check happen? During the parade every day? Would the commanding officer go to every Muslim beard and hold it to assess the length? Or would a Mullah be summoned to do the same?

And what are the recognised artificial aids? In order to demystify themselves for the followers of faith as well as faithful followers, the regulations should have prescribed a routine of keeping the beards tidy. For example, ‘use shikakai, but not shampoo’ or ‘grow your fingernails to use them as comb’. And also some ingenious way to keep the strands from conflict with fists, without the use of ‘haraam’ scissors. May be, pluck them, or better still, bite them off! Or the men may chew each other’s fuzz.

Commanding Officers too could do with some clarity. How were they to ensure that the bearded adherents to Islam did not defeat their faith by using artificial aids? By installing CC cameras in rooms, dormitories, corridors, kitchens and toilets? By conducting surprise inspections and confiscating the artificial aids? Or by less intrusive and more credulous means of administering an oath every morning that they would not use combs/scissors/shampoos/soaps?

To complicate matters further, another regulation was promulgated by the Defence Ministry in 1999.

“…No formal permission is required if Muslim personnel have already sported a beard at the time of joining the service. However, if the person desires to sport a beard after joining service, he is to submit a formal application to his Commanding Officer requesting for permission giving reasons….. The CO while according permission is to ascertain from the individual the reasons for the sudden decision to grow the beard…”

Well, those were the post-Babri demolition times, and it was the pre-ordained duty of the Commanding Officer to ensure that the Muslim in question was not growing his beard as an assertion of his identity. To wisdom of the rule-framers, assertion of identity was an expression of defiance rather than of devotion. Defiance should not be expressed. Muted, it will be gone, dissipated into the thin air!

I’m still trying to imagine the probable interrogation session between the soldier and the CO, something like this:

CO: So, tell me why are you growing beard?

Soldier: Because I’m a faithful follower of Islam

CO: Why didn’t you sport it at the time of joining?

S: I did not read the scriptures then.

CO: Why did you read them now?

S: Because I’m a faithful follower of Islam

CO: Why were you not a faithful follower then?

S: Because I didn’t read the scriptures…

CO: Why didn’t you read them then?

Enough for him to tear his nonexistent beard! Next would be the session of advising him to keep the beard tidy. I’m wondering if this is what the CO’s are meant to do — instruct the grown, semi-grown and overgrown men on tidiness and toilet training.

Wait, this is not all. There is more.

“It shall also be explained that the [Muslim] individual shall not be allowed to shave off again unless he had sought permission for a specific period. All personnel granted permission….should preferably be given one week leave from the date of approval of their application so that a person does not look as though he is unshaven during the initial stages of growing beard. After permission of the CO, the original copy of the application is to form part of the unit copy of service documents of the individual. Their changed identity is to be notified to all concerned…. The identity cards of such personnel are to be changed after three months from the date of intimation or when the physical change of identity is well established whichever is earlier. During the intervening period, such personnel are to be issued with a certificate stating the fact of changed identity which the personnel are to carry with the identity card.”

The coming-of-age ceremonies traditionally organised for girls in South India, and the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs in that order for Jewish boys and girls would pale before this. If you ask me, each Muslim beard grower should be welcomed back with such ceremonial pomp, so that the next body-hair aspirant would think twice before putting his wish on paper.

In 2003, the Defence Ministry saw some “anomalies” in its policy of “hair, beard and wearing turbans”, about which the 1999 policy—despite its verbosity—was supposedly “silent”. That the rather loquacious policy itself was an anomaly if seen from a civilian eye must’ve been lost on the ministry forever striving to enforce order into the chaos of Islam.

“Only those Muslim personnel, who had kept beard along with moustache at the time of commissioning /enrolment prior to 01 Jan.2002, would be allowed to keep beard and moustache….. Muslims who have grown beard after joining service should shave off the beard. Under no circumstances, a Muslim person who had beard at the time of joining service before 1 Jan.2002 shall be allowed to maintain beard without moustache. Moustache would be a part of the beard.”

After getting curiouser and curiouser, it now gets curiousest! After lengthy religious instructions on how to keep — through natural means — the beard from falling into your food, or food from falling into the beard, and even lengthier discourse on what could be called ‘Beard Mitzvah’, the ministry does an about-turn and preaches the opposite of what the Prophet is supposed to have preached as per Hadith: ‘Trim your moustache and let the beard flow’. Beat it if you can! And did Islam perish after the deadline? Just wondering.

While that’s the last I heard of beard in Defence rules, this ‘tricho-treat’ will be incomplete if I do not mention the legacy of court judgments on the legality of Muslim follicle growth.

A head-constable from the Kerala Police, after 22 years of service, approached the High Court against him not being permitting to grow beard as per his religion. He quoted extensively from Hadith, all ruled irrelevant by the court.

“These statements by the Prophet made apparently in different contexts are only Sunnath (optional) and are not understood as obligatory for every Musalman to follow,” the single-judge bench of Justice Balakrishna Menon J. said.

‘Sunnath’ or ‘Sunnah’ literally meant a set of practices or way of life (Don’t liberal Hindus justify Hinduism as a ‘way of life’?), and not ‘options’. Even if they are optional, they have been sanctioned to be so by the religion. True respect to religion is in extending the options along with the package of religious freedom as guaranteed by the Article 25 of the Indian Constitution, and not in curtailing them. For instance, if law says that I may avail 15 casual leaves per year, it hardly means that I also have the option of not availing them, and that the second option prevails over the first because it suits the employer.

And somehow, the judge had found that “common experience shows that such a practice is not in vogue.” And pray, what would be that “common experience”? The judge did not leave it to our pee-wee imagination. The common experience so cherished by Justice Menon was that the “President of a neighbouring Theocratic Islamic Republic [all in caps, mind you] does not wear a beard. Similarly high dignitaries like President, Vice-President, Judge of the Supreme Court and High Court and Ministers have not been wearing beards.” So much for the “common experience”!

The revered Justice then showers encomiums on Article 25 of the Constitution which entitles citizens with the right to profess, practice and propagate religion, and fills his judgment copy further with a two-page statement by another judge in Ahmedabad, also showering encomiums on Article 25.

Not out of context to mention that the latter judgment meanders from India’s syncretic culture, to Partition, to the good intentions of doing away with separate electorates, to special safeguards for minorities, the contribution of Sardar Patel, his speech as chairman of the Advisory Committee dealing with the “question of minorities”…. yawn!

Justice Menon also cites another judgment by Supreme Court which said freedom of religion in our Constitution is not confined to religious beliefs, but also extends to religious practices. Then follows some more praise on Article 25.

Then comes the jolt to the listener/reader almost convinced and overjoyed at this secular angle of Indian courts.

“The contention that Indian Musalmans had been sacrificing cows from time immemorial as enjoined…by their religion and this practice of religion is protected by Article 25 of the Constitution was negatived by the Supreme Court…on the ground that there was no material on record to enable the court to conclude that sacrifice of cow even on Bakr Id Day is an obligatory overt act for a Musalman … This conclusion was reached after referring to certain historic events such as the Moghul Emperor Babar had prohibited slaughter of cows as and by way of religious sacrifice and also directed his son Humayun to follow the same example. Similarly Emperors Akbar, Jehangir, and Ahmad Shah had prohibited cow slaughter. Nawab Hyder Ali of Mysore made cow slaughter an offence punishable with the cutting of the hands of the offenders….”

I’m certain Babur, Akbar and their successors, together with Ahmad Shah and Nawab Hyder Ali would have kept their horses on leash had they imagined that Indian courts would some day turn their magnanimity and religious tolerance against their own ilk growing beards. By the way, Babur, Humayun, Hyder Ali and Ahmed Shah were heavily bearded, in an unpleasant contrast to the presidents of the ‘Theocratic Islamic Republic’! But unfortunately My Lord chose to idealise the heads of the Theocratic Islamic Republic for the Indian Muslims, but not the Indian rulers of the great yonder times when cows were respected by beef eaters!

After a whole lot of observations such as this, Justice Menon concludes that beard could not be allowed as per the existing rules in Kerala, without permission from the Superintendent of Police. There go flying the Hadith, Article 25, secular fabric of the country, minority rights, cow slaughter prohibition, president of the Theocratic Islamic Republic and Babur, Akbar, Humayun, Hyder Ali, Ahmed Shah! Why sermonise this length and breadth about high ideals when all the Highness had to cite was the Police rules? Because we happened to have ears which bleed, eyes which ache, and faces which yawn?

Another judgment by Punjab & Haryana High Court also cites Article 25 extensively, before ruling against beard on Muslims in Defence. It seems to be a curious ritual among judiciary to recite this Article whenever they have to deny it. I remember a drama I read as a child, which is word by word reproduction of an argument in the epic Ramayan between an ascetic Satyakama Jabali and Lord Sriram. In the drama, Jabali argues with Sriram at length, expressing rationalist beliefs, dismissing the notion of ‘afterlife’, opposing rituals and scrapping the ‘Dharma Sanrakshan’ that Sriram espouses, only to pull off a total volte-face at the end, and support everything that he had just then denounced! These judgments do not seem any different!

Further, the Punjab & Haryana High Court defines the state’s obligation to maintain public order in a completely new light.

“If members of the disciplined force are permitted to behave according to their own wishes and desires, it is surely to disturb the public order in the force and may create chaotic conditions,” the learned justice pronounced.

He goes on to say, “Facial identity of every member of the service is important and essential particularly while in uniform. This is particularly relevant in view of the growing incidents of terrorism and militancy in our country.”

Here you go finally! The umbilical connection between beard and terrorism! Haven’t we heard it as undertone in all the rules, regulations, assertions and judgments? Protruding, piercing through the façade of Fundamental Rights, and India’s syncretic culture?

Unfortunately, the Leading Aircraftsman Ansari Aaftab Ahmed and Corporal Mohammed Zubair of Punjab and Haryana, along with Mohammed Fasi of Kerala who had approached the respective courts for protection of their right to grow facial hair, must have lost their faith in the Indian Judiciary. Practicing religion is personal freedom here. But practicing religion as interpreted by the State!