Minority Conscripts Increasing : Dutch Army Adapts to Muslims, Hindus

When Dutch troops march off to training exercises next year, they will have a choice of regular, curried or porkless battle rations.

This is just one way the Dutch army is trying to adapt to an increasing influx of Muslim and Hindu conscripts swelling its ranks from the Netherlands’ ethnic minority communities.

The military estimates that 5% to 8% of the Dutch standing army will be Muslim or Hindu by 1995, up from about half a percent now. In actual number, Hindus and Muslims are expected to increase from about 200 new recruits a year now to 5,000 a year in less than a decade.

Deputy Defense Minister Jan van Houwelingen recently announced a program to ensure that minorities get a fair chance in the army, which has traditionally tried to make life as easy on soldiers as possible without sacrificing quality.

The military has now started a program to educate officers about minority groups and their cultural and religious beliefs.

“We want these people to take part in the army. They are part of our society, and the army is part of their education in Dutch society,” Lt. Col. Jan van der Beek, chief of military social services, said in an interview.

Earlier this year, the military introduced vegetarian battle rations in part to accommodate observant Hindus, who do not eat meat from cows, and religious Muslims, who eat no pork and may consume other meat only if it is ritually slaughtered.

“The vegetarian rations came because vegetarians wanted it. But we wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t necessary for religious minorities,” Van der Beek said.

Curried battle rations for Hindus, many from the former Dutch colony of Suriname, and separate rations for Muslims, mostly from Morocco, Turkey and the former Dutch colony of Indonesia, will be the next innovations, he said.

There are 360,000 Muslims and 75,000 Hindus in the Netherlands, out of a total population of 14.4 million.

Already, Muslim and Hindu recruits are given $7 a day to buy their own food if their barracks can’t provide it.

Sgt. Major Harold Rack, an army social worker who emigrated to the Netherlands from Suriname, urged commanders to learn more about the cultures of these religious groups.

Muslims and Hindus are likely to be much more humiliated than the average Dutch soldier by being reprimanded in public because their culture places a premium on saving face, he said.

“If a soldier must be reprimanded, we suggest doing it in private,” Rack said.

Regulations which had long given Jews in the army their Sabbath on Saturdays were expanded in 1981 to allow Muslims to mark their day of rest on Fridays.

But the army has its limits. A Muslim soldier who went absent without leave earlier this year to observe Ramadan, a monthlong holiday of dawn-to-dusk fasting, was court-martialed and received a three-week suspended sentence.

Some recruits note that while the military has chaplains representing four groups--Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox Jews and less religious Jews--it has no religious leader for Muslims or Hindus.

“We’ve been pressing for religious representatives for Muslims and Hindus for six years. Two government commissions have concluded that it is a good idea, and we’re still waiting,” said Peter Paulus, a representative of VVDM, the soldiers’ union.

The VVDM has criticized the army for not always fully informing religious Muslims and Hindus of their rights to worship in the military.

The regulations, for example, allow for time off for religious days. But some soldiers complain that it doesn’t give them enough time--Hindu funeral rites last 14 days, and marriage celebrations go on for 10.