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Published: February 23, 2020 12:10:54 am
In 1989, Priya Jhingan in a letter to then Army chief General Sunith Francis Rodrigues, asked why only men are being urged to join Army and not women. “I told the chief that I would like to join the Army,” Jhingan recalls. (Express photo)
Sometime in 1989, as a 21-year-old student at Shimla's St Bede's College, Priya Jhingan chanced upon a newspaper advertisement urging men to join the Army. She immediately shot a letter to then Army chief General Sunith Francis Rodrigues, asking him “Why are you calling only men, why not women?” “I told the chief that I would like to join the Army,” she recalls.
To her surprise, Rodrigues wrote back, saying that he was “very happy to hear from a woman who is so enthusiastic to join the Army”, and that “it will happen soon”.
Three years later, in 1992, her dream came true. “I saw another advertisement calling for women recruits. The ad said ‘Indian Army Beckons You'. I applied along with 25,000 others. Finally 250 of us reached the interview round, and 25 were eventually selected,” says Jhingan, whose father was a police officer. “I was Cadet No.1,” she smiles.
Born and raised in Shimla, she had her first brush with the…
