‘Open Army to women’, she wrote in 1992. IMA’s 1st female cadets will soon march out

Dehradun: When Indian Military Academy’s passing out parade takes place on June 13 and eight women cadets march out with their male counterparts for the first time from the Dehradun academy, Maj Priya Jhingan (retd), will see a milestone she helped set in motion more than three decades ago with a letter to then Army chief Gen S F Rodrigues asking him to open the Indian Army to women beyond the medical services.

Maj Jhingan, a law graduate who joined the first batch of women cadets at Officers Training Academy (OTA), Chennai, on Sept 21, 1992, with the roll number “Lady Cadet Number 1”, was among the first women officers commissioned into a non-medical branch of Indian Army. She later joined Judge Advocate General’s Department, which handles the Army’s legal matters, after completing training on Mar 6, 1993.

Calling the commissioning of IMA’s first women cadets a “proud and historic moment”, she told TOI that the parade would carry a meaning far beyond ceremonial firsts. “The event marks not just a great opportunity for women, but a stronger and more inclusive Army. I hope it inspires many younger women to don the olive green uniform, but inspiration must be matched by determination,” Maj Jhingan said.

Her own story remains closely tied to the road that led to this moment. Before 1992, women entered Army only as doctors and nurses. Jhingan, then in her early 20s, wrote to Gen Rodrigues asking why women could not be allowed into other branches as officers. It was, as she has often described, a shot in the dark, but it worked. Women were subsequently allowed to train at OTA Chennai under Short Service Commission, and Jhingan entered the academy with 24 other women cadets in the first such batch.

That opening has since expanded through several institutional and legal changes. Women officers later fought for permanent commission in more branches, and Supreme Court’s intervention helped widen their career pathways in Army. The decision to allow women into National Defence Academy (NDA) in 2021 created another pipeline, bringing women into the same tri-service training route as men before they moved to pre-commission training at service academies, including IMA.

The June 13 parade will therefore mark a new chapter in IMA’s 93-year history. Founded in 1932, the academy has trained generations of Army officers, but women cadets marching out from its portals as commissioned officers places the institution within a longer arc of change that began with women first entering non-medical Army roles through OTA in the early 1990s.

Maj Jhingan said the young women passing out from IMA would now have to carry the moment through professional performance. “The Army demands excellence, resilience, leadership and sacrifice — qualities that know no gender. The real success of this milestone will be measured not by how many women join, but how convincingly they prove, through performance, that competence transcends gender. I wish all the brave-hearts memorable soldiering,” she said.

After retiring from the Army as a major with 10 years of service, Jhingan moved into leadership training and now runs a leadership academy in Chandigarh. But for the women cadets who will march at IMA on June 13, her 1992 letter remains part of the institutional memory behind the day — a reminder that the opening of one gate often begins with someone asking why it was closed in the first place.