which accounted for 2.2% of India's population, accounted for 7.82% of the armed forces' headcount; the figures for Himachal Pradesh were 0.6% of the population, and 4.68% of the armed forces, and for Punjab, 2.4% of the population and 16.6% of the armed forces. Explicit ethnic- or caste-based requirements have nevertheless persisted amongst some military formations. The most notable instance is the President's Bodyguard, the most senior and arguably the most prestigious unit of the Indian Army, which recruits exclusively from Sikhs, Jats and Rajputs in equal proportion. The Indian government has defended what it terms as "class composition" restrictions on the grounds of the "functional requirements" of the ceremonial detachment, namely its "ceremonial duties [which] demand common height, built, appearance and dress for reason of pomp and projection". Pakistan At independence, the new Pakistan Armed Forces likewise reflected the institutional legacy of the "martial races" theory, although it was no longer formally applied there as well. The British preference of Punjabis, combined with the fact that Bengalis (who were the single largest group in the new nation) had been disfavored ever since the Revolt of 1857, led to an even more ethnically lopsided army corps than in India. At the Pakistan Army's establishment in 1947, Punjab, with 25% of the new nation's population, accounted for 72% of the Army's headcount, while East Bengal, with 55% of the total population, was virtually unrepresented. In the Armoured Corps, there was not a single Muslim member from Sindh, Balochistan or Bengal, which together comprised 70% of Pakistan's total population. This imbalance created tensions, particularly amongst the Bengalis of East Pakistan, who felt humiliated by the continued belief in the theory which continued to hold sway in West Pakistan, that they were not 'martially inclined' compared to the Punjabis and Pashtuns. Pakistani author Hasan-Askari Rizvi notes that the limited recruitment of Bengali personnel in the Pakistan Army was because the West Pakistanis "could not overcome the hangover of the martial race theory". As a result, in 1955, out of the Pakistan Army's 908-strong officer corps, 894 hailed from West Pakistan and a mere 14 from East Pakistan. Thus, following the coup d'état of 1958, the exclusion of East Pakistani Bengalis from military leadership translated into their exclusion from the nation's political leadership. This deepened the alienation of East Pakistanis from the Pakistani government, which would eventually lead to the independence of Bangladesh. Furthermore,