What's in a Name?

With the symbolism of Operation ‘Sindoor’, whose grief are we honouring, and whose agency are we erasing?

- Pragya Singh IS SENIOR ASSISTANT EDITOR, OUTLOOK. SHE IS BASED IN DELHI

AN important question is being asked amid a fervent campaign to make women the symbolic face of India’s response to the brutal killing of twenty-six tourists in Pahalgam, Kashmir, on April 22: does armed conflict create sindoor or widows?

In one stroke, a popular symbol of matrimony is recast as an emblem of blood and vengeance. At first, a nation wounded—its public bristling with anger—is told to await a ‘befitting response’. Women stand by, as the tired tropes play out: outsiders coming in, killing ‘our’ men, and wiping off sindoor from ‘our’ women’s foreheads, while the government promises to restore that honour with equal bloodshed in return.

Jubilation follows: women step into the streets, smearing sindoor as India strikes nine terrorist hideouts in Pakistan in the still of the night. India’s military campaign, Operation Sindoor, takes wing. Sindoor transforms into a jet-fighter runway, featuring in memes that students pass around in classrooms, and that Indians and Pakistanis taunt each other with on social media...So, who's more powerful now—isn't it us? And who should de-escalate first? It won't be us!

“Traditionally, around the world, nationalism has always had emotional and gendered narratives. But what we're seeing now is that the symbolism of Operation Sindoor isn’t just centred on women, but also on muscular nationalism,” says Anuradha M. Chenoy, a Gender and International Relations expert and former professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.

Feminine rage in India often manifests as the raudra roop of divine femininity—Durga, Kali, Yellamma—goddesses who didn’t rely on help from men. But now, rage splits: one part hapless, the other empowered. The first spurred on by politics, the latter by the military.

THE imagery of Operation Sindoor, launched on May 6-7, has captivated the national imagination.

“There’s a cultural milieu in which