Operation Sindoor: The Reality Behind the Political Rhetoric

On May 7, the Indian government fielded two women military officers to brief the press about the strikes carried out in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. One of them was Muslim – Colonel Sofiya Qureshi. For the international media watching India, the government’s messaging was loud and clear: unlike Pakistan, India is a secular democracy with a professional army.

However, within a week, this carefully crafted projection began to unravel. Referring to Qureshi without naming her, Madhya Pradesh minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kunwar Vijay Shah said, “Jinhone hamare betiyon ke sindoor uchala… humne unhi ki behen ko hamare jahaj mein bhej kar aise ki taisi karvai.” The ones who wiped off the sindoor of our sisters, Modi ji sent their own sister in our plane to teach them a lesson.

“You widowed our sisters,” he continued, rhetorically addressing the terrorists, “so we sent your sister to strip and humiliate you.” Shah’s crass and communal remarks drew outrage, criticism, and an FIR. The apology that followed was just as revealing. “Sister Sofia has brought glory to India by rising above caste and religion,” Shah told The Indian Express. “She is more respected than our own sister.”

Not only did the Madhya Pradesh minister perceive an accomplished and senior military officer as the “sister” of Pakistani terrorists merely because of her religious identity, but when criticized, his only resort was paternalism – that he respected the woman officer more than his own sister. This paternalism isn’t limited to Shah. In his speech on May 12, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Operation Sindoor – code-named after the vermillion mark that is a symbol of marriage for Hindu women – represents the emotions of Indians.

“I dedicate Operation Sindoor to every mother, sister, and daughter,” he said. Now every terrorist knows the consequences of “removing the sindoor from the foreheads of our mothers and daughters,” he added. In the ideological framework of the Hindu Right, only some women are seen as worth protecting or celebrating: the behen who lost her sindoor and the behen who avenged the sindoor. Not the women who dare express opinions different from the establishment narrative.

Online abuse against women is rampant across India’s internet. This fortnight, the targets included the daughter of Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and Himanshi Narwal, the widow of Naval officer Vinay Narwal, who was shot dead in the Pahalgam attack. War-mongers, disappointed at the announcement of a ceasefire, directed their ire at the foreign secretary by picking on his daughter Didon for writing an article in independent news outlet The Wire and for apparently providing legal assistance to Rohingya refugees in Myanmar. Even as diplomats, Opposition politicians, and associations representing the Indian civil and police services came to Misri’s defense, the government was silent.

Himanshi Narwal, despite being a “sister who lost her sindoor,” was subjected to sexual trolling because she had called for communal harmony and peace. The National Women’s Commission was sufficiently troubled by the online hate to issue a statement, but no concrete action was taken. In contrast, the Haryana Women’s Commission has summoned Ashoka University professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad for a Facebook post pointing out the irony of Hindutva commentators praising Qureshi while Indian Muslims face mob lynchings, demolitions, and persecution for their religious identity.

Two things are evident. First, the official silence on Misri and Narwal sends the disturbing message that the trolling and online abuse come with tacit approval. This covert sanction allows online mobs to police the narrative by viciously attacking detractors and critics. Second, it is once again apparent that the ruling party invokes gender and women solely to further its narrative. Ideologically, Hindutva is intolerant of the religious pluralism that was put on display at the May 7 press conference. It was bound to come apart.

Thirty years ago, scholar Amrita Basu had coined the term “feminism inverted” based on her research on women’s political activism in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Basu contended that the BJP was accommodating of women and even tolerated a vocabulary of women’s empowerment – as long as this served its “electorally driven communal strategy.” The events of the past two weeks have confirmed this.