Operation Sindoor and the feminist puzzle

Wing Commander Vyomika Singh and Colonel Sofiya Qureshi address the media regarding Operation Sindoor in New Delhi | ANI

Operation Sindoor has drawn strong criticism from feminists and gender analysts from the subcontinent for its deeply gendered symbolism—reinforcing, as many of them have put it, traditional patriarchal norms, state militarism, and expectations about the ‘protector’ and ‘protected’ roles assigned to men and women in society.

Emerging analyses claim that the operation to dismantle terror infrastructure in Pakistan was an overtly militaristic campaign that not only heightened tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, but also symbolically weaponised sindoor — the red vermilion powder traditionally worn by married Hindu women. It also marked the ‘performative’ presence of women in the Indian Armed Forces, who were positioned as the public face of the operation.

Feminist censure has been intense on social media, stifling an alternative reading of this military campaign. It overshadows and erases the voices of women who lost husbands and other male family members in the brutal terrorist attack in Pahalgam. These feminist grand standings have overlooked the nation’s collective trauma – a body politic scarred by decades of relentless terrorist violence as part of the strategy of ‘bleeding India with a thousand cuts’.

Sindoor as a signifier

The name of the Operation is being called exclusionary, gendered, and religious. Some publications suggest that sindoor is an upper caste, North Indian cultural practice based on “patriarchal Hindu ideas”.

This reflects a clear lack of understanding of the cultural, spiritual and political symbolism associated with sindoor. For millions of women across India, and Hindus and Indian diasporic communities across the world, wearing sindoor is often a matter of personal choice, cultural habit, or social tradition. Some women wear it daily due to familial or cultural conditioning, while others may choose to wear it only on special occasions or not at all. Sindoor is worn by Hindu women of all communities – including Dalits, Other Backward Classes, and upper castes –  and even by some Christian, Adivasi, and Sikh women.

There is a rich tapestry of sacred and spiritual symbolism around it, where it is offered to gods and goddesses as a symbol of love and devotion. Hindu goddess Durga wears it, not just as an emblem of her marital status, but also as a symbol of her unbridled divine feminine energy and strength. According to the Hindu epic Ramayana, Hanuman, the devoted servant of  Ram, once observed Sita applying sindoor to the parting of her hair. When Sita explained to him that the sindoor was a sign of her deep love and eternal devotion to Ram, the clever Hanuman smeared sindoor all over his entire body as a profound gesture of his own unwavering devotion to Ram and Sita. Thus, sindoor transcends its social and cultural connotations and symbolises divine love, loyalty, and sacred commitment.

The depiction of sindoor in a widely circulated cartoon on Pakistani and Bangladeshi social media platforms is a stark example of how cultural symbols can be weaponised for political propaganda. In the image, a Pakistani soldier—representing the state and military establishment—applies sindoor to a feminised representation of India. This act, laden with symbolism, is not simply provocative; it conveys a disturbing message of conquest, ownership, and forced union. By using a deeply intimate and culturally significant symbol such as sindoor, the image frames military dominance as a form of sexual subjugation. This visual narrative draws heavily on colonial metaphors, where nations are gendered—India (or Hindu men) feminised, and Pakistan (or Muslim men) masculinised—and war is cast as an act of domination rooted in militarised masculinity. 

As feminists, it is imperative that we resist the urge to strip the sindoor of its sacred meanings and reframe it solely as a symbol of patriarchal oppression, humiliation, and exclusion. While it is essential to critique the ways in which such symbols can be co-opted for coercive and exclusionary purposes, we must also remain critically alert to their layered historical and political meanings. The colonial defilement of the Indian cultural representation of Bharat Mata (adorned with sindoor) was precisely because it carried immense symbolic strength—strength that colonial powers could neither fully comprehend nor control. To dismiss the powerful and culturally relevant symbolism of sindoor outright is to risk echoing those same colonial erasures.

Militarism & the woman question

The militarism underpinning Operation Sindoor has also been questioned in some feminist write-ups, arguing that state-led military interventions such as these weaponise feminism to further patriarchal causes. It has been suggested that women also need to wage wars, but only over issues such as “sexual violence, gender-based violence, underemployment, unpaid and underpaid work, and limited reproductive rights”. What often gets overlooked in these assertions is that women have historically performed gendered-war labour across several militaristic contexts, with full fervour and patriotism. Men’s wars have also been women’s wars, and feminist scholarship has long worked to reclaim and reframe women’s roles within war narratives.

Understanding Operation Sindoor as part of the muscle flexing and militarism of two nuclear states alone, and seeing it as a stage for gendered performances, tends to draw attention away from the highly militarised, racialised, and gendered act of terrorism that prompted it. These critiques often fail to account for the violence perpetrated by terrorist groups and individuals, whose actions have inflicted enduring trauma and grief on families and communities.

In Pahalgam, the chosen men were mostly Hindus – marked, othered, and distinguished from the local Muslim population. They were stripped, humiliated, made to recite the kalma (Islamic prayer), and shot point-blank in front of their family. A scenic tourist location in Kashmir, where ordinary couples were enjoying their time away together, was turned into a graveyard. Grieving and traumatised women were asked to inform their government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that terrorists had yet again come from across the border to emasculate a nation, a culture, and a religious community with their violence.

The message was clear – India and its (Hindu) men had not been able to ‘protect’ women and their sindoor.

Operation Sindoor was not just an act of patriarchal vengeance but a calibrated and controlled military strategy to neutralise terrorist safe havens in Pakistan. The blanket criticism of militarism as merely a patriarchal tool strips it of its context, the histories that have enabled different forms of meaning-making, and the closures and cathartic outcomes it has for individuals and communities.

The operation carried a deeper meaning, with many seeing it as a punitive yet a symbolic step toward accountability. As one of the survivors, Himanshi Narwal said, “my husband’s soul will rest in peace.” Sangita Ganbote, who also lost her husband in Pahalgam, said: “The action taken by the military is good, and by naming it Operation Sindoor, they have respected the women.” Asavari Jagdale, who lost her father, said that the airstrikes were a real tribute to all those slain in the terrorist attacks.

Military women, tokenism

The other issue that seems to have niggled some feminists is the perceived  tokenism in the ‘spectacle’ of two Indian women (a Hindu and a Muslim) in the Indian Armed Forces becoming  the face of Operation Sindoor. Colonel Sofiya Qureshi and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh appeared alongside Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri to lead the Operation Sindoor media briefings. This may have been a strategic choice, but could there have been a better time for the Armed Forces to showcase their commitment to gender equality? Militaries are patriarchal and male dominated institutions, but women have worked very hard to break the glass ceiling.  Is it really feminist to deny these women their agency – officers who have risen through the ranks on the strength of their competence –  by reducing their presence to a mere gendered performance of the state, a spectacle, or some form of tokenism? Should one flatten their identities instead of recognising them as autonomous individuals operating within complex institutional structures?

Militaries are not upholders of gender equality, but surely one can appreciate the visibility of women officers contributing in a male bastion. Feminists globally have long advocated for more women in militaries, not always arguing that it leads to a gender equal institution, but that it opens up spaces and opportunities for women.

Paradoxically, had the two women officers been men, the feminist critique would likely have condemned the absence of women in a military operation named “sindoor”, calling out their erasure from a narrative supposedly centred on them.

Reclaiming feminism

Operation Sindoor has been denied its “feminist” overtures – on the grounds that its use of the word sindoor reinforces a cultural problematique, and that any “war is inherently patriarchal.” However, history is replete with female warriors and gender struggles where violence sometimes becomes essential to protect cultures, language, territorial integrity, sovereignty, and national values from coloniality and aggression. For many women, the ‘natural instinct’ to care is not in opposition to arming themselves—it is precisely an extension of that ethic of care.

Women are not solely defined by their gender – they also possess a sense of belonging rooted in their communities, cultures, religions, and nations. These intersecting identities shape both their individual and collective experiences of power, trauma, and representation.

Through this article, we would like to restore feminist agency and visibility to the Indian women whose husbands and other male family members were shot in front of them in Pahalgam, and the thousands of other women who have died or lost family members in the scourge of terrorism perpetrated by Pakistan-based groups. Operation Sindoor, showcasing India’s zero-tolerance for terrorism and signifying a ‘new normal’, is an opportunity for feminists to recognise that sometimes the military labour of the state also restores dignity to its citizens. And it strongly challenges a specific form of unaccountable, cowardly, highly-gendered, racialised, and patriarchal armed violence.

Suruchi Thapar-Björkert is Professor in Political Science at the Department of Government, Uppsala University, Sweden. Swati Parashar is Professor in Peace and Development at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Views are personal.

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)