The Patriarchy Behind the Naming of Indian Military’s Operation in Response to the Pahalgam Terror Attack | Papri Sen Sri Raman

[On May 7, 2025, the Government of India launched a military operation called ’Operation Sindoor’ targeting multiple locations inside neighbouring Pakistan]

I am Upset.
I am Angry.
I OBJECT.

Why would a bunch of 70-80-year-old men in government offices use the word ‘sindoor’ for a bloodbath? A military operation could be called anything: O alpha, O boomboom, O catcall, O duckbill, O egghead… if you were going in alphabetical order.

Having been introduced to Alistair MacLean in the school library, I know military ops are named. Perhaps more dignified names than my imagination can cook up.

I am a very serious Bengali, brought up among grandmothers and grandaunts, their neatly parted grey hair red with vermillion, boasting of their married status. Unless someone was macabre enough to imagine wiping out the vermillion from the heads of north-Indian Hindu women, why would anyone think of using the word ‘sindoor’ for a death-imparting military operation in which two children died? What kind of Hindutva rejoices killing? It is not a real response. It is not a solution.

All over east India that worships the Goddess Kali and Goddess Durga, the ‘mother goddess’, consider vermillion holy. An ingredient of mother worship. Auspicious. These goddesses are ‘preservers’, ‘mothers’ ‘keepers’ – for them are used words like sthithi and astha, the protectors. Mythologically, these goddesses, matrikas, devis are familial forces associated with continuous regeneration and forces called upon to destroy, for regeneration of the good. Symbolically, they help maintain the ‘sindoor’ on the heads of women, keep their married status safe; as such, unlike the trident, ‘sindoor’ is not a weapon that the Durga or Kali is armed with.

A friend called this inauspicious naming a ‘patriarchal “wifely” association’. How true. This took me back to a past where ‘sindoor’ is not associated with ‘wifely’ status. I had gone to visit a couple of my aging aunts a few years after my marriage. The question I was asked was why I did not wear sindoor on the parting of my hair. It took me a while to explain that I am proud to be married in Tamil Nadu, a land where the ‘married’ status is not denoted by the sindoor even in Brahmin families. And I am glad it is not a nationwide symbol of marriage for all Hindu women.

Vermillion is a naturally occurring pigment made up of mercuric sulfide (HgS), a naturally found mineral, known as cinnabar. It is very very toxic, like the mother mineral mercury. It can be a byproduct of lead too, equally toxic and another hue of red. Putting it on the parting hair of married women has sever health consequences, feminists point out.

Anthropologists and culture experts point to the Kamakhya temple festival, in Nilachal, Assam where the menstruation of the deity is worshipped at the beginning of the monsoon season every year. Worshipped here is the mother goddess Kamakhya. It is a seat of Tantric practices using plenty of sindoor; Yogini worship, Yoni worship of a vulva-shaped depression filled with water has been prevalent here from the 6th century CE or perhaps even earlier. It is not a matriarchal worship, not by priestesses as in ancient Greece. The use of byproducts of mercury were known to ancient Greece. The priests in Kamakhya temple are men.

It is believed that the time – the Ambubachi Mela time – is the most potent time of the year for many tantric babas that live in seclusion and come out only during the Ambubachi festival to recharge their energy levels. They can be recognised by their red and black clothes, their dreadlocks and the religious paraphernalia that they carry. The three-day fair in June-July is when the waters of river Brahmaputra turn red and it is believed that Kamakhya Devi is menstruating. The temple is closed down for the three-day period. Geologists believe it is iron oxide that flows down the Himalayan hills, turning the river waters reddish.

Whatever it is, sindoor divides ‘womanhood’ into three clear phases: the Girlchild, without sindoor. The married woman, her virginity taken, the sindoor signifying this woman not only belongs to a man, she is in the reproductive mode of functioning. Then the widow, without sindoor, available without respect. The use of sindoor in northern India can perhaps be related to the rise of Brahminical canons in the subcontinent and its inherent patriarchy. Surely no woman herself started the use of sindoor. Neither Draupadi, nor Sita, nor Savitri, nor Damayanti or our umpteen female icons sport the vermillion.

The vermillion as identification and identity came about when ‘patriarchy’ gained the social upper hand, a ‘wifely’ marker as my friend says, pointing out how terrible he feels by the use of this single word in a national response of a country that calls itself democratic. This reminds me of ‘Mohini Sindoor’ of the Saheb, Bibi aur Ghulam film. This story by Bimal Mitra ends with the murder of the dutiful wife in search of the magic vermillion. Women of no Abrahamic faiths wear vermillion. So, operation sindoor could not be intended to wipe-out the sindoor of neighbouring women.

I am convinced, entrenched patriarchy guides all the men in the national security apparatus. No hotshot general, no official, no minister thought to object to the name given to this military operation. Had ‘Mother India’ responded (NFHS-5 Survey: India’s sex ratio in 2023 is 1,020 females per 1,000 males), I don’t think, she would have associated the holy ‘sindoor’ with military action, it’s a desecration of the auspecious.

I am assuming, they, all the six-pack men in our glorified security setup, of course, knew what they were doing. Maybe they were covering up a massive ‘security lapse’ with a dash of vermillion. What they were doing could very well be the flashpoint of a war, not any kind of war but a nuclear war. I don’t want a war.

And do not forget, it was a victim ‘wife’ of a victim naval officer, dead in the 22 April terrorist attack in the tourist hotspot of Pahalgam, who spoke out against hate campaigns and labeling of communities and people as ‘terrorists’. This extremely courageous, newly married young Hindu woman can visualise war. Himanshi Narwal, speaking at a blood donation camp organised by the family on the occasion of her husband Vinay’s 27th birthday, said, ‘People going against Muslims or Kashmiris – we don’t want this. We want peace and only peace’. For which she got trolled badly, as did Vaishna Roy, another educated Hindu woman who raised objections to calling a military op ‘sindoor’. Such a naming is no justice for any Hindu woman or a truly Hindu man; the sindoor is a false narrative.

As false as the PR footage of a government spokesman flanked by two women to announce the military operation. Neither of the two women were wearing sindoor, nor was women power the image that was supposed to draw sympathy from. Rather, using Sofia Qureshi here looked like a superpower using a political victim. Thus, the exercise became a gimmick, no more; another display of the poor imagination of an ideological heavyweight.