by Dr. AFTAB HUSAIN
‘Operation Sindoor’ echoes Indian nationalism’s trope of the motherland as a chaste body needing protection
In the days following the recent Indo-Pak conflict, a freshly written short story — a tale of a theatre actress who grieves, resists, and ultimately reclaims her identity on her own terms — by veteran Hindi writer Mamata Kalia appeared on a social media outlet.
“A Pinch of Sindoor” (Chutki Bhar Sindoor, titled after the red pigment that married Hindu women apply as a dot on the forehead or in the parting of the hair) is the story of Rita, a celebrated stage actress at the peak of her theatrical career, who marries Alam Khan, a devoted admirer and dry fruit merchant, defying warnings from her peers. Their marriage, however, becomes strained when Alam grows insecure and disapproving of Rita’s progressive roles on stage. Unable to reconcile with her public life and independence, he commits suicide, using her wedding dupatta. The media frenzy and his family’s backlash force Rita into isolation and grief. Yet, the world of theatre, unwilling to lose its star, draws her back.
With time, she returns to the stage, emotionally scarred but professionally resilient. Her comeback role portrays a widow finding hope again, mirroring her own journey from personal trauma to public performance. The story ends with Rita reclaiming her identity and agency, symbolised by her act of applying glitter and lipstick like sindoor, marking both continuity and rebirth. Through Rita’s journey, the story delicately explores themes of artistic autonomy, gender expectations, public versus private identity, and the quiet strength required to survive love, loss, and societal judgment.
Set far from the battlefield, the story appears to bear no direct reference to geopolitics or military conflict, yet its timing and symbolic gestures — particularly the protagonist’s final act of adorning herself with sindoor as an assertion of self rather than subservience — invite a deeper reading.
Around the same time, the Indian state named a retaliatory military operation “Operation Sindoor”, invoking a traditionally feminine, conjugal symbol to frame a nationalistic act of aggression. What does it mean when a symbol of love and marriage is militarised by the state, while in fiction it becomes a gesture of survival and autonomy?
The gendered language of war, as this article explores, is never innocent.
The naming of India’s recent cross-border retaliation as “Operation Sindoor” is not just a tactical code — it is a deeply symbolic gesture, with Sindoor being the traditional symbol of marital status for women. The phrase evokes themes of marriage, conjugal unity, identity, tradition, femininity and feminine sacrifice.
By using this intimate, culturally potent symbol to name a military operation, the state effectively feminizes the nation and sacralises militarism — embedding within the language of war a narrative of chastity, purity, protection, and violation.
This is not a neutral move. It reflects a long-standing gendered metaphor in Indian nationalist discourse, where the motherland (Bharat mata) is cast as a chaste, violated body needing protection. In this symbolic schema: The nation becomes the wife or mother whose honour must be avenged; The soldier becomes the husband or son whose duty is to protect or restore that honour; blood becomes sindoor — a conflation of sacrifice and sanctity.
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