Operation ‘Sindoor’: For the widows, daughters and mothers

By naming India’s predawn, meticulously planned and precision-driven strike on nine spots housing terror camps across the border in Pakistan Operation Sindoor, the Narendra Modi government gave the mission not only strategic weight but deep symbolic power. The name honours the memory of the men murdered in the April 22 Pahalgam massacre, singled out and executed solely for their faith, and sends a solemn message to the women they left behind: this was not just retaliation, but an act of remembrance, protection, honour and dignity.

To the widows, daughters, and mothers of the slain, Operation Sindoor stands as an assurance: you are not alone. It affirms that your pain is seen and that your grief is not consigned to silence. Whether the victims were husbands shot in front of their wives, fathers torn away from daughters, or sons mourned by ageing mothers, the operation was as much a cultural and emotional statement as it was military.

For Prime Minister Modi, who has repeatedly acknowledged the central role of women in his voter base, the symbolism is not incidental.

This strike is seen as a fulfilment of his vow to bring justice to those who carried out the Pahalgam killings. He had promised that India would track the perpetrators to the ends of the earth. Operation Sindoor is the realisation of that promise, not merely a tactical operation, but a moral reckoning.

The choice of the name Sindhoor is especially powerful. In Hindu tradition, sindoor (vermilion powder) is worn by married women along the parting of their hair, symbolising their marital status and devotion to their husbands. It embodies prayer, fidelity, and continuity. It is associated with blessings of prosperity and the long life of one’s spouse, and it is closely tied to Goddess Parvati, the ideal of wifely devotion and strength. Parvati, wife of Lord Shiva, the eternal destroyer in the Hindu trinity alongside Brahma the creator and Vishnu the preserver, represents enduring love and sacred duty.

To invoke sindoor, then, is to invoke not only protection and honour but the cultural fabric that binds families and communities together in the Hindu faith. That this name was chosen for an operation responding to the calculated killing of Hindu men in Pahalgam is therefore no accident. The victims — who were husbands, sons, fathers — were not only murdered, but targeted as symbols of identity and belief. Their deaths ripped through their homes, leaving behind women with shattered lives and broken futures, their vermilion wiped away in violence.

Operation Sindoor is India’s message to those women: you have not been forgotten. It is a vow of solidarity, of national memory and resolve. In a sense, just as sindoor represents the bond between a woman and her husband, this mission represents the nation’s bond with its people, especially those mourning the loss of their loved ones.

By drawing from its deepest cultural roots, India has answered an act of terror with both strength and meaning. Operation Sindoor is not only a response, it is, in fact, a reckoning.

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