Women and Operation Sindoor: The gap between optics and reality

Scroll.in

18-05-2025

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.
But within a week, this careful projection has unravelled. 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, when criticised, 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. Except that 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 defence, 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 knuckle raps to no one in particular.
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.
Here is a summary of the week's top stories.
Were migrants pushed out? The Supreme Court questioned a petition alleging that the Indian government had forcibly deported 43 Rohingya refugees to Myanmar by pushing them into international waters. The court also rejected a request to pass an interim order halting the deportation of Rohingyas.
The bench sought material to be placed on record that would substantiate the allegations, stating that the petitioners were coming up with 'a new story every day'. 'Who is the person watching them?' asked Justice Surya Kant about allegations that the persons were taken to the Andaman Sea and dropped into international waters.
The advocate appearing for the petitioners quoted a report published by the United Nations on Thursday, which alleged that the refugees had been 'cast into the sea from naval vessels'. The bench said it will comment on the report when 'sitting in a three-judge composition'.
Vineet Bhalla explains . And Rokibuz Zaman reports about Bangladeshi police's claim that there were three Indians among 78 'pushed' off boats into the neighbouring country.
The scope of the judiciary. President Droupadi Murmu has sought the Supreme Court's opinion about its ruling on April 8 that set timelines for governors and the president to grant assent to bills passed by legislatures. The president asked whether such timelines could be set in the absence of legal provisions.
The court had ruled that Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi's decision to withhold assent to 10 bills, some of which had been pending since January 2020, and refer them to the president after they were re-enacted by the Assembly was 'illegal and erroneous'. The court also imposed a three-month deadline on the president to approve or reject such bills.
Vineet Bhalla explains and why the BJP launched a bitter attack on the top court.
Islamabad's funding. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said that any financial assistance provided by the International Monetary Fund to Pakistan is ' no less than terror funding ' and should be reconsidered. He was referring to the fresh $1 billion financial assistance programme that the United Nations financial agency approved for Islamabad on May 9 as part of its bailout package.
The defence minister claimed that a large part of the IMF's funding would be used by Pakistan on 'terror infrastructure'. New Delhi does not want the funds it gives to the IMF to be used for creating terror infrastructure in Pakistan or any other country, said Singh.
Also on Scroll this week