Sofia Qureshi Is the Face of Indian Nationalism—But Fathima Was Left to Die Unseen

The Hindu

08-05-2025

Published : May 08, 2025 19:57 IST - 6 MINS READ
When Indian Army officer Colonel Sofia Qureshi stood in the heart of Delhi, legitimising the Indian strikes on terrorist training cells in Pakistan as a valid response to the terror killings in Pahalgam, Fathima, living in a corner of India in Uri, was asking the Indian government and its people where she should go with her three children when her village was being pounded by the Pakistan Army's bombs.
Sofia Qureshi is a symbol, while Fathima from Uri is plain reality carrying no symbolism. She shatters the aesthetic of Sofia's symbolism. Her question is that of a citizen questioning her government, asking for its accountability to its people. But she must know what we know—that there is no space for her question in this national moment.
Sofia Qureshi is being used to aestheticise and thus justify Hindu Indian nationalism. Fathima, with her three children, wears no military cap. Before a confident Sofia, she comes across as a worried, insecure woman. Sofia is extraordinary; Fathima is utterly ordinary.
Also Read | India vs Pakistan: Why 'settling the score' still decides the fight
Sofia Qureshi is currently the mouthpiece for Indian nationalism. Hence, she is welcome. The Indian nation, which has been transforming into a Hindu nation over the last 10 years, has chosen Sofia as its face—along with Vyomika Singh.
Sofia Qureshi's voice is very soothing to our excited nerves. But the question of an ordinary woman, Fathima, leaves us bewildered. She is asking the government why it did not take measures for her safety.
Government's elementary duty
Fathima's question reminds the government of its responsibility to perform its elementary duty: making its people secure. That is uncomfortable for all of us. This is a time only to stand with the government, not to question it. Don't we know the etiquette of wartime?
'15 people killed in Pakistani shelling on an Indian village near the border.' This is just ordinary news. We don't want to hear this right now. This news won't make headlines. No TV channel will scream for justice for them. Their deaths lack the theatre of the April 22 killings of tourists in Baisaran. Those who died were Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus—children, men, women. Is an attack on them an attack on India or not?
All these people could have been saved if the government had done its basic duty. This is what Fathima from Uri is saying, as is Ranveer Kaur from Poonch. They are asking: 'We are just 7 km inside the border, within range of Pakistani shelling. Why were no safety arrangements made for us? Why were no warnings issued? Why were no evacuation drills conducted? Why were no bunkers built? Why weren't we moved to safer places like Jammu?' Ranveer is asking the same questions as Fathima. Could the government not have anticipated that Pakistan would shell these areas?
These drills were happening in Delhi, in cities of north India—not where they should have been done. Why did this simple logic escape the government?
'How can a government obsessed only with dividing society, solely focussed on controlling Muslims, and crafting policies solely to create chaos and disruption worry about the safety of any section of society?'
Fathima and Ranveer are asking: 'Why doesn't the government do even its basic job?' You do not need to be extraordinarily intelligent to anticipate that Pakistan could shell these areas. You need just basic administrative alertness. An efficient government, vigilant everywhere, could not have ignored these regions. While preparing to strike Pakistan, it should have remembered that shelling places like Uri and Poonch would be easiest for Pakistan. It could have anticipated and made safety arrangements for the people of these areas. It did not, leaving the people there to die.
What do we want—governance or valour? The display of valour always overwhelms us. Imagine security personnel guarding Pahalgam: either the terrorists would not have entered, or they would have been confronted. Then, it would have been very difficult for them to identify Hindus and kill them. If simple, effective administrative measures had been taken in Pahalgam, the need for Operation Sindoor would not have arisen.
But then there would not have been a spectacle. No Hindu wounds. No cause for Operation Sindoor. No need for the dramatic imagery of Sofia Qureshi standing with Vyomika Singh.
But how can a government obsessed only with dividing society, solely focussed on controlling Muslims, and crafting policies solely to create chaos and disruption worry about the safety of any section of society?
Whose India is it?
Many of our friends are cheering the image of Sofia and Vyomika together, claiming this is their India. This image has been crafted by a government whose leader recently called Muslims puncture-walas.
Also Read | What a war with Pakistan could really cost India
They all know, however, deep in their hearts, that this is not their India. Their India, the real India is where, until this image of Sofia and Vyomika in a single frame emerged, a Hindu woman—Himanshi Narwal—was verbally lynched merely for daring to appeal for peace, for saying the revenge for her soldier husband's killing in a terrorist attack could not be violence against Muslims and Kashmiris. The same government that made Sofia its face did not stand with a soldier's wife—because she stood with Muslims and Kashmiris despite her grief.
A Hindu is not allowed to feel sympathy for Muslims. To be humane. They are only permitted to be Hindutvavadi nationalists.
If it were a civilised government, it would have said what Himanshi Narwal said spontaneously. But it allowed its people to insult and kill Muslims and Kashmiris. It stayed silent during attacks on Muslims and Kashmiris. Do these abuses and insults hurled at Muslims include Sofia and her family or not? Or did the Hindutvavadis spare them since they were nationalist?
We applauded Vikram Misri when he said, 'The manner of the attack was also driven by an objective of provoking communal discord, both in Jammu and Kashmir and the rest of the nation. It is to the credit of the government and the people of India that these designs were foiled.'
We know what he said was only a half-truth. For India's government itself made no efforts to stop attacks on Kashmiris and Muslims. We saw a drive to evict Muslims in Ahmedabad, watched them detained and paraded through cities, we heard a BJP leader issuing a death threat to a Muslim lawmaker without any consequence, we heard about attempts to profile Kashmiri students in Delhi University.
We know what Misri said was not the entire truth. The truth is that the objective of the attack in Baisaran was to provoke communal discord and that matched the objective of the Hindutva forces as well.
Imagine an impossible scenario: Fathima and Ranveer holding a press conference. To ask some ordinary questions to the government. Would our TV cameras crowd before them? Would they frame them the way they framed Sofia and Vyomika from different angles? Would we look at Fathima and Ranveer and say, This is our India? We know the answer.
Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University and writes literary and cultural criticism.