Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, addressing the media on Operation Sindoor at the National Media Centre, New Delhi, on May 07, 2025. Image via Press Information Bureau, Government of India. Public Domain.

In the wake of “Operation Sindoor,” the name given by the Indian government to the bombing of targets in Pakistan the night of May 6, 2025, much of the media fanfare in India has focused on the supposed triumph of gender equality: women military officers leading the charge, images of empowered Indian women donning uniforms, and glowing headlines about “the nation's support for gender equality and the value of women to national defence.” Yet beneath this veneer of progress lies a deeply unsettling reality — one that feminist and social justice movements cannot afford to ignore.

Once again, the Kashmir Valley has borne the brunt of escalating militarisation, with devastating consequences. The loss of civilian lives, destruction of local infrastructure, and deepening cycles of fear and displacement have become tragically routine. For decades, both the Indian and Pakistani militaries have entrenched themselves in the region, turning Kashmir into a stage for nationalist performance, where the human cost is either sidelined or erased entirely.

On April 22, 2025, a terror attack in a tourist resort in Pahalgam in Indian- Administered Kashmir, led to the death of 26 tourists. It was called the deadliest attack on civilians in the country’s recent history. Twenty-five Indian nationals and one Nepalese national were killed in the attack, all of them men. Victims were also predominantly Hindu, as survivors recounted that the armed gunmen separated men from women and children, asked the men to recite Islamic verses and, on their failure to do so, shot them.

The Resistance Front (TRF), considered to be an offshoot of Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, claimed responsibility for the attack through their social media handles. TRF denied responsibility on April 26 and called it a cyber breach. India has since accused Pakistan of supporting the militants, an accusation rejected by Islamabad. Since then, tensions between India and Pakistan have continued to escalate. On the night of May 6, India launched missiles that hit nine sites in Pakistan, with the Indian government claiming that they had targeted terror camps in a mission called Operation Sindoor.

Daily ceremony with a synchronized parade by soldiers from the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) and the Pakistan Rangers at the Wagha Border. Image via Flickr by Joshua Song. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The symbolism of ‘sindoor’

The choice of name evoked mixed reactions online among women and men in India. While one section criticized the name strongly as misogynistic, a symbol of patriarchal control used to justify military violence, another section hailed it as a symbol of feminine rage, of the grief of women who lost their husbands in the Pahalgam attack and a sign of women’s power.

Sindoor is a vermilion powder traditionally worn by married Hindu women in the north of India. There is a great deal of symbolism attached to it in ritual and culture, and the smearing or removal of it is often used in cinema to symbolize the wronging of a woman. When a woman is widowed, she traditionally stops wearing it. Given the deaths of Hindu men in the Pahalgam terrorist attack, this name may seem innocuous or even symbolic of feminine strength. But to many, it is a chilling marker of exclusion, an attempt to homogenise a narrow vision of Indian womanhood, rooted in north Indian, upper-caste patriarchal Hindu ideas. It is also considered a patriarchal symbol of marriage that is imposed on many women against their wishes, a symbol they are expected to carry for the well-being of their spouses and in order to gain respect as a married woman in society, even if they don’t want to. It is often marked as a wife’s “religious duty,” with the assertion that a woman’s refusal to wear sindoor indicates infidelity or that she does not want to continue the marriage. This is not purely a social norm propagated in families — it is a narrative that even the Indian courts have asserted in their rulings.

Screenshot of a post on X by user Wajahat Kazmi that shares an image from Pakistan using the symbolism of sindoor. Fair use.

The sindoor in the illustration, shared widely in Pakistani social media spaces, is used as a symbol of conquest. The Pakistani soldier representing the state and military applies sindoor to a feminized version of India, implying ownership, subjugation and forced union. This kind of imagery is not merely provocative; it's a patriarchal metaphor for domination, rooted in militarised masculinity. In this framing, war becomes a symbolic sexual conquest. In Pakistan, such propaganda seeks to project victory and national pride by appropriating cultural symbols from the “enemy” and distorting them into tools of humiliation. It mirrors the same tactics often critiqued in Indian nationalist discourse, where Pakistan is feminized, vilified, and made an object of conquest. This cycle of mutual dehumanization, steeped in patriarchal symbolism, leaves no room for genuine peace or dignity.

Women, their symbols, and their bodies are consistently instrumentalized in this theater of nationalism, rendered voiceless, submissive, or defiled while male militarism plays out its fantasies of power.

Military feminism and the illusion of equality

Adding to the spectacle are two women colonels — one of whom is Muslim — framed as proof of India’s pluralism and gender inclusivity. Their prominence is being wielded as a political weapon, a tool to signal that the Indian military is a great equalizer where gender and religion supposedly dissolve in the face of national duty, when, as in all militaries, it is not. War itself is one of the strongest tools of the patriarchy, so it can never be feminist.

Wing Commander Vyomika Singh briefing the media on Operation Sindoor at the National Media Centre, New Delhi, on May 07, 2025. Image via Press Information Bureau, Government of India. Public domain.

But, as many feminists have long pointed out, representation alone does not dismantle oppressive systems. Instead, it can reinforce them when used to sanitize violent state actions. In this case, the inclusion of women (and particularly a Muslim woman) is deployed to mask the very real harms inflicted on marginalized communities, both in Kashmir and within India’s own borders. The asserted symbolism of the operation named “Sindoor” being led by two Indian women colonels, to avenge the men who lost their lives, is intentionally put together to project this entire military operation as a feminist success story and a powerful symbol of women’s empowerment in India. This image is used tactically to evoke pride in Indians and deflect any questions about the military action itself and its impact.

Pinkwashing militarism: Global parallels

This strategy is hardly new. The Israeli military, for instance, has frequently showcased images of LGBTQ+ soldiers, most infamously a male soldier in uniform holding the pride flag in the backdrop of a destroyed infrastructure, to launder its image even as it continues relentless assaults on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. These tactics are designed to rebrand occupation and aggression as progressive, normalizing violence through the prism of liberal values.

Israeli writer Leekern posted on X:

LIBERATION🏳️‍🌈THE FIRST EVER PRIDE FLAG RAISED IN GAZA!

Under Hamas, being gay means death. Israeli Yoav Atzmoni wanted to send a message of hope. See his story below.

To Gaza’s hidden LGBTQ+ community: STAY HOPEFUL of a future where you can live and love free of Hamas! pic.twitter.com/9NOGfqhNVQ

— leekern (@leekern13) November 12, 2023

Intersectional feminism has been clear in its critique: empowerment narratives that rely on participation in violence do not equate to liberation. True justice cannot be achieved by simply diversifying the face of oppression.

Why we must call this out

What’s at stake here is more than symbolic. When feminist language and imagery are harnessed to justify militarism, we risk losing sight of the core principles of social justice: peace, equity, and dignity for all people. For those of us committed to an intersectional vision of justice, it is essential to resist these co-optations, to stand in solidarity with those most affected by state violence, and to insist that true empowerment cannot come at the expense of others’ lives and freedoms.

As Indian and Pakistani writers, we recognize the urgent need to push back against both our governments’ cynical use of feminist and progressive imagery. Militarization — no matter who leads it or what it’s named — will never be the path to justice.