Liaqat Ali Asadi<\/p>\n
The quiet ritual of sindoor, vermilion powder pressed into the parting of a married Hindu woman\u2019s hair each morning, and wiped off if one is widowed. It is as delicate as the first light touching temple stones and has been revered as sacred for centuries. Now, politicians hand it out like campaign flyers.
\nThis vermilion dust, a symbol of private ritual, has been thrust into Indian politics over the past month. In the first week of May, India launched military strikes against Pakistan, codenamed \u2018Operation Sindoor\u2019. In the last week of the same month, the ruling party allegedly proposed door-to-door distribution of sindoor. This move transformed the private spousal devotion into a public spectacle, ostensibly to commemorate Narendra Modi\u2019s eleven years in government.
\nWithin days, the BJP officially denied the reports, calling their campaign \u2018fake news.\u2019 One social media user, Ritu, questioned: \u201cWhy is the BJP now labelling it as fake news after five days?\u201d The denial came only after opposition leaders like Congress spokesperson Ragini Nayak condemned this as a \u201cshameful\u201d manipulation of Hindu symbolism for political harvest and an attempt to hide political and diplomatic failure.
\nSindoor is not merely a cosmetic. Like the delicate symbiosis between soil and seed, it had an unspoken understanding between husband and wife. A woman reacted on social media, \u2018Isn\u2019t it only the husband\u2019s prerogative?\u2019
\nThe controversy took a personal turn when opposition leaders questioned not just the policy but Modi\u2019s authority to distribute sindoor. As West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee pointedly asked: \u2018You are not the husband of everybody; why are you not giving sindoor to your Mrs first?\u2019-a barb that highlighted both the ritual\u2019s intimate nature and the prime minister\u2019s complicated relationship with his marriage.
\nThe move was not devotional. It was trespass. The backlash was swift and unmistakable. For centuries, it had exuded the aromatics of intimacy itself. The turmeric\u2019s grounding warmth, saffron\u2019s precious heat, and sandalwood\u2019s scent, which comprise sindoor, had kindled something deeper than anaesthetised politics could ever touch. When the government replicates the gesture, especially in a politicised context, it violates a symbolic trust. \u201cThey planned to distribute \u2018Sindoor\u2019 door to door. But the moment they sensed the anger among Hindu women and their husbands, the BJP started backtracking\u201d Dr Shama Mohamed, a spokesperson for the Congress, nailed on X.
\nThere was a time when Narendra Modi understood this intimacy instinctively. The man who sold tea at railway stations knew the rhythm of ordinary devotion. The quiet prayers whispered over morning chai, the way faith lived in gestures too small for cameras. His political ascent was built on this understanding, on speaking the language of the temple and the hearth with a fluency that elites never mastered. He knew when to bow, when to stay silent and when reverence required distance rather than appropriation. But power has its grammar, and somewhere in the corridors of influence, that instinctive wisdom got lost. The pauper who became prince forgot the very lessons that crowned him.
\nThe BJP moved to appropriate a sacred ritual like sindoor, a tool for public mind-regimenting for its political narrative. A video circulating widely on social media captured a group of Hindu women expressing outrage: \u201cIt is our husband\u2019s right to apply sindoor-not some political worker\u2019s,\u201d one woman said firmly.
\nIt was the ritual\u2019s intended recipients who rejected the gesture most decisively, not out of political affiliation, but cultural intuition. For them, this was not a matter of reverence. It was trespass.
\nAs Susan Sontag revealed in Illness as Metaphor, political movements often appropriate medical and purification imagery to mystify their failures. Modi\u2019s sindoor campaign follows this pattern precisely \u2013 transforming military aggression into spiritual healing, and political failure into ritual cleansing. Political actors understand that cultural symbols function like chemical compounds in the ecosystem of public opinion-when introduced artificially, they can alter the entire balance of collective consciousness.
\nPolitical analysts describe this reversal as damage control rather than strategic repositioning. The controversy exposed deeper failures. According to Congress, the government had dispatched 59 delegates to 32 countries seeking international support for Operation Sindoor. Yet not a single nation publicly backed India\u2019s narrative. As opposition leaders noted, in the aftermath, Kuwait lifted visa restrictions on Pakistan, Gulf countries signed new agreements with Islamabad, and Russia committed $2.6 billion to revive Pakistan\u2019s steel industry-outcomes they argue highlight the limitations of turning military operations into political theatre.
\nThis retreat was not a strategy-it was a necessary concession, an off-the-cuff response to the unexpected backlash. Echoing public frustration, Kumar Talukdar asked on X, \u201cShould we not acknowledge at this point that the country has become a subject of ridicule?\u201d
\nThe controversy sparked deeper debates about patriarchy and agency. Dr Ruchika Sharma wrote on X: \u201cYour daily reminder that sindoor is a patriarchal symbol that marks a woman as married and thereby a property. Gimmicks like these strengthen such regressive symbols of patriarchy.\u201d
\nWhat was meant as a celebration spiralled into layered critique-not just of politics, but of patriarchy, the commodification of femininity, and the state\u2019s intrusion into private life.
\nYet in valleys of Indian-occupied Kashmir, where apple blossoms once promised spring and deodar forests whisper ancient secrets, other women wake at night with breathless terror, their hearts pounding against the weight of not knowing. Here, where peaks pierce the sky like prayers left unanswered, half-widows clutch photographs of husbands who vanished into silence-men who exist neither in this world nor the next, leaving their wives suspended in a limbo that recognises no ritual, no ceremony, no closure.
\nSindoor, a tiny line of red that speaks of love, union, and shared journeys. A political campaign repackaged sindoor as a nationalistic token, tied to military action and public spectacle, like a cuckoo\u2019s eggs in another bird\u2019s nest. Suddenly, something sacred felt staged. \u201cIt\u2019s not sindoor anymore,\u201d a woman wrote online. \u201cIt\u2019s blood.\u201d Like tobacco or alcohol dressed in fancy packaging, this campaign took something intimate and turned it into emotional merchandise-shiny on the outside, empty within. As Orwell foresaw, sacred language and emotional symbols, when seized by the state, lose their meaning and become mere tools of control. In \u2018Operation Sindoor\u2019, this erosion of meaning was not just metaphorical-it was planned to be stamped, boxed, and delivered to doorsteps. Pragnya Gupta\u2019s tweet captures this disillusionment: \u201cAnother backfire campaign from BJP they know they have goofed up big time.\u201d
\nWhen a party borrows the symbols of sanctity and performs them as drama, they risk not only political failure but a deep spiritual affront. The backlash from women, scholars, and even ordinary husbands wasn\u2019t orchestrated. It was spontaneous. It was real. It reminded the country that some rituals are not tools. They are truths.
\nIn Mark Twain\u2019s The Prince and the Pauper, the exchange of identities reveals not only the burdens of privilege but also the peril of forgetting where one comes from. The pauper who becomes prince must struggle not to lose the humility and wisdom that hardship once taught him. So too, in the corridors of power, it is all too easy to lose sight of the sacredness that once lived in small, everyday rituals. As India\u2019s leaders reach for spectacle and abandon the quiet truths of tradition, the lesson is clear: when we forget the origins of our rituals and the meaning of our symbols, we risk not only political failure but a deeper, spiritual kind that no campaign can restore.<\/p>\n
The writer is a freelance columnist based in Lahore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Liaqat Ali Asadi The quiet ritual of sindoor, vermilion powder pressed into the parting of a married Hindu woman\u2019s hair each morning, and wiped off if one is widowed. It is as delicate as the first light touching temple stones and has been revered as sacred for centuries. Now, politicians hand it out like campaign […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[13671],"class_list":["post-488476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-article","tag-liaqat-ali-asadi"],"yoast_head":"\n