Naming the Operation ‘Sindoor’; Misinformation Campaigns

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi named India’s attack on Pakistan ‘terrorist infrastructure’ Operation Sindoor. Sindoor is the vermillion marker for married Hindu women; it was a deliberate invocation of grief and memory of the tourists killed in the Pahalgam attack on 22 Apr. Most of the 28 male victims had been targeted and shot for being Hindu. The name was, however, a typical, patriarchal, response from the Hindutva right-wing which posits itself as the defender of women’s honor. In this case the subtext was that a woman’s honor is only related to her husband and the country shall avenge the loss. However, the men who were killed were also brothers, sons, and fathers. Only married women in Indian states of Bihar—due for elections soon—Madhya Pradesh, and Jharkhand wear sindoor. India released the news of the attack on 7 May morning with a logo of the Operation. Normally groups, institutions, battalions, and so on have logos. It is ironic, but for conflicts, logos are used only in video games, highlighting the heavily propagandized messaging of the conflict. Through the conflict, a huge misinformation war started on various social media forums and Indian television with its ludicrous claims. This made real information very hard to come by even though the Indian Ministry of Defence had its dedicated sites. One of the misinformation pieces from a government of Pakistan’s X handle was: ‘India has launched six ballistic missiles from Adampur. Five landed on Amritsar, one fell back on Adampur.’ This led to shock among Sikhs that Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) was attacked by India. It had to be rebutted by India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri. India went on to ask X to ban 8,000 accounts. Even the news websiteThe Wire which is neutral in its reporting was briefly banned. Meanwhile, Reliance Industries owned by Anil Ambani emerged as one of the vultures of the Operation Sindoor when it applied to trademark the name for entertainment programs in the future. It later withdrew but other applicants remained in fray, some of them dummies (earlier coverage).