Operation Sindoor: India’s New Normal Under Modi – OpEd

In the aftermath of the tragic attack on pilgrims in Pahalgam, Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not pause to mourn in silence. Instead, he mounted the national stage, clad not in the sober tones of a statesman but in the thunderous rhetoric of a commander-in-chief. His pronouncement—“Operation Sindoor is now the new normal for India”—was not merely a response to terror. It was a rhetorical pivot, a semiotic recalibration, and a discursive blueprint for a new India, where grief is weaponised and military posture replaces democratic deliberation.

This piece examines that statement—“Operation Sindoor is the new normal”—through the lens of rhetoric, discourse, and semiotics, to uncover what it tells us about Modi’s India: a republic increasingly narrated in the language of myth, war, and masculine retribution.

The Rhetoric of Rage: From Condolence to Combat

Modi’s post-Pahalgam speeches were not elegies. They were mobilisations.

In Patna, his voice rose in calibrated fury: “We will not forget. We will not forgive.” He turned the vocabulary of loss into the vocabulary of vengeance, using anaphora and repetition to drum a rhythm of resolve. With each speech, he shaped a national narrative of trauma and fury, of India standing not as a grieving democracy but as an avenging force.

The phrase “Operation Sindoor” itself is a masterclass in Modi’s rhetorical strategy. Sindoor—the red vermilion worn by married Hindu women—signifies devotion, fertility, and continuity. By invoking it in a military context, Modi draws on emotional reservoirs embedded deep within Indian cultural consciousness. The result is a rhetorical sleight of hand: the maternal and sacred are now yoked to martyrdom and masculinity.

“Operation Sindoor is our new normal” isn’t policy-speak—it’s a nationalist incantation. It compresses mourning into marching orders, transforming individual tragedy into collective militarisation. This rhetoric is designed not to inform, but to inflame.

Discursive Warfare: The Manufacture of National Siege

Discourse is power. And Modi, a consummate political performer, understands the power of repeated, emotionally charged discourse to shape not just what a nation feels, but what it becomes.

“Operation Sindoor” is deliberately left undefined. There is no operational briefing, no geographic locus, no legal frame. It is not a military doctrine—it is a discursive device. By keeping it open-ended, Modi allows “Operation Sindoor” to mean whatever the government wants it to mean—from cross-border strikes to silencing dissenters at home.

The real target of this discourse is not terrorists. It is the national imagination.

Modi constructs a permanent atmosphere of siege. The language he uses—“invisible enemies,” “internal saboteurs,” “urban Naxals”—invites suspicion, demands loyalty, and delegitimises critique. Those who mourn differently, question loudly, or dissent peacefully are painted in the same hue as terrorists. Thus, a discursive trap is laid: the more you defend democracy, the more you’re seen as a threat to it.

This transformation of discourse has consequences. India is no longer framed as a diverse, plural republic but as a fortress under attack. And fortresses, by nature, close their gates.

Semiotics of Sindoor: From Sacred Symbol to State Sanction

Semiotically, the appropriation of sindoor is Modi’s most calculated move.

In Hindu tradition, sindoor is an intimate, feminine symbol of marital status and societal belonging. By militarising it into “Operation Sindoor,” Modi performs a violent act of semiotic inversion: he strips a personal emblem of sanctity and reassigns it as a badge of nationalist sacrifice.

This symbolic shift is more than rhetorical flourish. It is a cultural reordering of the nation’s emotional compass. In this semiotic landscape, the red on a woman’s forehead becomes interchangeable with the blood of martyrs. The private becomes public. The sacred becomes political. And the feminine, once celebrated in ritual, is repurposed to legitimise a hyper-masculine national identity.

In Modi’s symbolic world, the motherland is perpetually dishonoured, and it is the duty of its sons to avenge her. The message is clear: to be a citizen is to be a soldier.

Normalising the Exceptional: Where Grief Becomes Spectacle

The idea of “a new normal” is bureaucratic in tone but chilling in effect. It implies permanence. It marks the institutionalisation of the extraordinary. In Modi’s hands, the Pahalgam tragedy becomes not a moment of national introspection but a turning point—an excuse to suspend the usual limits of liberal democracy in the name of an endless, undefined war.

But what does this “normal” look like?

It looks like a state where border skirmishes double as campaign content. It looks like television channels echoing the Prime Minister’s war cries rather than asking hard questions. It looks like universities treated as insurgent cells, where students are surveilled and professors censured. It looks like the narrowing of the civic space into a battlefield of loyalty tests.

This is not merely the militarisation of state policy—it is the militarisation of national culture.

A Nation of Permanent Spectators

The genius of Modi’s rhetorical framework is that it transforms every citizen into a spectator of a grand, unending nationalist saga. The real-world complexities of terrorism, Kashmir, diplomacy, and security are flattened into a simple story: India is the eternal victim-hero, surrounded by cowards and conspirators.

This dramatization comes with real costs. When tragedy becomes performance, truth becomes relative. The line between theatre and policy blurs. Soldiers are glorified, but scrutiny of their deployment is cast as betrayal. The victims of terrorism are sanctified, but the politics that may have enabled their vulnerability go unexamined.

A Dangerous Lexicon for Democracy

“Operation Sindoor is the new normal” isn’t just a phrase—it’s a blueprint for a nationalist narrative. It is a turning point in how India sees itself—and how it will be governed. It signals a future in which the wounds of the nation are never allowed to heal, because they serve too well as instruments of mobilisation. A future in which language is not a tool of understanding, but of command.

Modi’s genius lies not only in what he says, but in how he makes the nation feel. And he has taught India to feel in binaries: pride or shame, loyalty or treason, victory or silence.

In this discursive battlefield, where sindoor becomes blood and mourning becomes mobilisation, democracy finds itself under quiet erasure—not with tanks on the street, but with slogans on lips, repeated until the exception becomes the rule.

And that, perhaps, is the most dangerous war of all.