The Symbolism Of Sindoor: Analysing The Operation That Checkmated Pakistan

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5 days ago

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The beauty, the splendour, the glory, the auspiciousness: the symbol has spoken from our collective psyche
Every symbol has three layers of interpretation, said Roland Barthes. I think I have found at least five for Operation Sindoor.
Let us see. The first one, or primary interpretation, is simple and straightforward: the colour of blood. It was a message that we would be kicking butt. We were ticked. They killed our men and left their young wives widowed. It left our blood boiling and turned it into hot Sindoor. We had to show them who the real man was, aka 56.
But what is the hidden or secondary message? That too seems obvious, I think. Sindoor is the paste applied by Hanuman over all his body to express how much he loved Sri Rama. For Sindoor on her forehead was a mark of her love for Sri Rama, said Sita. No one will mess with her.
I get this too. This is the in-your-face finger that is being shown to the Asura. They came and killed wantonly and spared the women only to use them as tools, as messengers to go tell Modi. Well, he heard, and he responded. And we heard too as the ear of his ears and saw as the eye of his eyes. That is the mythological, the religious, hidden behind the Brahmo, and the arrow of the sky, the Akashteer, another symbol and message.
What is the third level, then? The ensconced one. I think it is the BJP, plain and simple. For, if you remember, the colour of Sindoor is both red and orange. And subtly, the puratana prateeka, the chinha of our civilisation, of security and dedication, is the party of nationalists. Sindoor and Bhagwa flow together.
There is nothing wrong with it. It is an inspired choice, and I am duly impressed. Just because I prefer to eat Amul, not for its taste (which is excellent, by the way) but for its advertising. I will always stand by Prime Minister Modi for his marketing genius. The tertiary level, or the Tritiya Stara, here, is a subtle link with the party. This is why Mamata Didi did not acknowledge the Sindoor of her sisters that had been so unceremoniously wiped off their foreheads. She praised and mentioned only the military.
But Modi, the modern Gipper, has scored a big one. With a symbol that, to most of us, was a Ritual. There was an ulterior motive behind all the advertising and the marketing, and it was the political.
But wait, there is more. And I did not see it until more than a month later. There is here a new myth being built, the myth of a central figure, filled with fire in his bloodstreams, even though his mind is calm and still. The yogi who is invoking the flame. And I was instantly reminded of the first rik of the Veda, 'Agnimile purohitam yajnasya devam ritvijam Hotaram ratna dhatamam."
Translated loosely, it implies, 'I adore the flame, the priest of the Sacrifice, the shining lover of Truth, the invoker of opulence and Light."
What a genius! Did he actually know that he was turning himself into a tapasvi, a Rishi, with this flagrant symbol that hides so much more than it reveals? If he did, give him ten more years as poetic justice. For the man who picks the right metaphor gets the drone. If he did not, then the man is an artist of a high order. He is a master builder of narratives, and he has built it, Kubrick by Kubrick.
We need narratives, in the land of Bollywood. We need the dialogues of Sholay and Mother India. They fill our national desire for drama. If someone understands this, then he understands our collective psyche.
So now we have figured out the fourth level, that of movie-making, the quaternary, the chatvari. But wait! There is something more to this than mere symbolism. Something that transcends the representative and the metaphorical, the mythological and the cultural, the political and the historical. Sri Aurobindo says that the entire Veda is three layers of interpretation, trayortha sarva Vedeshu. The highest layer is bhadram, the good, the adhyatmik, the spiritual.
For it is the colour of our collective aspiration. We are royally PO'd. We have borne enough bouncers on our helmets and our chests. We have been quiet all along and have smiled back every time they come hurtling at us with the red ball.
I think the fifth level is our collective need burning a hole through us. We have had enough of having been played. We will be redder than Red China. We will be like Draupadi, who wiped away the Sindoor from her forehead when she was violated and her husbands did not stand up for her.
We are done. We need a symbol we can cling to and hold. Where, as Sri Aurobindo says, the real is the symbol and the symbol is the real. Where our operation, surgical and clinical will never be over. We will keep cutting delicately with our scalpel.
We will watch you bleed a thousand times and will not flinch. We do not care.
A wounded civilisation needs to be healed. And the price of its healing is blood. It is the thousand years of humiliation that need to be punched in the nose. Wash the wound with blood!
But whose blood and why? Is it our reverse of Jihad? Isn't this what it was about? The dog whistle of Munir being answered by our own. And I am very comfortable with it.
All that I would like is, while we admire it, we put its explosion to good use too. For the true value of Sindoor is not in its look of blood but in its ancient evocation of Sringara.
The beauty, the splendour, the glory, the auspiciousness. The symbol has spoken from our collective psyche. But we must remember to remember this too.
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We need to turn it into the real that it was meant for. Someday. For red is also the colour of transformation.
Pariksith Singh is author, poet, philosopher and medical practitioner based in Florida. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
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