As the armed forces were preparing for action against perpetrators of the Pahalgam attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the code word ‘Operation Sindoor.’ An image put out later had ‘Operation Sindoor’ written in block letters. One ‘O’ in Sindoor is a bowl of vermilion.
Selection of codeword Sindoor was a message. Sindoor, or vermillion, is a mark of married Hindu women and a reference to the April 22 Pahalgam massacre in which men, including those newly married, were singled out on the basis of their religion and killed by terrorists. A sindoor tilak is also worn with pride by warriors.
It was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who chose the retaliatory action ‘Operation Sindoor’, keeping in mind the widows of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack.
Himanshi Narwal from Haryana, Aishanya Dwivedi from UP, Shital Kalathiya and Kajalben Parmar from Gujarat, Sohini Adhikari from Kolkata, Pragati Jagdale from Maharashtra, Sheela Ramachandran from Kerala, Jennifer Nathaniel from Madhya Pradesh and Jaya Mishra were the women whose husbands were killed in the Pahalgam incident. It was Himanshi Narwal, married for just six days, kneeling beside the body of her husband, Navy officer Lieutenant Vinay Narwal, who became the face of the tragedy.