On the Warmongering of Sindoor Defenders
By Saswat Pattanayak
New York City, May 7, 2025
War (infused with religiosity no less) is the ultimate opium for the masses - it lets you suddenly trust the very same corrupt and communal politicians you used to once despise for their unbroken records of lies and mass deception;
it makes you give up your critical thinking skills you had developed over a lifetime that had allowed you to consistently challenge the corporate/godi media narratives, in favor of happily turning into a willing warmongering propagandist yourself;
it helps you swiftly surrender your principled fight against patriarchal norms and khap panchayats, to then glamorize “sindoor” and to infantilize the very women survivors who publicly had pleaded against military aggressions;
it facilitates you in conveniently overlooking the hitherto detestable mardangi of the 56-inch, of sadistic silence over Manipur, of numerous extrajudicial killings, of sustained pattern of mob lynching committed against the disenfranchised, and of systematic violence against the minorities - Dalits, Muslims, women, in your own backyard - in favor of suddenly turning into a bloodthirsty ultranationalist whose sense of humanity must stop at the man-made colonial borders.
The war drums stop you from asking journalistic questions about evidence of state-sponsored acts against whom you are now going to be so committed - have you asked if sufficient investigations have been done to look into internal security lapses or/and into allegations of external collaborations to conduct the incident that is now being used as a rationale for this war?
The war hysteria prevents you from seeking legal questions on internationally disputed territories that you used to invoke routinely in other times to stand up for struggles of people that have been long denied their land and freedom - whether Gaza or Kashmir, your professed silence has only helped justify mass scale suppressions; slow and steady genocide.
The fog of war helps you voluntarily to cloud your sense of judgment on the potentially catastrophic outcomes in conflicts between two nuclear powers that may eventually result in a MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) scenario not just for your life with a suspended conscience temporarily overjoyed to relish blood, but more importantly, for the future generations who have had nothing to do with these hatemongering.
No war, no matter the pretext of seeking a revenge, is a just war. If that were a logic, imagine how many times every country may then deserve to be invaded for the injustices it harbors today. How many times one then needs to "take law into their own hands" without care for civility and sovereignty. To kill more people because you are opposed to killing of people is not a very Gandhian thing to do. Of course, war also helps you unlearn Gandhi in a jiffy...
In the name of "Sindoor", let there not be honor killings of hundreds of innocent people whether they are from this side of the map, or from that side. Because in any war, casualties are inevitable - of truth, of people, and of your own sense of humanity. Therefore, postpone wars for as long as you can - for this lifetime and beyond. Do not be its cheerleader.
