Sindoor ka badla khoon’: Shashi Tharoor lauds ‘brilliantly chosen name’ for operation

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, leading an all-party Indian parliamentary delegation to the US, described Operation Sindoor as a “brilliantly chosen name” and a powerful response to terrorism. Addressing the National Press Club on Wednesday, Tharoor linked the operation’s name to the symbolic wiping out of sindoor, a traditional mark of marriage worn by Hindu women, during the April 22 terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam.

‘Sindoor ka badla khoon’: Tharoor explains the name
Tharoor noted that 26 Indian women were widowed in the Pahalgam attack, and described the choice of the name Operation Sindoor as both culturally evocative and emotionally resonant. “Sindoor is a vermilion mark applied on the forehead of married women in Hindu tradition. These terrorists wiped it off. The colour is not far from that of blood. So yes, this was sindoor ka badla khoon,” he said. He recounted how the terrorists deliberately spared the wives of those killed to force them to “go back and tell others what had happened,” making the act even more chilling.