Fractured Patriotism

In a week dominated by tales of valour, Operation Sindoor should have been a moment of solemn national unity. Instead, it has become a stage for political point-scoring, communal undertones, and casteist distractions. The poise of officers like Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, Wing Commander Vyomika Singh, and Air Marshal A.K. Bharti was supposed to remind us that the uniform dissolves all identity but one ~ Indian. Yet, in the political cacophony that followed, that principle was not just forgotten but willfully dismantled. When Madhya Pradesh minister Vijay Shah made a crude analogy likening Colonel Qureshi ~ a decorated Indian Army officer who just happens to be Muslim ~ to the “sister of terrorists,” he crossed a line that no amount of post facto clarification can erase.

His invocation of identity to dramatise a military operation not only undermined the armed forces’ discipline and apolitical ethos but betrayed a deeply troubling majoritarian narrative ~ one where loyalty must be proven through religion. It didn’t stop there. Senior Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav’s retort, citing caste identities of the officers involved, was no better. In attempting to counter Mr Shah’s communal slur with casteist counter-assertions, Mr Yadav turned a national security achievement into another trench in the electoral battlefield.

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That his comments came shortly after an FIR was ordered against Mr Shah only reveals how entrenched identity politics has become ~ and how no party is immune to weaponizing it. What is lost in this unseemly crossfire is the quiet dignity of the officers themselves; they did not sign up to be avatars of caste, religion, or party ideology. Their courage belongs to all Indians, not just to those who seek to fold them into political symbolism. The episode involving a senior diplomat and his family ~ targeted online following his announcement of a ceasefire ~ only deepens the sense of fracture. When civil servants are vilified for executing government policy, and their families are subjected to orchestrated smear campaigns, we must ask what kind of society we are becoming.

These events show how dangerously thin the line has become between patriotism and parochialism. To turn national security into an occasion for communal or casteist point-scoring is not just irresponsible ~ it is a betrayal of the very soldiers, officers, and civil servants who defend our fragile union. What’s more disturbing is the silence ~ or worse, the quiet applause ~ from sections of the public. When citizens begin to cheer polarising rhetoric under the guise of national pride, the rot goes deeper than politics. A democracy is only as strong as its people’s ability to reject hate, even when it masquerades as patriotism. The nation cannot afford a patriotism that fractures us further. True respect for our armed forces begins by refusing to see them through the prism of religion or caste ~ and demanding that those in power do the same.