Operation Sindoor, 2025: India's Answer to Pahalgam

Patriotism is not only about the wars of the past. It is also about how a nation responds, today, when its people are attacked. In May 2025, India faced exactly such a moment — and its answer was Operation Sindoor.

This is a recent and still-debated chapter, so it deserves to be told carefully, with attention to what is established rather than what is claimed by either side.

The Pahalgam attack

On 22 April 2025, terrorists attacked tourists at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir, killing 26 people — twenty-five Indian tourists and one Nepali citizen. India blamed Pakistan-based militant groups for the massacre, and public demand for a response was overwhelming.^[1]

The operation was named Sindoor — the vermilion worn by married Hindu women — a pointed reference to the women widowed in the attack.

The strikes of 7 May

In the early hours of 7 May 2025, India launched precision strikes on nine sites it described as terror infrastructure linked to groups including Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.^[1][2] A tense, four-day military confrontation followed, involving aircraft and missiles on both sides.

On 10 May 2025, after the most serious crisis between the two nuclear-armed neighbours in years, a ceasefire was announced.^[2]

When shadows crept, the strikes were swift, a nation's roar through every rift.

A poem written before its time

Long before May 2025, in my poem on India's sovereignty, I had written lines that now read almost as prophecy: "When shadows crept, the strikes were swift, a nation's roar through every rift. Not for vengeance, but for peace to reign, for dreams to thrive unchained by pain."

That, in the end, is the only justification any such operation can claim — not revenge, but the protection of ordinary lives and the deterrence of the next attack. Whether it achieves that is a question history will answer.

Remembering responsibly

As a writer, I believe patriotism includes the duty to speak about even recent events honestly — to honour the sacrifice and resolve of our forces while remaining sober about the terrible stakes of conflict between nuclear powers. Operation Sindoor was a moment of national grief and national resolve. The truest tribute is to remember both the courage it demanded and the cost that any war, threatened or fought, always carries.