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........

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