Femininity, a sight for the sore eyes of brutal regimes. Blood on the sheets gets softened by a woman’s face in headlines, and it is easy to remove. Fascists know how to cash it. They would never underestimate the power of a nurturing mother figure, a divine goddess, or a lady officer clad in uniform. Womanhood for fascist states isn’t something about equity; it is a set dressing. An innocent veil to hide the monster underneath. Just a moral fig leaf.
India just pulls out the spectacle, an image, of feminine symbols. Exploiting the symbolic capital of femininity while simultaneously executing masculine militarism. An oxymoronic show of soft power to conceal hard power. Naming of Operation Sindoor. Two lady officers are briefing live on the war. Ah, the sweet sight of empowered women. No, this is not a contemporary smart way for fascist regimes to mask their horrors. It can be traced across history. Regimes turn to femininity not to liberate it but to rebrand it as symbols of purity and gain moral legitimacy. The state would craft an idea of a “Motherland” and how it needs its sons’ blood to survive, a female officer justifying missiles on live TV on civilians. From the Third Reich to Modi’s India. The fascist script remains the same. States have been using her image to sanctify the violence. India is naming missiles after a Hindu goddess and showcasing female officers during military confrontations to show what? Look at us. We are so liberated. So woke. Yet we are quite equally disgusting to appropriate feminist rhetoric to conceal our state aggression. This is bizarre. It is what Silvia Federici might call a re-domestication of the feminine under the guise of national service. Welcome to the masterclass of performative feminisms sponsored by the Indian authoritarian regime.
Let’s recall history to see whose footsteps India is following. Germany celebrated ideal motherhood. Weaponised it. An ideal German woman would produce more children. No, she would not vote or think. Her body serves a function for the state. She gives birth and gets rewarded for that. “The Mutterkreuz”, a shiny trinket awarded for how many Aryan babies one could pop out, celebrated maternal nationalism. Claudia Koonz argues, “Motherhood became a weapon of racial warfare.” The Nazi state simultaneously sterilised and exterminated “undesirable” women while idealising Aryan mothers. Eugenic violence was cloaked in maternal virtue. Thus, femininity was conscripted into genocide, not militarily, but through the bodies of women and ideology. The woman’s body became a national border to be policed, weaponised, and glorified, all in one ironic swoop.
The Aryan mother, Mother Russia, and Operation Sindoor—they all serve the same function: to make state aggression look sacred, to wrap violence in a cute floral paper wrap
And then we’ve got Stalin. The man who coiled the thick velvet maternal guilt around the necks of his citizens. “The Mother Calls” is a famous poster for World War II. Again, a spectacle, an image, a performance. A woman holding the Russian constitution in one hand. When Mother Russia cries, you must die. Living in a womb comes with a price. The figure of the “Motherland” during World War II had a fervent symbolism. Kristeva’s theory of the abject mother states that the mother is an image of both terror and safety, nurturing and devouring. Stalin’s Russia milked this duality dry. Mother Russia was not just a homeland but a strong feminine force. That legitimised wartime brutality and internal repression. In the Soviet Union, women were ploughing fields, and in the propaganda, they were the pure and static face of the state. Womanhood is used symbolically, rather poetically, I’d say.
Fast forward to Putin’s Russia. The system has been upgraded. Femininity is still serving a nationalistic agenda, but is now rather well-groomed and militarised. Women are not only soldiers but also the soft voice of propaganda. For instance, Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry. She delivers aggressive geopolitical rhetoric in a highly aestheticised, composed manner. Humanising the dehumanising actions, no offence. An image, a spectacle, a performance. Butler would roll her eyes and say, this is the state performing morality through a woman’s body. A spectacle of empathy that serves to hide the façade of imperialism. Militarism airbrushed with an expensive face powder.
Now that we’ve established that it’s not something new that India’s modern fascist regime has crafted on its own. It’s old. Bogus and abhorrent. India's symbolic feminism is more of a PR campaign. Why would we build on-ground gender justice when we can just name our missiles after a goddess and call it a day? Operation Shakti—their nuclear test was named after the goddess of strength. The symbol of Sindoor is taken from a traditional feminine narrative and weaponised to serve a purpose for the state. The state co-opts female bodies to obscure the structural violence. A hopeless deployment of gender optics. The briefing done by two female officers is yet again a gender performance serving a nationalist agenda.
The masses in India are thrilled. The image. The spectacle. The performance. Fascist states are so boringly repetitive. Women officers gave a live briefing on how they attacked the enemy. The sight is captivating. It’s a neat trick: use women to front actions that are otherwise violently repressive. Judith Butler’s idea of gender performativity should be printed on Indian government letterheads. The state “does” feminism, stylised and rehearsed. But it doesn’t practise it. The female body becomes a theatre. Uniforms become costumes. Missiles become metaphors. Federici says the female body becomes an ideological battleground. She traces this manipulation back in time, claiming women’s bodies are commodified—first for labour, now for nationalist branding. A progressive, united India under female military leadership. While the Indian masses are smothered by the women in uniform. Ironically, one of them is Muslim; even her religious identity is used by the state to fake a political moral high ground. Clever. Funny. Pathetic. Julia Kristeva nailed it: nations carve the maternal image for cohesion. Why not? It’s warm, it’s mythical, and it doesn’t talk back. And when it does? Well, then, she’s a “threat to the nation”. Again, ask any Indian woman activist who’s under state surveillance, arrest, or online trolling.
So, stop pretending. India’s feminine symbolism is a state tactic—a theatre of the absurd. Well, at least they had good playwrights; Indian scripts are lousy. The Aryan mother, Mother Russia, and Operation Sindoor—they all serve the same function: to make state aggression look sacred, to wrap violence in a cute floral paper wrap. Sindoor is stained with nationalism and reeks of the blood of innocent Pakistani civilians. The use of femininity is a pathetic farce, a mimicry, not empowerment. Indian state machinery paints feminism on missiles and press conferences. While Dalit women die in police custody, the anti-BJP female activists suffer cyberbullying, and many lack basic facilities like toilets. Operation Sindoor is the state-sanctioned lipstick on burning international law.