Borders and Bodies: How Women Bear the Brunt of Armed Conflict

In war, borders are redrawn, governments clash, and power changes hands—but women’s bodies often become the battlefield. The recent tensions between India and Pakistan, especially around Kashmir, have once again thrown into sharp relief how gendered violence and symbolic womanhood are used as tools of both aggression and resistance.

In the initial attack in Pahalgam, which triggered the recent Operation Sindoor, several newlywed couples were targeted. Men were shot in front of their wives, and the women were deliberately spared—not out of mercy, but strategy. Their survival was meant to carry a message: to complain, to protest, to seek justice from governments headed by other men. This brutal orchestration shows how women are used not just as victims, but as vessels to channel political outrage.

The operation Sindoor launched in retaliation is also deeply significant. It's name—Sindoor—highlights the deeply gendered framing of the state’s response. Sindoor, a symbol of Hindu womanhood, carries immense emotional and cultural significance. By invoking it, the state sought to portray the attack not just as a national insult, but as an assault on Indian womanhood itself. This form of symbolic retaliation weaponizes the feminine: using women’s identity markers to justify state vengeance.

The operation’s name—Sindoor—highlights the deeply gendered framing of the state’s response.

Operation Sindoor being led by female military officers is an interesting twist. It appears empowering on the surface, suggesting that women are reclaiming agency by avenging wrongs committed against their own. But a critical lens reveals a more complex reality: this may also be a calculated tactic to show women that the nation stands with them—provided they conform to the roles of mourning widows, loyal wives, or national symbols(like that of wearing the Sindoor) . Their participation becomes both validation and containment.

This tactic is not new. During India’s freedom struggle, British colonizers justified their rule by pointing to India’s oppressive traditions, especially the treatment of women. One of the most infamous colonial texts, Mother India (1927) by Katherine Mayo, portrayed Indian women as ignorant, superstitious, and weak — blaming them for raising feeble men and justifying British rule. Nationalists responded by encouraging reforms like female education — not to liberate women, but to prove to the British that Indian tradition could self-correct. Even progressive platforms like the All-India Women's Conference often reinforced this idea. In 1931, Mrs. P.K. Ray, its president, emphasized that women’s education was to re-mould them into ideal homemakers who would serve the “glory of our country.” In MK Gandhi's Hind Swaraj, he emphasized purity as a woman’s supreme virtue. This expectation of moral superiority reinforced the idea that a woman’s worth lay in spiritual sacrifice, not political agency. Therefore Nationalism used women to defend Indian tradition against colonial critique — but only as long as they embodied traditional femininity.

Operation Sindoor may well be a repetition of this historical sleight of hand: involving women to uphold a national narrative, while continuing to marginalize their voices in everyday justice. It uses their pain to fuel patriotic fervor without addressing the systemic issues that expose them to violence in the first place.

Operation Sindoor may well be a repetition of this historical sleight of hand: involving women to uphold a national narrative, while continuing to marginalize their voices in everyday justice.

The weaponization of women in times of war is not unique to India. Myths across cultures have long used women as pretexts for battle. Helen’s abduction sparked the Trojan War; Sita’s kidnapping led to the Ramayana war; Draupadi’s insult became the cause of the Mahabharata’s bloodshed. These epics encode a troubling legacy: wars are started over women, but fought by men, and suffered most deeply by women themselves. These women are often denied their subjectivity. They are imagined as symbols—of purity, honor, nationhood—but never fully as individuals with autonomy.

In modern conflicts, this symbolic role transforms into real, brutal consequences. During the Partition of 1947, women’s bodies became sites of mass violence. Tens of thousands were raped, abducted, mutilated, and forcibly converted. Families often killed their own daughters to preserve “honor.” What was framed as communal or political violence was, in reality, deeply gendered. Even after the war ended, thousands of women were not repatriated because their altered status threatened the purity of family and community identities.

During the Partition of 1947, women’s bodies became sites of mass violence.

This pattern continues today. Armed conflict makes women’s bodies vulnerable in multiple ways. Rape is used systematically to demoralize communities. Displacement affects women more deeply, especially those with children or elderly dependents. Relief camps and conflict zones often lack security and privacy for women, increasing their risk of abuse. Even peace talks and post-war governance rarely include women meaningfully, reducing their role to that of victims rather than agents of change.

Furthermore, the state often frames women as symbols of culture, tradition, or honor. In India, this is particularly potent given the cultural narratives surrounding feminine purity and sacrifice. When a woman is violated, the state is dishonored; and when the state retaliates, it claims to be avenging her. But what happens to her? She becomes an afterthought. Her trauma, her recovery, her justice—all secondary to the narrative of national pride.

The selective empowerment of women in military responses—like those leading Operation Sindoor—can be seen as part of this same symbolic economy. These women are held up as exceptions: tough, disciplined, patriotic. But their stories are rarely used to critique the militarization itself or the patriarchal culture within these institutions. Their role reinforces the idea that only by adopting masculine forms of power can women be valuable.

Meanwhile, everyday justice remains elusive for most women. Rape conviction rates are abysmal. Survivors are shamed in courtrooms, by families, and in media. Domestic violence is underreported and poorly prosecuted. Dowry deaths continue to haunt households. These are not isolated incidents—they are products of a system that treats women’s lives as less valuable, their freedoms as conditional.

Meanwhile, everyday justice remains elusive for most women.

If the state truly wants to protect and empower women, it must look beyond moments of public tragedy and beyond symbolic gestures. It must dismantle the deep structures that normalize violence and impunity. It must ensure that women are not merely passive witnesses to war or instruments of propaganda, but active participants in peace and policy.

The real measure of a nation’s respect for women lies not in how dramatically it responds to their suffering, but in how persistently it works to prevent it. That requires listening to women—not just the ones in uniform, but the ones at home, in rural areas, in courtrooms, in shelters. It requires giving them more than representation: giving them power.

In this latest phase of India-Pakistan conflict, as we witness both bloodshed and spectacle, we must ask: are women truly being protected, or are they simply being performed? Are they being heard, or merely used to amplify the voices of power? Until we confront these questions honestly, we will continue to write the same stories—across borders, across decades—with the same tragic endings.

About the Author

I am Sanchari Mukherjee, a student doing Masters in English from the reputed Presidency University, Calcutta. I love writing and appreciate art in all forms. Being a literature major, I have learnt to critically comment on things of various kinds. I wrote this blog to expose the recurring pattern of how women are exploited as symbols and scapegoats in patriarchal power struggles, especially during armed conflicts. Really glad that you came across my blog, hope you found it covering some critical insights essential for progress!