Hours after New Delhi and Islamabad launched their worst conflict in nearly three decades, Indian businesses cashed in on a surge in nationalism with t-shirts and bags glorifying the military.
After a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22, New Delhi launched strikes deep into Pakistan’s territory as part of what it named “Operation Sindoor”.
India blamed Pakistan for backing the attackers who killed 26 civilians. Islamabad denied it and called for an independent probe.
A ceasefire was reached on May 10 after four days of fighting, but a massive wave of nationalist support for the military operation continues unabated in India.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government used Sindoor, the Hindi word for the red powder which married Hindu women wear on their foreheads, as a sign that it was to avenge those widowed in the April 22 attack.
Some canny businessmen translated the conflict into cash, offering t-shirts and tote bags sporting the official logo of the operation and quotes from Indian military top brass during and after the conflict.
“Our design team whipped up four or five artworks,” a day after Sindoor was launched, said Adi Arora, founder of KadakMerch.
“It just turned into a viral sensation. Since then our products have been flying off the shelves,” Arora told AFP.
His factory in a small industrial town in northern India has churned out over 2,000 t-shirts and other Sindoor merchandise.
Arora said the bestseller was a t-shirt spouting a quote from a senior Indian air force officer: “Our job is to hit the target, not to count the body bags.”
Using popular culture
“Proud to wear this,” wrote one social media user who shared pictures of a t-shirt with the same quote but from a different manufacturer.
A senior government adviser, Kanchan Gupta, also promoted on X another seller making t-shirts emblazoned with “Operation Sindoor”.
“The fact that in a moment as grave as this, the government thought that it was a good idea to bring out a creative for the military operation… will tell you that this was also done with a domestic audience in mind,” said Indian writer and journalist Kunal Purohit.
The branding is part of the government’s push to promote nationalist pride which “only gets heightened when India is in a conflict with its oldest arch-rival Pakistan,” said Purohit, who has written a book about Hindu nationalist pop music.
Modi’s government “has been creating and using popular culture very, very successfully for the large part of the last 10 years” to promote its ideology, Purohit told AFP.
During the conflict, New Delhi also cracked down on sales of Pakistani flags and merchandise, ordering e-commerce sites to “remove all such content”.
The days-long fighting killed dozens of people on each side, including civilians, according to tolls from Indian and Pakistani officials.
‘People are really excited’
Another small online business called Hank Hawk, jumped on the bandwagon.
“We have received enormous enquiries. People are really excited about Operation Sindoor,” said Deepak Kumar, who is in charge of marketing.
“People needed a way to show their support to Indian armed forces,” said KadakMerch’s Arora.
The t-shirts are the “best and the closest and the cheapest way for them to be a part of something that has become very significant,” he added.
Arora said he had even received orders from Indian military officials.
“There was a very deliberate push from the government and from the ruling party to popularise this moment,” Purohit said.
“You make that moment so big that everyone wants to be a part of it.”
Vendors at the popular Janpath market in the heart of New Delhi, where clothes, handicrafts and souvenirs are the main wares, are readying to sell the new products.
One clothes stall owner said they had discussed ordering the Sindoor t-shirts.
“Why wouldn’t they love these? The military is also a symbol of India,” he said.
“We will be selling t-shirts like these soon.”
