Tattoos, Patriotism, and the Politics of a Shelf-Life ?

By Prashanth (Mysore)

Tattoos, Patriotism, and the Politics of a Shelf-Life ?

This morning, as I sipped my filter coffee and flipped through the front page (Left, Bottom Most Corner) of The New Indian Express (dated May 14, 2025), a peculiar headline caught my eye - “‘Sindoor’ tattoos a rage among Hampi youth.”A photo of a young arm proudly etched with “Operation Sindoor…” stared back at me.

My initial reaction? What nonsense is this? But then I paused. You can’t say that out loud these days. Not in a climate where every reaction is ammunition for someone’s ideological bakery—ready to be baked, packaged, and served piping hot to emotional consumers.

Whether it's BJP or Congress, news like this isn’t news anymore. It’s marketing material. One side calls it patriotism; the other calls it performative. Both sides secretly smile because they now have something fresh to knead into their next political loaf. But here’s the question that really got to me - Is tattooing a military operation name on your arm truly a symbol of patriotism? Or is it simply a burst of dopamine in an age of short attention spans and even shorter convictions? Much like a freshly baked bread, these gestures sit prettily on the political shelf. They smell nice, look warm, and attract attention. But they have a shelf life.Consume it immediately, and it fills your stomach and your Instagram feed.Leave it out too long, and it stales, thrown away—along with the sentiment that created it.

What if this youthful energy—so capable, so bright—was redirected? Not to tattoos, but to tools. Not to etching symbols on skin, but to crafting solutions for the economy, for innovation, for the next generation.

I can think of a bakery that doesn’t churn out short-lived dopamine loaves but instead nurtures grain fields—the foundations of sustainable growth. That’s the kind of patriotism we need. Not one that screams from our skin, but one that flows through our work, our creativity, our commitment.

Now don’t get me wrong; I understand emotion. We are a nation that bleeds sentiment, and sometimes it feels good to wear it (not always). But I worry that we are not yet a mature society, one that chooses long-term value over instant validation.

So today, I look at that tattoo again. I don’t dismiss it. I see it for what it is - a temporary flame in a bakery of political performance. It will warm some hearts and feed some egos. But unless we shift from shelf-life patriotism to shelf-building purpose, we’re just stuck in a cycle of symbolic sugar highs.