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Journalism of Courage
The government’s objective behind Operation Sindoor was not retribution but to draw the limits of tolerance with Pakistan, said Chief of the Defence Staff Anil Chauhan on Tuesday.
Delivering a talk titled ‘Future Wars and Warfare’ at the Savitribai Phule Pune University, Chauhan said: “Let me talk about reason… Operation Sindoor, as per the government is concerned, is not about retribution. I think it was about drawing these limits of tolerance. Thus, and not far. This state-sponsored terrorism from Pakistan had to stop, and Pakistan should not be able to hold India hostage to terror activities.”
Another point made by the operation was that India was not going to live under the shadow of terror or nuclear blackmail, he said.
Immediately before this, Chauhan said: “The emotion that was being evoked among the people of India was revenge and retribution… and to get the perpetrators to justice. That, I think, was playing in everyone’s mind; that is the kind of emotion and public sentiment that was happening. And at the end of it, there was probably some sort of satisfaction, (and also) anxiety. Anxiety during the operation…”
He also talked about the risks involved during military operations. “You can’t be 100 per cent prepared for every kind of contingency, and you can’t have 100 per cent of the information about that. So you are always groping around in the dark when you are carrying out military operations. In every military operation, there is an element of risk involved. The only thing is that it should be a calculated kind of risk.”
Chauhan reiterated that Operation Sindoor was not over and that there was only a temporary cessation of operations. He added that post-Balakot, “we thought we should be able to strike deep inside, so we have built those kinds of capabilities. None of the capabilities we employed had been tested on the battlefield. Therefore, risk was involved… In a war, even if there are setbacks, we have to adapt, understand what went wrong and go out again.”
He added that as an organisation, one must have an offensive spirit. “That’s why I said in a couple of my interviews that losses are not important, the outcome is,” he said.
