‘Enough is enough’: Army chief on how political clarity drove Operation Sindoor

Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi on Saturday explained that Operation Sindoor was executed like a high-stakes game of chess, with uncertainty at every turn. He described the mission as a strategic battle of wits, where India made calculated moves while the enemy responded with its own.

“In Operation Sindoor, we played chess… We did not know what the enemy’s next move was going to be, and what we were going to do. This is called greyzone. Greyzone means that we are not going for conventional operations. What we are doing is just short of a conventional operation…We were making the chess moves, and he (enemy) was also making the chess moves,” General Dwivedi remarked at an event at IIT Madras.

The operation, launched on May 7, was in retaliation for the Pahalgam terrorist attack that killed 26 civilians in Jammu and Kashmir. It was driven by a clear political resolve and strategic clarity at the highest levels of government. The Army chief credited the “free hand” given to the armed forces by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, particularly after a critical meeting on April 23.

“On (April) 23rd, we all sat down. This is the first time that RM (Defence Minister Rajnath Singh) said, ‘enough is enough’. All three chiefs were very clear that something had to be done. The free hand was given, ‘you decide what is to be done.’ That is the kind of confidence, political direction and political clarity we saw for the first time,” Dwivedi shared.

General Dwivedi also addressed Pakistan’s narrative management, pointing out how it portrayed itself as the victor in the conflict. “Narrative management system is something which we realise in a big way because victory is in mind. It’s always in mind. If you ask a Pakistani whether you lost or won, he’d say, ‘Army chief has become Field Marshal. We must have won only, that’s why he has become a Field Marshal’,” he said.

He explained how the name ‘Operation Sindoor’ became a symbol of national unity. “It is important that how a small name Op Sindoor connects the whole nation… That is something which galvanised the whole nation… That is the reason the whole nation was saying why have you stopped? That question was being asked and it has been amply answered,” General Dwivedi said.

Operation Sindoor, which targeted terrorist infrastructure and camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, involved precision air and missile strikes on nine key targets. India maintained that the strikes were measured and non-escalatory, but Pakistan retaliated with drone and missile attacks, all of which were neutralised by India’s air defence systems.