New Delhi, Aug 10: Army Chief Gen. Upendra Dwivedi has said that Operation Sindoor was akin to playing a game of chess, as “we did not know” what would be the enemy’s next move, and though the “test match stopped on the fourth day”, it could have been a protracted conflict.
He also emphasised the importance of “narrative management” in such a scenario as “victory is in mind”, and said if you ask a Pakistani “whether you lost or won, he would say, my (Army) chief has become a Field Marshal, we must have won only, that is why he has become a Field Marshal”.
The Army chief made the remarks in his address at a function held at IIT-Madras on August 4. The video of his address was shared by the Army over the weekend.
Without naming any country, the Army chief also underlined the threat perception, and said, “next time, it may be much more, and whether that country will do it alone, or supported by some other country, we do not know. But I have a strong hunch, feeling, that country will not be alone. That is where we have to be careful”.
The Army chief used the analogies of chess and cricket to emphasise the intricacies of Operation Sindoor, India’s decisive military action launched in May on terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam attack.
The operation led to a four-day military conflict between India and Pakistan that was halted after an understanding reached between the two sides on May 10.
On how the battle of narratives was fought during Operation Sindoor, he said the Indian forces countered Pakistan’s strategy in their own way – using social media and other platforms to convey the message to the masses.
This is how, you can influence the population. It is the domestic population, the adversary’s population and the neutral population, he said.
“Strategic messaging was very important, and that’s why the first messaging that we did was, justice done. That hit the maximum, I am told, in the world today, the number of hits which we received,” he said. (PTI)
