"If You Ask A Pakistani...": Army Chief Explains Pak Narrative During Op Sindoor

Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi has mocked Pakistan's victory claim against India during the recent conflict, underlining the importance of the narrative management system. Victory is in the mind, the Army chief said while explaining how Pakistan managed to convince its populace that it had won, in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor. That is how you influence the domestic population, the adversary's population, and the neutral population, Gen Dwivedi told a gathering at IIT Madras.

"Narrative management system is something which we realise in a big way because victory is in mind. It's always in the mind. If you ask a Pakistani whether you lost or won, he'd say, my chief has become field marshal, we must have won only, that's why he has become field marshal," said the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), taking a subtle jibe at Pakistan Army chief Asim Munir's promotion to Field Marshal. 

The Indian forces countered Pakistan's strategy in their own way - using social media and other platforms to convey their message to the masses. "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.

The strategic messaging was "simple" but travelled worldwide, the COAS underlined, pointing to the press conferences held by two women officers of the Indian Army and Indian Air Force.

"The logo which you see all over the world was created by a Lieutenant Colonel and an NCO. We prepared all this. When we were going in for these kinds of operations, we were also going for these things (strategic messaging) because the narrative management system is important. It took a lot of time and a lot of effort," said the Army chief.

Gen Dwivedi also shared with the IIT-M faculty and students how the intelligence-led operation marked a doctrinal shift. He compared the military operation with the game of chess, where the enemy's next move could not be guessed.

"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 the grey zone. Grey zone means that we are not going for the 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. Somewhere, we were giving them the checkmate and somewhere we were going in for the kill at the risk of losing our own, but that's (what) life is all about," the COAS told the gathering.

He also echoed his Air Force counterpart, Air Chief Marshal AP Singh, over the "political will" that gave a free hand to the forces to decide their next move. On April 23, a day after the attack, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh sat down with the chiefs of the Indian armed forces, and exclaimed, "Enough is enough", the Army chief recalled.

"All three chiefs were very clear that something had to be done. A 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. That is what raises your morale. That is how it helped our army commanders-in-chief to be on the ground and act as per their wisdom," he said.

Operation Sindoor was India's response to the Pahalgam massacre, the deadliest terror attack in decades. On April 22, Pakistan-linked terrorists surrounded innocent tourists in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam and shot 26 of them dead.

As the country swelled with grief and anger, the forces executed a befitting response, targeting nine terror targets deep inside Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. Early May 7 morning, aerial attacks eliminated over 100 terrorists at these terror camps.

Three of the terrorists involved in the massacre were hunted down by the forces during Operation Mahadev last month.