Operation Sindoor was unlike any conventional battle, Chief of Army Staff General Upendra Dwivedi said, describing it as a game of chess where each move was calculated without knowing the opponent’s next step.
Speaking at IIT Madras, he said India ultimately delivered a decisive “checkmate” to Pakistan, even as Islamabad tried to claim victory through strategic narrative management. “In Operation Sindoor, we operated in the greyzone — just short of conventional war. We made our moves, they made theirs. Somewhere we were delivering checkmate, somewhere going in for the kill at personal risk — but that’s what life is,” Gen. Dwivedi explained.
He accused Pakistan of using optics to project success, pointing to the promotion of Army chief Asim Munir to Field Marshal. “Victory is in the mind. If you ask a Pakistani whether they lost or won, they’ll say, ‘Our Army chief became Field Marshal — we must have won,’” he remarked.
The operation, launched on May 7 after Pakistan-based militants killed 26 civilians in the Pahalgam terror attack, was backed by firm political direction. At an April 23 meeting, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh told the service chiefs “enough is enough” and gave them full freedom to plan the response. “For the first time, we saw such confidence, political clarity and resolve,” the Army chief said.
Under Operation Sindoor, Indian forces carried out precision air and missile strikes on nine terrorist camps and infrastructure sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The strikes were designed to be focused and non-escalatory, while Pakistan’s retaliatory drone and missile attacks were successfully intercepted by Indian air defences.
Gen. Dwivedi said the operation’s name itself galvanised the nation. “A small name like ‘Op Sindoor’ connected the whole country… People kept asking why we stopped. That question has been answered,” he said.
Military analysts have called the mission a strategic and psychological success, demonstrating India’s ability to execute high-precision, coordinated strikes that dismantle terrorist networks and reassert deterrence against cross-border terrorism.
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