Even Film Plot More Believable Than Operation Sindoor Playback

It should come as a relief to us all that the government only very judiciously exposes us to our defence brass, who keep offering truly frightening glimpses into what really went on in Operation Sindoor. The latest by Deputy Chief of Army Staff Lt General Rahul Singh had the remainder of my hair turning shocking white almost overnight, but we will come to that presently. First, it is important to understand the chronology. Aap chronology samajhiye.

First, we had Air Marshal A.K. Bharti, who assured us that our pilots had returned safely. Which was such a relief. Then the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Anil Chauhan, said in Singapore that the numbers of the aircraft did not matter, which is a somewhat scary thought. Not him saying it in Singapore, a foreign country, even Rahul Gandhi tends to be loquacious when he is using his passport, but that Gen Chauhan was not attaching much importance to the numbers of the aircraft because losses are part of combat. “What is important is not the jet being down, but why they were being downed…,” he told a media organisation. He told another, “Why they (the planes) were downed, what mistakes were made… that is important. Numbers are not important.” He also gave us the comforting news that had us falling off our seats that for two full days out of an episode of war that lasted only four days, most of our aircraft had been grounded as a result of a devastating Pakistani first strike that took out a number of our aircraft. He did not tell us what happened, but he told us ‘something’ happened. Gen Rahul Singh gave us a clue to what might have happened, but we will come to that soon.

Imagine while the nation was thinking that the war was going swimmingly, our pilots were actually twiddling their thumbs. Of course, this columnist cannot vouch for the condition of the thumbs (or any other part of the body) of those pilots whose planes were plucked out of the air and subsequently returned safe, whose numbers have been kept from us. In a Mumbai-based paper such as this, the most dramatic way to put it would be, Arrey O Samba, ‘kitne aadmi the’, but that does not apply to the Indian Air Force in war situations. Please forget about it. This is real life; nothing filmy about it.

In real life people say things that need heavy application of gloss, and that’s the other thing about the government: they will never tell you what sort of budget they keep for the gloss they continually apply, as though it were an industrial lubricant to keep that machine going. They had to use quite a bit when Col Shiv Kumar of the Indian Navy, Defence Attache in our mission in Jakarta, a week ago, blurted out at a seminar where the Pakistani attache prudently stayed away, that “I may not agree that we (India) lost so many aircraft, but that happened only because of the constraint given by political leadership to not attack the military establishment or their air defences. But after the loss, we changed our tactics, and we went for their military installations. So we first achieved separation of enemy air defence and destruction of enemy air defence… After that, all our attacks could easily go through… surface-to-air missiles, Brahmos, surface-to-surface missiles.” This is the quote, offered suo motu by Col Shiv Kumar in his presentation on Operation Sindoor. He was explaining to other panellists why the Indian losses occurred. Though our poor ambassador in Jakarta had, perforce, to offer a clarification saying Shiv Kumar had been quoted out of context, the fact remains he said it. It is there in the video for anyone to see. Col Shiv Kumar could not have blabbed about it after making it up, could he? If he had made it up, he would have lost his commission forthwith.

Now we come to Gen Rahul Singh. Three points are worth flagging. First, out of a total of 21 targets that had been identified, they focused on nine targets they thought would be “prudent” to engage. That’s a loaded word, prudent. This is because making war with Pakistan is like making love to a shark. It has to be done very carefully. So, after engaging with the nine prudent targets, it was all very carefully, very gently explained to Pakistan. Gen Singh puts it this way, “A message was sent that we have only engaged militant targets, the terrorist targets, and we would like to put an end to it.” So, this is the new normal. Haathi ke daanth, khaneke aur, dikhane ke aur. Now that we have a happy ending, could we not both hold hands and walk into the sunrise? Second, we didn’t have the critical armaments that we needed. Gen Rahul says some armaments that ought to have been there in October the previous year were not there when the April attack came seven months later, and “had all that equipment been made available, the story may have been a little different.” Hmm. Curiouser and curiouser. Remember that Alice in Wonderland feeling?

Third, General Singh has revealed that while our DGMO was talking to their DGMO, “Pakistan was actually mentioning that we know that your such-and-such important sort of vector is primed and it is ready for action. I would request you to perhaps pull it back. So he was getting live inputs as far as from China.” It may not be an exaggeration to say Pakistan and China knew/know more about our deployments and posture than our own guys.

That, in short, would explain plainly the loss of the planes. This newspaper reported in its Sunday edition that China told the European Union it would not countenance a Russian loss in Ukraine. Can China afford to let Pakistan lose? It’s a no-brainer. The unnerving part is our military nakedness during Op Sindoor, which is coming out in dribs and drabs, like a faucet with incontinence. It is alarming that a full two months after Operation Sindoor has been in pause mode, New Delhi has absolutely no idea who the perpetrators are and where they have gone. Some of them could be riding the Mumbai Metro for all we know. All that can be surmised is that the attackers entered our part of the world about a year ago and that they are Pakistanis. Think of it: when statement after statement is being collected from world capitals by the kilo, demanding that the Pahalgam perpetrators be brought to justice, no one has a clue who they are talking about. The new Ajmal Kasabs, gone incognito. Nothing more, nothing less. Perturbing that we were so easily sucker-punched into Operation Sindoor.