"We Played Chess, Gave Them Checkmate": Army Chief on Operation Sindoor

Indian Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi has ridiculed Pakistan’s claim of victory over India during the recent conflict, underscoring the role of strategic communication in shaping public perception.

Speaking at IIT Madras, General Dwivedi said, “Victory is in the mind. If you ask a Pakistani whether you lost or won, he would say, my chief has become field marshal, we must have won only, that’s why he has become field marshal,” in a pointed reference to Pakistan Army chief Asim Munir’s promotion.

He explained how Pakistan had managed to convince its own citizens of a win, and how the Indian forces countered this through timely strategic messaging. “The first messaging that we did was, justice done. That hit the maximum… the number of hits which we received,” he said, noting the press briefings by women officers and the creation of widely shared visuals.

Gen Dwivedi also described Operation Sindoor as a doctrinal shift, comparing it to a chess game in the “grey zone”, just short of conventional warfare, where both sides were making calculated moves.

He said, "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."

Recalling the political backing that followed the Pahalgam massacre, he said, “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.”

Operation Sindoor was launched in response to the April 22 Pahalgam massacre, in which Pakistan-linked terrorists killed 26 tourists. The Indian retaliation targeted multiple terror camps deep inside Pakistan and PoK, eliminating scores of militants.

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