CDS Gen Anil Chauhan's stern warning to Pakistan: 'India not going to live under shadow of terror and nuclear blackmail'
CDS General Chauhan said whatever happened in Pahalgam was profound cruelty towards victims, and that the thinking behind Operation Sindoor was that state-sponsored terrorism from Pakistan had to stop.
India's Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan once again issued a stern warning to Pakistan by asserting that India was not going to live under the shadow of terror and nuclear blackmail. The CDS also said that Pakistan should not be able to hold India hostage to terrorist activities.
“India is not going to live under shadow of terror and nuclear blackmail.” General Anil Chauhan said during a special lecture on ‘Future Wars and Warfare' at Savitribai Phule Pune University, in Pune on 3 June.
General Chauhan said whatever happened in Pahalgam was profound cruelty towards victims, and that the thinking behind Operation Sindoor was that state-sponsored terrorism from Pakistan had to stop. “Pakistan should not be able to hold India hostage to terrorist activities: CDS Gen Anil Chauhan on reasons behind Operation Sindoor,” he said.
As many as 26 people were killed and several others injured in the terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam on 22 April. Indian Armed Forces launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, targeting terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
India's adversary's (Pakistan) approach is to bleed India by a thousand cuts. General Chauhan recalled how Pakistan's army chief General Asim Munir spewed venom against India and Hindus just weeks before what happened in Pahalgam.
The Pahalgam attack happened a week after Pakistan Army chief General Asim Munir sparked a row when he said Kashmir is Islamabad’s 'jugular vein.’ The remark evoked a strong objection from New Delhi.
“Our stance is absolutely clear, it was our jugular vein, it will be our jugular vein, we will not forget it. We will not leave our Kashmiri brothers in their heroic struggle,” General Munir said in Islamabad while addressing the Overseas Pakistani Convention on 16 April – a week before the deadline Pahalgam attack.
'Warfare synonymous with history of mankind'
The CDS said in Tuesday's lecture that war and warfare are synonymous with the political history of mankind. "Warfare is as old as human civilisation. Any kind of war has two important elements in it- the violence and politics behind violence… The third element is communication, which is happening continuously. ”
In Operation Sindoor too, General Chauhan said, war and politics were happening as a parallel phenomenon. General Chauhan said losses are “not important, but outcomes are important.”
General Chauhan recently responded to a question on whether Pakistan had downed an Indian jet during the conflict with Pakistan in May.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Gen Anil Chauhan didn't deny the claim and said, “What is important is not the jet being down, but why they were being downed.”
In the same interview, General Chauhan said that India went 300kms inside Pakistan during Operation Sindoor and penetrated with ‘pinpoint accuracy.’