Panaji: India has permanently shed the doctrine of restraint that shaped its response to Pakistan-backed aggression for decades, former Army chief General Ved Prakash Malik said here on Sunday. He held up Operation Sindoor as proof that the country is now prepared to strike deep inside Pakistani territory and treat any attack as an act of war.The policy shift was already in place by the time of the Pahalgam killings, Malik said at an event marking 26 years since the Kargil War.“Earlier there was this policy of restraint that we were following in the defence. Now, we are not following that policy of restraint, and we are now quite aggressive, quite prepared to go inside Pakistani territory and to any length in that territory,” he said.
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He described how, on May 7, India struck nine terror camps with standoff rockets from air, land and sea, and how the three services jointly blunted a subsequent Pakistani drone barrage along the western border.He said that the Navy was on the verge of hitting assets in Karachi when Pakistan’s director general of military operations (DGMO) reached out to India’s DGMO to seek a ceasefire. The call seeking negotiations was a sign that Islamabad knew India was ready to strike, information he suggested may have reached Pakistan through Chinese interception of Indian communications.Gen Malik reiterated that Op Sindoor was not over. “Operation Sindoor continues, there is only a pause. We have not finished yet, and Pakistan knows that we can come again,” he said, stressing that no Indian troops crossed the border throughout.He contrasted this with Kargil’s hand-to-hand combat, calling today’s fight a drone-and-missile war under a doctrine of zero tolerance that makes no distinction between terrorists and their state sponsors. “India will no longer tolerate Pakistan’s nuclear blackmail,” he said, urging India’s youth to remember Kargil’s sacrifices and be ready to match that valour if called upon again.
