Pakistan follows a 1000-year war policy against India, says CDS Anil Chauhan
'What happened in Pahalgam was profound cruelty'
Live Events
'India's forces not impacted by losses'
'They wanted India on its knees in 48 hours'
(You can now subscribe to our
(You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel
Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan on Tuesday said Pakistan has pursued a long-standing, hostile posture towards India rooted in the ideology of a 'thousand-year war', first articulated by its former prime minister and president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1965.'In a 1965 speech to the UN Security Council, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, former Prime Minister and former President of Pakistan, declared a thousand-year war against India.' He noted that recent comments made by Pakistan Army chief General Asim Munir 'were reminiscent of those previously propagated against India by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto," said General Chauhand while delivering at a lecture at a university in Pune.Chauhan added that Asim Munir, Pakistan's Army General, 'spewed venom against India' just days before the deadly terror attack in Pahalgam, which left 26 civilians dead. He said the thinking behind Operation Sindoor—India's counter-terror operation—was rooted in the understanding that 'state-sponsored terrorism from Pakistan has to stop.'Chauhan described the massacre in Pahalgam as a deeply disturbing act of terror, in which the victims were killed in front of their families.'What happened in Pahalgam was profound cruelty towards the victims because all of them were killed with head shots in front of their families and their children and they were shot in the name of religion... which is kind of unacceptable to this modern world,' he said.'This caused a huge revulsion in the society. There was a kind of hatred. It revived memories because this was not a single act of terror against India. Western nations may have had of one or two acts of terror… India has been a victim of maximum terror acts, almost 20,000 people have been killed,' the CDS added.Reiterating the resolve of India's armed forces, Chauhan said, 'India's professional forces have not been impacted by losses.'He emphasised that India's military capabilities had been built with calculated risks and foresight.'Both nations (India & Pakistan) had tried to build different kinds of capabilities, so obviously there was an inherent amount of risk into this. None of the capabilities that we had acquired had actually been into the battlefield. There is always an element of risk into it, but as they say, you cannot succeed if you don't take that type of risk. We knew that we have a better counter-drone system," he said.Offering fresh details on the timeline and aftermath of the conflict that followed the Pahalgam massacre, the CDS said, '...On the 10th of May, at about 1 am, their (Pakistan) aim was to get India to its knees in 48 hours," he said.Multiple attacks were launched and in some manner, they have escalated this conflict, while we had actually hit only terror targets., he added.However, operations which they thought would continue for 48 hours, folded up in about 8 hours and then they picked up the telephone and said they (Pakistan) wanted to talk, said the Chief of Defence Staff.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Indian Express
17 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Top Gujarat Congress leader arrested over Op Sindoor post: Who is Rajesh Soni?
Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) general secretary Rajesh Soni, arrested for an alleged objectionable post on Operation Sindoor, belongs to a family of jewellers and is a first-generation politician, say his party colleagues. Many in the Congress refer to Soni as the go-to person for 'publicity-related tasks'. At least three top party leaders told The Indian Express that the credit for putting up maximum hoardings and billboards during Congress party events goes to him. However, according to his detractors in the party say 'his billboards would mostly be of his mentors and patrons in the party'. Soni, who is in his forties, was arrested by the Gujarat State Cyber Crime Cell on Friday under sections 152 (endangering the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India) and 353 (making, publishing or circulating statements that could lead to public mischief) of the Bharatiya Nyay Samhita (BNS) for alleged posts on his social media handles and pages that were 'demoralising for the Army', as per the FIR. Originally from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Soni joined the Congress in 2015 with his team of supporters. 'Within just a couple of years of his joining the party, he was made an All India Congress Committee (AICC) delegate. Promotions came early for him compared to other senior leaders,' said a Congress leader in the Ahmedabad city unit. He was appointed general secretary of the state unit in 2022 when former MP Jagdish Thakor was the state party president. Thakor described Soni as a person 'who did a lot of charity and was always at the forefront to help during natural calamities', while state Congress spokesperson Amit Nayak recalled how, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Soni ran a community kitchen. Former Union minister Bharatsinh Solanki, who was the state Congress president from 2015 to 2018, told The Indian Express, 'Soni holds an event every year to distribute notebooks to children and this time he invited me. I suggested that he also distribute tablets. He obliged and gave tablets to some five children.' Soni's father, a jewellery businessman from Pali in Rajasthan, came to Ahmedabad for business and the family decided to settle down in the city's Isanpur area, where Soni was born. When he was young, Soni joined his father's business. 'Later, he got into the construction business and launched his own company called Soni Corporation,' said Nayak. Soni's party colleagues said one of the reasons he was being 'targeted' because he is an 'RTI activist' and participates in television debates.'Soni is being targeted because he is a kattar agevan (staunch leader), has been in charge of the party's IT Cell earlier. He is part of our TV debate team and his appearances must have bothered the BJP government,' said Nayak. The spokesperson, who said he was also booked for his social media posts in 2023, added, 'We have decided that all top leaders of the party will repost Rajesh Soni's (alleged objectionable) post and then go to the DGP's (Director General of Police) office to court arrest.' Top Congress leaders such as state Congress president Shaktisinh Gohil and Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Amit Chavda have criticised the action against Soni and demanded immediate bail. Gohil said Friday that the Gandhinagar Police cyber crime team picked up Soni as if he were a 'terrorist'. He said Soni's post was more about giving credit to the soldiers for their bravery and saying that 'money from the public treasury should not be used for publicity and … political gains should not be taken in the name of Operation Sindoor'.
Indian Express
24 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Tavleen Singh writes: Political poster boys
An unforeseen consequence of Operation Sindoor has been that South Asia's two poster boys of dynastic democracy surfaced and made fools of themselves. I speak of Bilawal Bhutto and Rahul Gandhi. They would not be considered political leaders at all if it were not for their illustrious surnames. As someone who believes dynastic succession should have ended when feudalism did, I watched the performance of these two political princes with real interest. The first performance came from Bilawal Bhutto, who made a speech on the banks of the Indus a day after India decided to suspend the Indus Water Treaty. In this speech, he threatened that either water would flow down the Indus or the 'blood of our enemies'. His Urdu remains bad, so he used melodrama to compensate and, in the manner of a crazed messiah, shrieked 'the Indus has always been ours, is ours, and will be ours'. This one speech was proof that not only was the heir to the mighty Bhutto dynasty linguistically challenged, but that he was politically challenged as well. But Pakistan's military rulers were clearly impressed with his performance and sent him off to Washington to convince people that it was Pakistan that was the victim of terrorism and that India's allegations were lies. It took Shashi Tharoor, who was also in Washington, one minute to demolish the narrative that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's heir was trying to weave. Tharoor said he sympathised with Bilawal because his mother had been killed by jihadi terrorists, but he seemed to have forgotten Hillary Clinton's warning to Pakistan. If you breed vipers in your backyard, you cannot expect that they will only attack your neighbour. Pakistan's terrorists are home-bred. Last week came a performance from the heir to our own storied dynasty. Rahul has, since Operation Sindoor, made statements that have been applauded in Pakistan even by Hafiz Saeed. But last week, he outdid himself. In the manner of a schoolboy discussing a cricket match, and with a sneery grin on his face, he imitated Donald Trump having a conversation with our prime minister on the phone and saying 'Narendra, Surrender'. And then he mimicked Narendra Modi saying 'ji huzoor'. The point the Leader of the Opposition was trying to make was that when his grandmother was prime minister, the Seventh Fleet was sent by Richard Nixon to warn her that breaking up Pakistan would have consequences. And she had courageously remained fixed on the course that she had set. A dangerous analogy to evoke, because Indira Gandhi also ended up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (to use that useful cliché) by signing the Simla Agreement. All the cards were in India's hands. There were more than 90,000 prisoners of war in the custody of the Indian Army, so she could have told Bhutto that there would be no agreement without a signed guarantee that the Kashmir issue would end now. Instead, the agreement has a feeble reference to Kashmir being decided bilaterally. Years later, I happened to learn from a close associate of Bhutto that he boasted afterwards that he had outdone her. What exactly was the point that Indira's grandson was trying to make? Was he trying to prove the debunked falsehood that Modi agreed to a ceasefire because of pressure from Trump? Was he trying to say that the war should have continued indefinitely? Or was he trying to say what Congress spokespersons have said in TV debates, which is that the war should have continued until Pakistan is broken up once more? This was never the objective of Operation Sindoor. It had the limited objective of destroying Pakistan's terrorist infrastructure and from all accounts this objective was achieved. To return, though, to the poster boys of dynastic democracy. Bilawal has lost his relevance in Pakistani politics and is now merely a spokesman for the military men who control the political chessboard. Rahul remains relevant because he is fully in control of our oldest political party. And the only national party, we have other than the BJP. We have no choice but to take what he says seriously, which is why it is worrying that he continues to sound like a schoolboy with a special grudge against Modi for daring to usurp India, which he considers his birthright to rule since his family once did. It is this idea that India remains the private property of the Dynasty that is destroying the Congress Party. If you have been following recent events, you would have noticed that the Congress leaders in the parliamentary delegations have done an extremely good job. The only people who have let the party down are those who constitute the coterie around our own poster boy of dynastic democracy. It could be time for those who want Congress to survive and thrive to come together and urge the Dynasty's heirs to consider playing the role that the Chairman Emeritus plays in companies. If they agree, they can continue to have relevance in the family firm, but can move away from playing an active role. How long does the Congress Party want to pretend that Rahul is its prime minister-in-waiting when he has been unable to win a single Lok Sabha election for the party? One way or another dynastic democracy is a bad idea. And it is abundantly obvious that India's voters saw this before our political leaders have.
India.com
24 minutes ago
- India.com
In Pakistan, You Get Rewarded For Promoting Terrorism: Shashi Tharoor
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has sharply criticised Pakistan for its treatment of Dr. Shakil Afridi, the physician who helped the US locate and eliminate Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, responding to a post by US Congressman Brad Sherman who urged a visiting Pakistani delegation to press for Dr. Afridi's release. Taking to social media platform X, Sherman wrote, 'I urged the Pakistani delegation to relay to their government the need to free Dr. Shakil Afridi, who continues to languish in prison for helping the United States kill Osama Bin Laden. Freeing Dr. Afridi represents an important step in bringing closure for victims of 9/11.' Reacting to the statement, Tharoor, who is currently leading an All-Party Parliamentary Delegation from India to the US, said: 'A welcome reminder by Rep. @BradSherman that Pakistan is the country that not only sheltered terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden (in a safe house near an army camp in a cantonment city!) but also arrested and punished the brave doctor who identified his location for the Americans. In Pakistan you are rewarded for promoting terrorism and persecuted for exposing terrorists!' Dr Shakil Afridi is a Pakistani doctor who helped the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the hunt for al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. Afridi served as the senior health official of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. In 2008, he was abducted by Mangal Bagh, a bus driver turned commander of a Pakistani militant group, Lashkar-e-Islam. The Indian delegation in the US also paid homage to Mahatma Gandhi at his statue opposite the Indian Embassy in Washington, continuing a tradition observed in all the countries visited. 'Once again, as in all the countries the delegation visited, we were able to pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi at his statue opposite the Embassy in Washington DC,' Tharoor posted. He further noted, 'It is striking how many world capitals are adorned with statues or busts of the Mahatma, the 20th century's greatest apostle of peace, nonviolence, and human freedom.' Earlier, the delegation held a significant meeting with US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau. The Indian Embassy in Washington shared the update on the social media platform X, stating: 'The All Party Parliamentary delegation led by Dr. @ShashiTharoor had a warm and candid conversation with US Deputy Secretary of State @DeputySecState today. The Indian Delegation briefed him on the atrocities of the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor,' the embassy posted. Earlier on Thursday, the Delegation had an "excellent meeting" with United States Vice President J.D. Vance in Washington, briefing him about Operation Sindoor, terrorism faced by India, and regional security.
