India had conducted surgical strikes last year as a message to Pakistan. They can continue in future too, said Army chief General Bipin Rawat on Monday.
“The strikes were more of a messaging that we wanted to communicate and I think that they understand that… If required and if the adversary does not behave, then we have to continue these kind of activities. But there are also other ways of doing these things and they may not take the same form,” he said.
Gen. Rawat made these comments after releasing the book, India’s most fearless: True stories of modern military heroes authored by two defence journalists, Shiv Aroor and Rahul Singh. The book catalogues 14 personal accounts of soldiers and their courage in extreme situations under hostile conditions, including of officers who participated in the surgical strikes across the Line of Control (LoC) and the strikes on insurgent camps in Myanmar. Eight are of the Army and three each of the Navy and the Air Force.
Recording history
In September last year, the Army launched surgical strikes against terror launch pads across the Line of Control (LoC) after 19 soldiers were killed in a terror attack on an Army camp in Uri.
On the impact of the surgical strikes, Gen. Rawat said: “We are now more capable of taking decisions keeping our national interests in mind.”
Observing that the country was “poor in recording history”, he hoped that someday such personal accounts would find their way into school textbooks.
On increasing infiltrations along the LoC, Gen. Rawat said they would keep coming and we would keep receiving them and “burying them under the ground.”
Enhanced image
Former Army Chief Gen. Dalbir Singh, under whose tenure both the surgical strikes were conducted, echoed similar views on their impact. They had “struck well as deterrence and have enhanced India’s image abroad,” he said.
However he refused to delve into the details of the surgical strikes. “The methods and means of executing the surgical strikes cannot be made public,” Gen. Singh said. Stating that India’s Special Forces were the finest in the world, he stressed on the need to upgrade them from time to time.
