New Delhi, May 17 (PTI) Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Saturday said Operation Sindoor has changed India’s discourse, both politically as well as diplomatically, and the whole world is witness to this.
The minister, who is a Member of Parliament from the Udhampur constituency of Jammu and Kashmir, also observed that the Indus Water Treaty was done in haste because the then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was inclined to appease Pakistan.
As a result, the treaty fell short of doing equitable justice to the two countries, said Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel, while speaking at the Constitutional Club here after releasing the book “Kashmir Chronicles” written by Vijay K Sazawal.
Singh said that after the surgical strikes following the 2019 Pulwama attack, India had heralded the change in its defence strategies with Prime Minister Narendra Modi allowing full freedom to the forces to act as per the circumstances, depending upon the professional wisdom and discretion.
This, he said, was quite in contrast to the practice followed before 2014, when only limited freedom was allowed to the forces and for a bigger strike, they had to wait for the political nod from New Delhi.
Operation Sindoor, launched by Indian armed forces to destroy terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir in the aftermath of the April 22 Pahalgam terrorist attack, is a sequel to the change in the hitherto prevailing practice, the minister said.
Singh said India’s defence section hereafter is going to be active and not reactive following a strike by the adversary.
At the same time, Operation Sindoor also established that India under Modi is no longer given to knee-jerk responses but enjoys the prerogative to decide the timing and place of responding to an adversary’s aggression, he said.
Singh said, Operation Sindoor has send out important message at three levels — domestically it has convinced the country’s people that India is now ready to play the role of a global leader, to Pakistan it has convincingly conveyed that India of today is no longer the India of 1965 or 1971 and internationally, it has been loudly conveyed that India is emerging as a force to reckon with.
He said the next destination for India is going to be the Viksit Bharat of 2047, when independent India would celebrate its 100th birthday, and the next agenda for India would be to retrieve Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, which is possible only under Modi.
Earlier, the author of the book spoke in detail about his personal experience both as a Kashmiri Pandit living in exile and also the perspective of Jammu and Kashmir viewed by him over the last several years. PTI AKV SKU RHL
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