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A year after Operation Sindoor, the dust of disinformation has settled. It is time for a clear-eyed assessment — one that neither inflates the operation into myth nor diminishes it into failure.
The strikes were significant by any honest measure. India destroyed terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and — crucially — went further than it ever had before. Indian Air Force strikes hit Pakistani Air Force assets: aircraft, radar installations, air defence systems, and ammunition depots. Sargodha and Nur Khan airbases, the twin pillars of Pakistani airpower, were struck successfully. Satellite imagery confirmed the damage — leaving no room for ambiguity or denial. India lost some aircraft in the aerial engagement that followed. But in comparative terms, Pakistan’s losses were far heavier.
India also suspended the Indus Waters Treaty — a step it had not taken even during the wars of 1965, 1971, or 1999. The Indus river system is Pakistan’s agricultural and economic lifeline. Any additional storage or diversion of the Indus, Jhelum, or Chenab by India will directly affect Pakistan’s farming sector, drinking water supply, and broader economy. This is a long-term pressure lever — not a symbolic gesture. Its full impact depends on how quickly India builds the necessary tunnels, dams, and canals in Jammu & Kashmir.
Yet a vocal section in India has called the operation a defeat — arguing that anything short of annexing Pakistan-occupied Kashmir or breaking off Balochistan falls beneath the standard set in 1971. This framing is historically illiterate.
In 1971, East Pakistan was geographically isolated — surrounded on three sides by India, with no land corridor to West Pakistan. India could arm and train the Mukti Bahini with relative ease, and the Bangladeshi independence movement had strong internal mass support in a densely populated territory. Balochistan shares none of these conditions. It is landlocked, directly accessible to the Pakistani military, and sparsely populated — which makes freedom movement far harder to sustain and far easier to suppress. The comparison does not hold.
POK presents its own complications. The terrain is mountainous — ideal for defence, brutal for offensive operations. Any large-scale Indian military action in POK would trigger immediate Chinese intervention. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor runs through POK. Beijing would not allow India to sever that link — and with it, China’s overland access to Pakistan and the Arabian Sea. Washington, similarly, would resist any outcome that dramatically alters South Asian power balances in India’s favour. India integrating POK would give it a direct land link to Afghanistan and Central Asia — a strategic windfall that neither Beijing nor Washington wants to hand New Delhi.
The geopolitical arithmetic has also changed since 1971. Then, India had Soviet backing — a counterweight to American pressure. Today, no comparable patron exists. India has productive relations with the United States, but Washington simultaneously hedges by sustaining Pakistan. The logic is straightforward: a rising India that could one day challenge American primacy is best managed by keeping a regional rival in play. China’s calculus runs parallel — it continuously arms, funds, and diplomatically shields Pakistan to keep India pinned down in its own neighbourhood. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal adds a further constraint: it functions as a deterrence shield against full-scale conventional escalation.
None of this means India should be satisfied with the status quo. It means India must be realistic about what is achievable at this stage — and what requires sustained capability-building before it becomes viable. The conditions that made 1971 possible was a rare alignment of international circumstances. POK and Balochistan require a comparable external scenario — and still incomplete — strategic foundation.
Within those real-world constraints, Operation Sindoor achieved what it set out to do. It demonstrated that India will now respond to terrorism not merely with diplomatic protest or limited strikes on non-state actors, but with direct military pressure on Pakistan’s armed forces. That is a significant shift in India’s deterrence posture — one that will change Islamabad’s calculus in every future crisis. The operation also establishes a precedent and a baseline: the next Indian response, should Pakistan’s proxies strike again, will be larger.
Those demanding 1971-scale outcomes from a 2025 operation are measuring today’s chess game by yesterday’s rules. The strategic board has changed. The pieces have changed. Operation Sindoor was not India’s final move — it was a calibrated, consequential opening in a much longer game.
The author holds a B.Tech from IIT Hyderabad and writes on defence and strategic affairs.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.