New Delhi: In a strongly worded statement, Indian Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi said that Pakistan will have to decide whether they want to be a part of geography or history or not, should the country continue to harbour terrorists.
Gen Dwivedi was speaking at Sena Samvad, a civil-military interaction, on Saturday.
“If Pakistan continues to harbour terrorists and operate against India, then they have to decide whether they want to be part of geography and history or not,” the Chief of Army Staff said, as reported by timesnow.in.
General Dwivedi was asked how the Indian Army would respond if circumstances similar to those that triggered Operation Sindoor emerged again at the event hosted by Uniform Unveiled.
Gen Dwivedi is the first Indian Army chief in 26 years to have led his forces in a full-fledged, though short, conflict against Pakistan. The last war between the two nations was the Kargil War in 1999, when Gen V P Malik was the Chief of Army Staff.
Gen Dwivedi’s remarks came days after India and its armed forces marked the first anniversary of Operation Sindoor, under which Indian forces carried out precision strikes on terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir on May 7, 2025.
Operation Sindoor was launched after the gruesome massacre of 26 innocents by Pakistan-based terrorists at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22.
Soon after the strikes, India informed Pakistan that it had not struck any military or civilian facility. Pakistan, however, launched retaliatory offensives, sending thousands of missiles and drones towards civilian and military targets within India.
None of these were able to strike strategic assets and were intercepted midway.
Finally, India launched a major offensive on May 10, carrying out major strikes on Pakistani air bases and air defence systems, rendering most of them unusable before repairs.
Within hours, the Pakistani Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) was on a call to his Indian counterpart, seeking a ceasefire. India agreed to a cessation of operations on condition that not a single round is fired from the Pakistani side.
Since then, Pakistan has not violated the ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) even once. There would be regular ceasefire violations by Pakistan before Operation Sindoor.
