‘Rubbish! Total rubbish!’ Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India shouted. ‘We don’t need a defense plan. Our policy is ahimsa (non-violence). We foresee no military threats. Scrap the army! The police are good enough to meet our security needs’. According to Major General AA “Jick” Rudra’s biography, Nehru’s remark came when the Indian Armed Forces’ First Commander-in-Chief Gen Sir Robert Lockhart went to him in 1946, asking for a government directive on India’s defence policy. The book says that Sir Robert Lockhart told Major General AA “Jick” Rudra that Nehru had refused to even look at the documents. For decades after Independence, India remained behind the global curve in addressing her security issues, primarily because of pure lack of any political will. These limitations ensured that we remained embroiled in conflict management instead of pursuing conflict resolution. Nehru’s indifference cost India a lot. But instead of learning from past mistakes, successive Congress governments continued to display equal, if not more indifference towards India’s security establishment. Surgical Strikes against Pakistan-based terrorists, including specific operations to target their leadership, were discussed by the Manmohan Singh-led cabinet committee on security in the aftermath of the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai. But these were abandoned for a clear lack of political will. Former Indian Air Force chief Fali Homi Major said the force had planned a Surgical Strike to avenge the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, but never received approval from the then UPA government. He added, “We were deployed and waited for nearly a month. But government approval never came”. This infallible guarantee of India’s reluctance to cross the self-imposed restriction gave immunity to the Pakistani ‘deep state’ that continued to bleed India. But Modi’s unprecedented determination and political will made something finally possible, something that was seemingly unthinkable in the past.

On 29 September 2016, within a fortnight of the Uri attack, India conducted Surgical Strikes against terrorist launchpads across the Line of Control in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Earlier, on 18 September, four Pakistani terrorists had attacked the Indian army at Uri which had resulted into the death of 19 Indian soldiers. After the attack at Uri, the Narendra Modi government had given our armed forces a, “freehand”, to formulate any action plan necessary to protect our nation. In response, the Close Target Reconnaissance, CTR, carried out operations to stalk out and identify the targets, the infiltration routes, and the approximate times for infiltration and exfiltration.  For days they stalked the terrorist launchpads used to infiltrate militants into India. On the night of September 28, Paratroopers from Special Forces were airdropped at the LOC around 12:30 am, from where they crossed over 3 Kms to the Pakistani side. Teams from 4 Para crossed the LoC in the Nowgam sector of Kupwara district, while teams from 9 Para simultaneously crossed the LoC in Poonch district. Close to 100 specially trained operators exhaled gently into enemy territory as they lay in wait at multiple locations across the Line of Control. The soldiers blended themselves into the rugged topography. Their combat fatigues blended into the forest; their faces were streaked with camouflage paint; their skin was covered in a thin film of mud and leopard urine to suppress body odor from Pakistani sniffing dogs; their weapons had been blackened. They had lain in ambush for over 48 hours. The Indian soldiers had crossed into a land belt where vision drops to less than a meter in broad daylight; where the crackle of twigs could well be a wild bear, a marauding panther, a terrorist or a Pakistani SSG operator. At H-hour, when a coded signal went out to the team, the soldiers opened up with the portable artillery they had backpacked across the LoC — Carl Gustaf rocket launchers, thermobaric rockets, under-barrel grenade launchers clipped on rifles and ‘Milkor’ multiple grenade launchers that spat out six 40 mm grenades in one pull of the trigger. The aim was to inflict maximum damage to the terrorist infrastructure.