Indian Chief of Defence Staff Gen Anil Chauhan’s admission that Indian aircraft had been shot down is the first admission by an Indian military official, even if partial, of the correctness of Pakistan’s claim that it had downed six Indian aircraft. This followed the concession by Dr Subramaniam Swamy the day before of an unspecified number of downings. Dr Swamy is no longer active in politics, but is a respected figure in the BJP. However, General Chauhan’s concession, though he tried to frame it as a boast, confirmed to the world that Pakistan was not making hollow claims as India had been doing.
General Chauhan, who was speaking to Bloomberg TV at the Shangrila moot (at which his Pakistani counterpart, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Chairman Gen Shamshad Mirza, was aslo prevent), had to make the concession to make his further claim that the IAF assessed what went wrong and took corrective action. It may be noted that whereas, during its own offensive, Operation Sindoor, India lost planes, during the Pakistani offensive, Operation Bunyanum Marsoos, it could not inflict any losses. At the same time, Pakistan made no claims about inflicting any losses on the IAF beyond the five planes it said it downed when India made its assault. During that Operation, it claimed to have knocked out such ground targets as an S400 launcher and a BrahMos missile storage depot. Apart from the fact that Pakistan made very reasonable claims, other evidence, such as satellite imagery, made it clear that India was trying to minimize its losses.
Instead of moving forward with whatever corrective action it considers needed, General Chauhan’s partial candour has been met by an outcry, with mounting calls for his resignation. This is despite his having stoutly defended Sindoor as a success. The general tenor of the criticism is that he shouldn’t have conceded the loss. It seems the inability to concede that India had had its nose well and truly bloodied has led to the ridiculous. Part of the problem is political: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is looking very bad, and his image, cultivated so carefully during the 2019 Phulwama crisis, as the ‘warrior-hero’, has been shattered. The strength of the evidence Pakistan had to back its claims shows that in this electronic age it is impossible to keep such losses hidden. The Russia-Ukraine conflict shows too that dust cannot be thrown into the eyes of the other side, and false claims cannot be sustained for too long.
