Delayed honour: On Operation Sindoor, gains and losses

War is secretive and strategy may require deception. But that is no good explanation for the fact that the Narendra Modi government took over a year before formally acknowledging that six soldiers had lost their lives in Operation Sindoor in 2025. India had launched cross-border military strikes in Pakistan in retaliation for the Pahalgam terrorist attack , in April 2025, that killed 26 innocent people . From the beginning, the government has been reluctant to share any meaningful details of Operation Sindoor even as it continuously kept the hyperbolic self-congratulatory posture. Its decision to not publicly acknowledge and honour the supreme sacrifice of the fallen soldiers contemporaneously was hardly a sign of any wise strategy. Casualties can happen in any military operation and that is a key consideration in any military planning, and more importantly, the political decision to go to war or not. Not being transparent about losses, human and material, may serve the political interests of the ruling party, but not national interest. By trying to be clever and selective about facts, the government undermined its own credibility and did a disservice to those who paid with their lives. Soon after the operation concluded in May 2025, the then Director General of Military Operations (DGMO), Lieutenant General Rajiv Ghai, paid tribute, during a press briefing on May 11, 2025 , to Indian military personnel who had made the supreme sacrifice, though their names were not disclosed.