Kutch key to Sindoor sequel: Forgotten war holds lessons for future plans

Kutch is our most forgotten war with Pakistan. Learn from it and draw up a plan for the next six months, two years and five years

While it is only India that still formally calls Operation Sindoor an unfinished business, both countries are seeing it as something of a trailer. Or a prelude to the next round. Not an issue fought to any conclusion. 

The subcontinent’s record tells us this is not the best place to be in. We have a precedent in the short Kutch conflict of April 9, 1965. Both sides called a truce, but the first full-scale India-Pakistan war followed five months later. 

Pakistan launched the war having learned the wrong lessons from Kutch. We might hope for better sense six decades later.