CHENNAI: Pakistan’s “narrative management” during Operation Sindoor convinced its citizens they had triumphed, but “victory is in the mind”, Army chief Gen Upendra Dwivedi said recently, describing how India planned and executed the cross-border strike like a high-stakes chess match.“If you ask a Pakistani whether you lost or won, he’d say my chief has become a field marshal. We must have won only, that’s why he’s become a field marshal,” he said at an event at IIT Madras. “Narrative management system is something we realise in a big way because victory is in the mind. It’s always in the mind.”Recounting the operation launched after the April 22 Pahalgam terrorist attack, Gen Dwivedi said the Army abandoned conventional tactics. “We were making chess moves. We didn’t know the enemy’s next move. Somewhere we were giving him the checkmate, and we were going in for the kill at the risk of losing our own. But that’s what life is all about.”The planning began a day after the Pahalgam assault, he said. “This was the first time the Raksha Mantri (defence minister Rajnath Singh) said, ‘Enough is enough’. All three chiefs were very clear something had to be done. A free hand was given. That is the kind of confidence with the political directions and political clarity we saw for the first time.”Unlike in the 2016 and 2019 operations, the 2025 strike went deep into Pakistan. “This was the first time we hit the heartland. Our target was the nursery and the masters. This had never been done, and Pakistan was not expecting that the heartland would be hit. That’s what came as a shocker to them,” Gen Dwivedi said.Gen Dwivedi said future wars will be “diffused”, with no clear battlefronts and ongoing in nature. He also outlined Army collaborations with top institutions, including IITs, in AI, machine learning, synthetic biology, microelectronics, precision guidance, cybersecurity and quantum computing. He inaugurated Army’s research cell Agnisodh at IIT Madras.