Op Sindoor And The Shadow Of Brasstacks: What 1987 Reveals About Today’s Posture

Last Updated:May 24, 2025, 13:48 IST

What Op Brasstacks pulled back from, Op Sindoor pursued. One standoff ended with cricket. The other, with airstrikes. The rules have changed

Launched in response to the Pahalgam attack, Operation Sindoor showcased India’s evolving posture: restraint replaced with retaliation. (File pic/PTI)

The political discourse around Operation Sindoor has revived comparisons with an earlier moment of high-stakes brinkmanship—Operation Brasstacks. In a pointed attack on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, BJP’s Amit Malviya invoked the 1986–87 crisis to contrast today’s military assertiveness with what he framed as the strategic indecision of Rajiv Gandhi’s leadership. According to Malviya, Brasstacks began as India’s most ambitious military mobilisation, but ended in a diplomatic retreat following a call from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak—made at Pakistan’s behest. The message, he argued, was clear: India blinked, and Pakistan took note.

That moment of hesitation now serves as a reference point for how far India’s strategic posture has evolved. Where Operation Brasstacks ended in retreat despite overwhelming military readiness, Operation Sindoor unfolded with decisive strikes and a clear assertion of intent. One pulled back at the brink; the other stepped forward with calibrated force. Together, they mark a shift in doctrine—from demonstrating strength to using it.

A DRILL OR A PRECURSOR TO WAR?

Operation Brasstacks was conceived by then Army Chief General Krishnaswami Sundarji as a bold experiment to test India’s evolving mechanised warfare doctrine and rapid mobilisation capabilities. It involved the deployment of close to half a million troops in Rajasthan. The Indian Army formed a powerful strike force comprising nine infantry divisions, three mechanised divisions, three armoured divisions, and one air assault division, all operating under four corps headquarters. This force was supported by extensive artillery regiments, rocket systems, and elements from the Indian Air Force and Navy.

Importantly, there was also a planned amphibious component involving an assault division off the Korangi coast near Karachi, as well as the integration of India’s emerging tactical nuclear capabilities into routine manoeuvres. These elements combined to create a scenario that could easily be interpreted as more than a training exercise.

The Indian government claimed the operation was a routine internal exercise. However, the scale, timing, and proximity to Pakistan’s southern flank—especially Sindh—triggered alarms in Rawalpindi. The mobilisation was viewed as a strategic feint that could transform into a real offensive without further notice. The location of the drills, away from the traditional India-Pakistan flashpoint of Kashmir and instead focused on the Thar desert, further contributed to Pakistan’s suspicion that the real objective might be a conventional thrust into Pakistani territory designed to split the country.

INTELLIGENCE PANIC AND FEARS OF STRATEGIC DECEPTION

Pakistani military intelligence, already attuned to Indian deployments due to the Cold War environment and domestic insurgency in India, interpreted Brasstacks as a strategic deception. Intercepted Indian plans reportedly suggested a corps-level attack that would cut through the Bahawalpur-Khairpur corridor. Some assessments feared the exercise was designed to gauge India’s resilience in case of a tactical nuclear strike—something that was not entirely implausible given the simulated use of nuclear battlefield scenarios in Brasstacks.

Despite India’s formal notification to Pakistan in November 1986, and assurances from Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to Pakistani Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo during the SAARC Summit in Bangalore, Pakistani anxieties deepened. Rajiv allegedly offered to review or limit the final phase of the exercise, but no such adjustment followed. Instead, the Indian Army moved forward with Phase IV—the most extensive leg of the operation.

THE FOURTH PHASE AND THE PROSPECT OF WAR

Phase IV of Brasstacks involved a complex choreography of large-scale troop movements in Rajasthan, Punjab, and Jammu and Kashmir. Forward deployment of armoured divisions and stockpiling of logistics suggested India was preparing for sustained operations. The Indian Air Force adopted an offensive posture, and the Navy conducted mock amphibious landings.

Pakistan countered by activating its satellite airbases, moving reserves to forward positions, mining bridges near Lahore, and evacuating civilians from vulnerable regions. By mid-January 1987, nearly 340,000 troops from both nations stood in full readiness along a 400-kilometre front. The risk of miscalculation became palpable.

Indian generals such as Lieutenant General P.N. Hoon—then Commander-in-Chief of Western Command—later revealed that the Army was fully prepared for a limited war. Hoon alleged that the political leadership had been briefed and that operational plans existed which went well beyond an academic war game.

INTERNAL PRESSURES: PUNJAB AND OPERATION BLACK THUNDER I

The external mobilisation coincided with grave internal disturbances. In April 1986, months before Brasstacks, the Panthic Committee had issued a unilateral declaration of Khalistan from within the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar. This escalated the already fraught situation in Punjab, which had not recovered from the trauma of Operation Blue Star in 1984.

In response to the Khalistan declaration, Operation Black Thunder I was launched. The security forces, under the direct supervision of Punjab’s DGP J.F. Rebeiro and with covert backing from Delhi, raided the complex and arrested hundreds of militants. Though less bloody than Operation Blue Star, the operation deepened communal tensions. 27 MLAs resigned from the Akali Dal, the Barnala government lost legitimacy, and Delhi was accused of manipulating events through political puppetry.

Khalistani militants began to align with Pakistani intelligence operatives. Delhi was caught in a bind—any escalation in military deployment along the Pakistan border risked inflaming Punjab, while any leniency risked a missed opportunity to counter Pakistan’s growing strategic threat. Rajiv Gandhi, under immense pressure, was balancing external posturing with internal stability.

NUCLEAR WARNING AND DIPLOMATIC REVERSAL

It is also important to note that at the time of Brasstacks, there existed no formal agreement between India and Pakistan regarding the sharing of information on troop deployments or peacetime exercises. That protocol was only established later, with a bilateral pact signed in 1991 under a Congress-supported government and formally ratified in 1994, again during a Congress tenure.

The situation reached a critical point in January 1987 when Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, in an interview to journalist Kuldip Nayar, claimed that Pakistan possessed nuclear weapons and would not hesitate to use them if threatened. Although he later backtracked, the statement had the desired effect.

On January 22, India deployed fresh units to the forward theatre. But within 24 hours, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi ordered a halt to the escalation. Multiple sources suggest that this decision was prompted by a phone call from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, made on behalf of Zia-ul-Haq during an Islamic Summit in Kuwait. Rajiv Gandhi, conscious of his global peace-oriented image, abruptly reversed India’s mobilisation.

No reciprocal gesture was made by Pakistan. Zia, in fact, seized the diplomatic upper hand. He flew to India, attended a cricket match, and turned what could have been a crisis for Pakistan into a diplomatic opportunity. A few months later, Rajiv Gandhi visited Pakistan and on December 31, 1988, signed the Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack Against Nuclear Installations and Facilities with Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The agreement came into effect on January 1, 1991. It required both countries to exchange annual lists of nuclear installations and facilities, promoting transparency and aiming to prevent surprise attacks on nuclear assets. Critics argue that the agreement gave Pakistan strategic parity without similar transparency.

STRATEGIC CONSEQUENCES: OPERATION TUPAC AND KASHMIR

If Brasstacks was India’s last grand assertion of conventional power, its diplomatic retreat emboldened Pakistan to pivot. In 1988, General Zia initiated Operation Tupac—a covert campaign to destabilise India through asymmetric warfare in Kashmir. Pakistani operatives trained and armed militants, infiltrated borders through Nepal and Bangladesh, and fuelled insurgency.

The following year, the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir exploded. Sparked in part by the rigged 1987 state elections, the movement was quickly hijacked by Pakistan-backed groups like Hizbul Mujahideen. According to estimates, more than 84,000 people have died in Kashmir since the 1990s. India has had to station upwards of 500,000 troops in the valley, an enduring legacy of the failure to deter Pakistan post-Brasstacks.

POLITICAL FRAMING AND CONTEMPORARY PARALLELS

BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya reignited the historical debate around Operation Brasstacks in a pointed tweet targeting Rahul Gandhi’s criticism of Operation Sindoor. Malviya asserted that the Gandhi family’s handling of the 1986–87 crisis exposed a legacy of appeasement and strategic retreat. In his post, he claimed that Operation Brasstacks, though meticulously designed by General Sundarji, was derailed by political indecision when Rajiv Gandhi abruptly halted troop movement following a call from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak—made at the behest of Pakistan’s General Zia-ul-Haq.

Malviya alleged that Rajiv Gandhi, in a bid to uphold his image as a global peacemaker, sacrificed military advantage without securing any reciprocal concessions from Pakistan. He further pointed to Rajiv’s decision to invite Zia to a cricket match in India, and later, the Congress government’s 1995 conferment of the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding to Mubarak, as indicative of a consistent pattern of diplomatic overreach.

The tweet concluded with a sharp rebuke: before lecturing the nation on military operations, Rahul Gandhi should revisit his family’s track record of compromising India’s strategic interests.

Malviya’s framing finds echoes in the retrospective accounts of several senior military officers and analysts. Lieutenant General P.N. Hoon, then Commander-in-Chief of the Western Command, wrote in his 2015 memoir ‘The Untold Truth’ that Operation Brasstacks was not an exercise, but a plan for war—and that political leaders including Rajiv Gandhi, Arun Singh, and Natwar Singh were either unaware of or indifferent to the Army’s actual operational objectives. Hoon’s claims suggested that the military was ready, but political will faltered.

Similarly, military scholar Ravi Rikhye, in his book ‘The War That Never Was,’ argued that Brasstacks was designed as a coercive strategy to compel Pakistan to roll back its support for insurgents, but it failed due to political indecision in Delhi. Rikhye was explicit in suggesting that figures like General Sundarji and MoS Defence Arun Singh sought a limited war, only to be overruled.

Lieutenant General Vijay Oberoi, who helped plan the early phases of Brasstacks and later served as Vice Chief of Army Staff, is quoted in a 2018 Hindustan Times retrospective on Brasstacks as saying that the exercise was a no-holds-barred war rehearsal, and that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had been fully briefed on its scope. His statements contradict the narrative that the PM was kept in the dark, implying instead a deliberate political decision to stand down at the peak of escalation.

Congress leaders defend the pullback as a move of prudence. In their view, the absence of a hot conflict and the successful defusing of tensions without bloodshed is evidence of political maturity. The risk of nuclear escalation, with no fail-safe communication protocols in place, made restraint not just desirable, but necessary.

Yet, the legacy of Brasstacks is more complicated. Long before this, in 1974, following India’s first nuclear test, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had even offered to share India’s nuclear technology with Pakistan—an offer that reflected the diplomatic optimism of the era but has since been viewed by critics as dangerously naïve. India gained no strategic concession. It exposed its conventional capabilities and then chose not to use them. Pakistan, in turn, adapted—not by matching force but by redefining the battlefield.

CONCLUSION: FROM BRASSTACKS TO SINDOOR

Operation Sindoor, in the current narrative, is being framed as the antidote to Brasstacks—a moment when India no longer hesitates, when it chooses retaliation over retreat. Where Brasstacks culminated in Zia watching cricket in Jaipur, Sindoor follows a very different trajectory: punitive airstrikes, political messaging, and international assertiveness.

Brasstacks is not just a military exercise frozen in time. It is a case study in political indecision, strategic signalling, and the importance of following through. It teaches India the price of blinking. As India and Pakistan once again navigate a climate of strategic uncertainty, marked by cross-border tensions, proxy threats, and shifting diplomatic equations, the lessons of 1987 remain as relevant as ever.

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