Operation Sindoor was not about nuclear war: AS Dulat

NEW DELHI, AUGUST 27, 2025. Amarjit Singh Dulat, India's former spymaster, has dismissed claims that India's recent military push against Pakistan, codenamed Operation Sindoor, brought South Asia to the edge of nuclear war.

- FROM SHYAM BHATIA

Playing host on the first floor of his home in Delhi's Defence Colony, where he was at his most urbane and polished, he reminisced over whisky and kebabs about his years in power, mentioning the foreign trips he once took as part of President Zail Singh's entourage. Then, turning to the present crisis, he was blunt.

"Total rubbish," Dulat, a former Director of India's external intelligence agency RAW, said of the nuclear scare. "That will never happen. It makes no sense. This last skirmish — why did it last three days only? Which India-Pakistan conflict has lasted more than ten days? No matter what Pakistan says."

For one of India’s most seasoned intelligence professionals, the idea that Sindoor crossed nuclear thresholds is a myth, recycled more often in drawing rooms and diplomatic cables than in real decision-making. “We are never going to do it,” he repeated. Some Pakistani leaders can be erratic, but unlikely; their military would sure visualise the results.”

Born in Sialkot — the Punjabi city that went to Pakistan at Partition — Dulat joined the Indian Police Service in 1965 before moving to the Intelligence Bureau, where his immersion in Kashmir set the course of his career. By 1988, he was inducted into the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). A decade later he became its chief under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, later serving as Adviser on Kashmir in the Prime Minister's Office.

(RAW was set up in 1968 by RN Kao, and Shankaran Nair, the last of the Imperial Police (IP) officers from the British rule. The two played a decisive role in the Bangladesh Liberation War. Civil Services officers, particularly from IPS, Indian Police Service, and military officers were among the first to be inducted).

Over the years Dulat built a reputation as a spymaster who believed in dialogue as much as surveillance, cultivating contacts with militants and moderates alike.