Army pays first official tribute to ‘Operation Pawan’ martyrs after 35 years

More than three decades after 1,171 Indian soldiers were martyred and over 3,500 wounded during Operation Pawan in Sri Lanka, the Indian Army on Tuesday paid its first-ever official tribute to the fallen, with Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi leading a solemn wreath-laying ceremony at the National War Memorial.

The Army chief was accompanied by Lieutenant General Pushpendra Singh, Vice Chief of the Army Staff (VCOAS). It is pertinent to mention here that the VCOAS, as a young officer, had been a part of Operation Pawan.

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Earlier, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh also paid tributes to Major R Parameshwaran, the only Param Vir Chakra awardee from Operation Pawan. “Remembering and paying tributes to Major Ramaswamy Parameswaran on his ‘Balidan Diwas’. He showed exceptional courage and leadership during ‘Operation Pawan’ in Jaffna. His supreme sacrifice and steadfast resolve remain a guiding light for our Armed Forces and our nation,” he wrote in a post on X.

Dubbed as Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) the Indian soldiers participated in Operation Pawan, launched in late 1987 to keep the peace in Jaffna. When the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) refused to disarm under the Indo–Sri Lanka Accord, the IPKF was dragged into hostilities.

In accordance with the accord which was signed by the then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President J.R. Jayawardene, on 29 July 1987 in Colombo, the Sri Lankan government agreed to transfer greater autonomy to its provinces, withdrawing its troops from Tamil-majority areas, and grant Tamil official-language status through the 13th Amendment.

In return, Tamil separatist groups, including the LTTE, were required to surrender their weapons. However, the LTTE rejected the agreement, declared its intent to continue the armed struggle for an independent Tamil Eelam, and refused to disarm.

The IPKF was inducted into Sri Lanka on 30th July 1987 and launched its first major operation on 9 October 1987. What followed was a fierce two-week urban battle in the Jaffna peninsula, where Indian forces fought through intense resistance, improvised explosive devices, and fortified LTTE strongholds.

‘Operation Pawan’ formally ended on 24 March 1990 with the withdrawal of the IPKF. Although Sri Lanka has constructed a memorial acknowledging the IPKF’s role, the operation did not receive formal commemoration at the NWM, until today.

Every year, only a handful of IPKF veterans, widows, and their families, paid tribute at the memorial, even though nothing official was done.