Meanwhile Chavan was also finding his feet in New Delhi. When he faced Parliament, he was not sure of himself. To use cricket idiom, the ground was new to him, the wicket was sticky, far too many people were out to bowl googlies to him and the crowd sympathetic but on the look out for a lapse. But as time went by, he mastered his subject, and his confidence grew.
Government had ordered an enquiry into the reverses in NEFA. The report of Maj. Gen. Henderson Brookes and Brigadier P. S. Bhagat was never officially released in full but only a summary was given to Parliament. There was a debate and Chavan had to reply to it. It was a difficult and delicate job. The whole nation felt humiliated at the reverses in the Himalayas. The set back had to be admitted but at the same time it had to be put in proper perspective as the loss of a battle and not defeat in a war. Failure of leadership at the senior level in the Army had to be conceded but then again care had to be taken that it did not result in further lowering of morale. Politically, the failure had to be admitted but then again in a way that it was not interpreted as condemnation of V. K. Krishna Menon More important, the leadership of Nehru, his thesis of non-alignment and the ideals for which he stood had to be defended. And all this had to be done without giving too much away. The nation had to be reassured about strengthening of its defence but it had also to be pointed out that the road ahead was hard, rocky and difficult, as Chavan put it "we are not at the end of our trouble but in the midst of it."
Chavan's speech was by all accounts a masterly performance. Those who listened to it felt that a new stat had risen in the political firmament. He now went from strength to strength. Soon he had mastered the idiom of life in Delhi. Many thought in the beginning that he was rather slow on the uptake. But they soon realised that he had a great capacity to learn, great patience to listen, and a mind which was wide awake but was not hustled.
The reorganisation of the Defence services and the self-confidence of the Army, Navy and Air Force were put to the test in 1965 in meeting the threat from Pakistan. So also were Chavan's own qualities as a national leader and able administrator. Memory of the humiliation of 1962 was still fresh and the Indian people were naturally alarmed at the threat from Pakistan to an India, without Jawaharlal Nehru. Chavan had to take the crucial decision in September to use the Air Force against Pakistani tanks in the Chamb sector.
Twenty years later, one had to admit that neither India nor Pakistan own a decisive victory in 1965. But India succeeded in blunting the edge of the Pakistani War machine by destroying her Ace of Spades - the 1st Armoured Division near Khem Karan. Pakistan's Sixth Armour Division suffered heavy losses in the Sialkot sector. Tiny Indian made Gnat aircraft took heavy toll of Pakistani war planes. At the end of the war India held 740 sq. miles of Pakistani territory as against 210 sq. miles of Indian territory held by Pakistan. But it was not in the land occupied, the Patton tanks or the Sabre jets destroyed that the success lay. It gave the Indian nation recovering from the trauma of 1962, a new sense of self-confidence in itself, its armed forces and its Defence Minister Yeshwantrao Chavan. Chavan got a hero's welcome wherever he went in the country.