R N Kao Read online

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  First published 2019

  Copyright © Nitin A. Gokhale, 2019

  Nitin A. Gokhale has asserted his right under the Indian Copyright Act to be identified as the Author of this work

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  To all unnamed

  and faceless R&AW sleuths

  Contents

  Foreword by Ajit Doval

  Preface

  Prologue

  ONE

  Not an Easy Start

  TWO

  Joining the IP, Shifting to IB

  THREE

  Ramji: The Gentle Giant

  FOUR

  The Kashmir Princess Investigation

  FIVE

  Running into a Roadblock

  SIX

  Of Observing People and Places

  SEVEN

  The Ghana Assignment

  EIGHT

  The 1962 Shock and the Formation of ARC

  NINE

  The Pressing Need for a Foreign Intelligence Agency

  TEN

  Watching the Neighbourhood

  ELEVEN

  The Crackdown in East Pakistan

  TWELVE

  RNK and the R&AW in Top Gear

  THIRTEEN

  Shepherding Sikkim’s Merger

  FOURTEEN

  The Final Innings

  Appendix

  Foreword

  This initiative of the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) to publish the memoirs of its founding father, Rameshwar Nath Kao, is a pioneering effort that needs to be commended.

  For any member of India’s intelligence community, it would be a cherished ambition to be called upon to write a foreword for a book on one of its tallest doyens, such Ramji Kao, as he was known to his friends, relatives and well-wishers. I am no exception.

  Ramji Kao straddled the world of secret intelligence in India’s formative years as a nation. Deputed to the Intelligence Bureau (IB) in 1947 and trained under the watchful eyes of the legendary Bhola Nath Mullik post-Independence, Mr Kao emerged as an institution builder par excellence and an epitome of professional excellence and exemplary personal conduct. Humble, suave, intellectual and modest, Ramji Kao left an indelible imprint on anyone he met or interacted with.

  His exploits are legendary. Whether it was the professionalism with which he conducted the ‘Kashmir Princess’ probe in the mid-1950s, his contributions in the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 or the role in ensuring Sikkim’s merger with India, he always brought to bear his sage counsel and leadership qualities to deliver desired results.

  Ramji Kao also had many firsts to his credit. A close adviser and security chief to three Indian Prime Ministers, he was one of the founding fathers of the Directorate General of Security (DGS) in the aftermath of the disasterous Sino-Indian conflict in 1962.

  Later, he went on to head, as the first Chief, the Aviation Research Centre (ARC) and the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW)—two of India’s foremost intelligence agencies that were created in the 1960s. It is a fitting tribute to his leadership skills that within three years of the creation of the R&AW in September 1968, the organisation went on to play a sterling role in the 1971 India-Pakistan War.

  A multi-talented genius, Ramji Kao also pursued his passions in the artistic and creative fields. Being a quintessential sculptor—‘he was good with wood, clay and stone’, according to the author—it is no surprise that he used this talent to curate some of the finest intelligence organisations in Independent India’s history. He also mentored two generations of R&AW sleuths, many of whom have come to be known as ‘Kaoboys’. Those who worked with him swear by his human qualities, eye for detail, meticulous grooming and affable nature.

  What is less known about Ramji Kao is the fact that in the months before his death, he meticulously recorded for posterity his reminisces in a tape-recorder. He even corrected the transcripts, but with the proviso that these tapes should be gradually opened to the public after his death.

  I am happy that finally Mr Kao’s work is being organised in the form of a biography. Written by well-known strategic affairs analyst and author, Nitin A. Gokhale, it is a worthy tribute to man who nurtured important institutions through their fledgling years. Gokhale, who has an impressive body of work on national security affairs, has aptly captured the professional journey of Kao and simultaneously flagged key milestones in the R&AW’s journey so far.

  Personally, blessed by Ramji Kao’s 99-year-old wife, Malini Kao, I am sure this book will be read with great interest not only by intelligence professionals but also by common citizens in the years to come.

  September 2019 Ajit Doval

  National Security Adviser

  New Delhi

  Preface

  Where does one begin to chronicle the life and times of a colossus like Rameshwar Nath Kao? Does one begin with his greatest moment of glory in contributing to the liberation of East Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh in 1971? Or the fact that he was the founder of one of the world’s best spy agencies, the R&AW? Does one talk about his fiercely private personality? Or his wide-ranging contacts in the secretive world of espionage? For an author like me, it had to be a combination of the personal and the professional to try and capture the essence of Kao, the man, the legend.

  Somewhere deep in the archives of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), in the heart of New Delhi, lies a set of papers that researchers and historians interested in recording the history of Indian intelligence would love to get their hands on. Alas, only part of those papers—transcripts of tape-recorded dictations left behind by Kao—are currently available. Three crucial files on Bangladesh, the merger of Sikkim and Mrs Indira Gandhi’s assassination will not be open until 2025, according to instructions left behind by him, months before he passed away in January 2002.

  Since those tapes and papers are not public, this biography of Rameshwar Nath Kao—RNK or ‘Ramji’ to his friends, colleagues and family—had to depend on the personal memories of a vast array of individuals who knew him in different capacities and their interpretation of his personality and contribution, apart from his correspondence with varied intelligence professionals.

  The task was made doubly difficult by the fact that Kao was by nature a very private person. He was rarely photographed. Except for a tape-recoded interview to Pupul Jayakar, one of Mrs Indira Gandhi’s closest
friends, RNK is not known to have given any public statements or formal interviews with any journalist. So, when I was requested to undertake this task, it seemed impossible. But thanks to help proffered by the Kao family, the three personal files of Kao that are now open for researchers and scholars at the NMML, the P.N. Haksar papers and R&AW’s former officers—some of them retired as chiefs of the organisation—I was able to put together this first full account of the personal and professional journey of Ramji Kao—the sensitive, compassionate man behind the façade of a distant, stern spymaster.

  Not everyone who made this book possible can be named but some who can be are: Shakti Sinha, Director of NMML, for his generous and quick cooperation in locating and making available the Kao files; Vikram Sood, former R&AW Chief, himself an author, for his timely and critical interventions in reading the early draft of the manuscript; Vappala Balachandran, former R&AW officer, prolific writer and columnist for sharing copies of his correspondence with RNK and recounting some important anecdotes about him; my colleagues in BharatShakti.in and sniwire.com, the two digital platforms I own and run; Soumitra ‘Bobby’ Banerjee, my former boss in early days of my journalism career (for reasons which will become apparent when you read the book in detail); the most supportive team of Paul Kumar, Jyoti Mehrotra, Rajbilochan Prasad and Satyabrat Mishra of Bloomsbury; and, last but not least, the Kao family.

  The book however has become possible only because my wife Neha and our sons, Harsh and Utkarsh, who have put up with my crazy schedule of writing 10–12 hours a day at a stretch for two months. During this period, I cancelled a pre-scheduled foreign trip with my wife, going to movies was put on hold and family dinners became a hurried affair in the race to meet the deadline. It is their support that allows me to function stress-free when I am doing projects with the tightest deadlines imaginable.

  Finally, I can’t thank National Security Adviser Ajit Doval enough for penning the foreword. It is a rare honour to write the untold story of the iconic R.N. Kao, and to have Mr Doval, another legend in the world of intelligence, introduce the book is a double privilege.

  One last word. This is neither history nor a detective thriller. It is by no means a comprehensive chronicle of the R&AW either. Just read it for what it is: a short glimpse into how organisations tasked to protect India’s national interests took shape. Many have contributed in the making of this book but the shortcomings are entirely because of me.

  September 2019 Nitin A. Gokhale

  New Delhi

  Prologue

  February 2019: Days before the Indian Air Force (IAF) planes bombed the Balakot camp of the Jaishe-Mohammad (JeM), in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, two assets of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW)—India’s foreign intelligence agency—had managed to get inside the Balakot facility for a week between 15 and 22 February and send vivid details that clinched the decision to hit the camp that trained recruits for jihad in Jammu and Kashmir.

  The intelligence showed that the training camp was alive and kicking, and was, in fact, getting ready to welcome 150 more trainees from 25 February. The two sources managed to document the entire facility visually and identify important buildings and their occupants. Spread over six acres, the camp had 10 major buildings or complexes devoted to various kinds of activities. Most importantly, the camp was run by JeM Chief Masood Azhar’s brother-in-law Yusuf Azhar, who resided in an abandoned school complex on the campus.

  On 26 February, this real-time information allowed Prime Minister Narendra Modi to order a strike deep inside Pakistani territory, forever erasing the unspoken fear in the minds of Indian decision-makers of triggering an unintended military escalation with Pakistan.

  Flashback to May 1999: Pakistan’s then Chief of Army Staff, General Pervez Musharraf, was on a visit to China when the Kargil conflict was just about beginning to make news in India and Pakistan. R&AW operatives were on the prowl to get as much intelligence as possible. They hit pay dirt on 25–26 May.

  Musharraf was speaking to his Chief of General Staff, Lt General Mohammed Aziz, from Beijing on an open line. The R&AW was listening in. Aziz reported to Musharraf about a meeting chaired by (Prime Minister) Nawaz Sharif at which the chiefs of the Pakistani Air Force and Navy complained to Sharif that Musharraf had kept them in the dark about the invasion of Kargil heights. R&AW records the conversation and after much deliberation, India hands over the evidence to Nawaz to convince him of Pakistan Army and Musharraf’s perfidy in Kargil.

  December 1971: R&AW’s number two, K Sankaran Nair, gets advance information from a mole he had planted in the office of Gen Yahya Khan, then Pakistan’s dictator, about a plan to carry out a pre-emptive strike on Indian airfields and IAF fleets stationed close to the border. Nair alerts IAF, preventing a catastrophe. Pakistan’s air strike fails. India joins the war, routs Pakistan in 13 days, liberates Bangladesh and the rest, as they say, is history.

  These are just three examples of strategic intelligence that shaped and changed the course of the Indian subcontinent’s recent history. In each case, it was the R&AW which provided the input, rising to the occasion when called to do so. In exactly half a century, the R&AW has proved its worth time and again.

  This saga of R&AW’s formation and especially of the life and times of its founder, the legendary Rameshwar Nath (R.N.) Kao, Ramji to his friends, RNK to others, has never been fully understood. In its 51st year of existence, the story of R&AW and its founder, RNK, was waiting to be told.

  Read on.

  ONE

  Not an Easy Start

  In the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, there was something about the Allahabad1–Banaras2 region in the erstwhile United Provinces of British India that attracted a lot of Kashmiri Pandits to either settle down or study there. The most famous residents of Allahabad were, of course, the Nehrus.

  Motilal Nehru made his name and wealth in Allahabad before joining the Indian National Congress (INC). His son, Jawaharlal Nehru, was the most well-known resident of Allahabad. But there were many other Kashmiri Pandits who had migrated from Jammu and Kashmir and made the Allahabad–Banaras region their home and karmabhumi (land where one works).

  One of the most distinguished civil servants of India, P.N. Haksar, studied there as a college student between 1929 and 1935. Another young Kashmiri Brahmin, who was two or three years junior to Haksar, was also educating himself at the Allahabad University. This young Kashmiri was Rameshwar Nath Kao (RNK), the legendary spymaster, widely known as the founder of India’s external espionage agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). Years later, the duo, Kao and Haksar, would play a seminal role in liberating East Pakistan and in the formation of Bangladesh—Haksar as Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and R.N. Kao as the Head of R&AW, which would form in 1968, barely three years earlier to the Bangladesh Liberation War.

  Haksar and Kao were destined to work together, not the least because they belonged to a small but very influential Kashmiri Brahmin community in central India, who had kinship with and access to the Nehru family. Both, however, rose in their respective professions because they were thorough in their jobs and men of great integrity, who did not hesitate to offer the correct advice even if it was unpalatable to their political bosses.

  Kao’s ancestor, Pandit Ghasi Ram Kao, was originally a resident of Srinagar district in the Kashmir Valley. He left the Kashmir Valley in the beginning of the 18th century in search of a job, and landed in Delhi with his son, Pandit Damodar Das Kao, and other family members. Dr B.N. Sharga, a Kashmiri Pandit himself, has traced the migration of Kashmiri Brahmins to different parts of India, and has written a magnum opus in Hindi called Kashmiri Panditon Ke Anmol Ratna, which is a six-volume work on the family histories of several thousand non-resident Kashmiri Pandits. He has written extensively about Kao’s lineage as well.

  According to Dr Sharga, Pandit Ghasi Ram Kao’s younger son, Pandit Daya Nidhan Kao, went to Oudh from Delhi during the rule of Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula (1775�
�1797) and became a dewan in his court. He settled down with his family in the Kashmiri Mohalla of Lucknow, where he built two houses. The Kao family flourished in Oudh and many of the family members became leading citizens in Lucknow, where they obtained education. As the family grew, they spread themselves across Oudh, which later became a part of the United Provinces.

  In the late 1870s, RNK’s grandfather, Pandit Kedar Nath Kao, after completing his education, became a deputy collector under the British and lived in Ramnagar, Banaras, for quite some time. He got married at 43 to a lady who was then 16 years of age. She bore him two sons—Triloki Nath Kao and Dwarika Nath Kao. RNK’s father was the younger of the two brothers. The two brothers were very close to each other.

  Triloki Nath Kao became a chemist and shifted from Lucknow to Baroda, whereas his younger brother, Dwarika Nath Kao, became a deputy collector like his father. Triloki Nath Kao married Daya Shuri Zutshi, who was the daughter of Shambhu Nath Zutshi of Lucknow. He lived till the age of about 84 and passed away in Calcutta in November 1976.

  Dwarika Nath Kao was married to Khemwati Kaul, who was the daughter of Srikishan Kaul of Lahore. Two sons, Rameshwar Nath Kao and Shyam Sunder Nath Kao, were born to this couple. The younger brother was, in fact, born a couple of months after the passing away of the father at the age of 24 years old. Rameshwar Nath Kao, according to his own notes, was born on 10 May 1918 in an old colonial-type bungalow in Banaras cantonment. His father, who then was about 29 years old, was working as a recruiting officer during the closing months of the First World War. From the account that RNK heard later, his father was a fastidious person. He also seemed to have had literary pretensions, because RNK remembered having seen at least one poem in Urdu that his father had written in aid of the recruitment drive for the British Government of India.