India
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Spy agency marks 58th year since Kao built external wing
The Indian Express··5d ago
R&AW marks its 58th year on September 21, The Indian Express reported in a profile of founding chief Rameshwar Nath Kao. Indira Gandhi tasked Kao in 1968 to create India's first dedicated external intelligence agency. In November 1971 a source warned Pakistan might strike Indian air bases. Strikes came on December 3 and Pakistan surrendered in Dhaka thirteen days later.
Prism
What It Means For You
- Anniversary coverage recalls how external intelligence fed military decisions during the 1971 Bangladesh war.
- Kao's preference for discretion shaped how officers collected on Pakistan and China in the agency's early years.
- Biographers cite his childhood humiliation in Baroda as shaping his withdrawn professional style.
What's Happening
- K Sankaran Nair passed a Pakistani pre-emptive strike warning to Indian authorities in late November 1971.
- R&AW had existed for barely three years when the Bangladesh campaign began.
- Kao gave officers early priorities to collect on Pakistan and China and build covert capacity in East Pakistan.
Kao's intelligence legacy
- Former R&AW officer V Balachandran said Kao laid groundwork others such as Sam Manekshaw built upon.
- Raman's book Kaoboys of RAW described daily extracts from Yahya Khan's phone conversations reaching Indira Gandhi.
- Kao was five when his father died, leaving his mother widowed at 25, biographers recorded.
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