BOOK REVIEW: RAW
Image by Khaled AhmedIndia's External Intelligence: Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW);
By Major General VK Singh; Manas Publications New Delhi 2007;
Pp185; Price Rs 495 Indian;
Available in bookstores in Pakistan
Like most intelligence agencies, RAW too embodies the paranoia of the state. When a state goes schizophrenic it gives free rein to its spooks without first looking at their IQ levels. In fact IQ goes against the very idea of evoking danger and then producing more of it by acting against it without oversight
Indias premier intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) is not much written about. Not many people know that like most intelligence agencies it too has the tendency to get out of hand. The indictment has now come from an insider.
Author Singh went into RAW in 2000 from Signals in the army because he thought it would give him two more years of gainful employment since there was a promotional logjam in his force. He was a bit put off when he went in, and the impression simply became more and more strengthened as he saw how RAW men exploited the exemption the organisation had from parliamentary oversight. He saw people going on freebies, even making funds disappear and taking graft from foreign suppliers when equipment had to be imported.
Is RAW different from other intelligence agencies some of which have become notorious? Not really. Singh talks about the 2006 defection of army officer Rabinder Singh who was under suspicion for spying for the Americans; but no action was taken against him as the RAW chief was too busy in his own careerist shenanigans to make the decision to swoop down on him. Of course Rabinder Singh disappeared never to be seen again. In the parallel rival organisation, someone at the lower rungs too escaped to the US after the great Mumbai undertaking in 1993. And the money was found embezzled too.
The RAW commissioner in Chennai one KV Unnikrishnan became too friendly with an American lady in 1987 who said she was an air hostess. But Unnikrishnan slept around quite a lot and passed on secrets about RAWs operations in Sri Lanka that the organisation would have given anything to guard. But IB in India matched its external sister in skirt-chasing. IB chief Rattan Sehgal bedded a CIA operative and was actually filmed during performance by a joint IB-RAW operation. Author Singh has many more cases of this category in the book.
Like most intelligence agencies, RAW too embodies the paranoia of the state. When a state goes schizophrenic it gives free rein to its spooks without first looking at their IQ levels. In fact IQ goes against the very idea of evoking danger and then producing more of it by acting against it without oversight. The disease actually results in the intelligence agency not doing the job it should normally do.
When Kargil happened, RAW was too busy spying in Tibet to notice. When an inquiry commission went after it, its findings were concealed from Lok Sabha; hence RAW probably lives on without reform.
The book says intelligence in India was begun by the British in 1885, but India should be amenable to spooks because of evidence in its ancient past of rulers surviving through vast espionage networks imitated in our day only in East Germany before it fell. India was the original home of spying in Arthashastra of Kautilya. RAW has Sikhs, Hindus and Christians and all sorts of others of indeterminate religious identity doing the dirty job for the state.
India began with IB doing internal and external spying. After 1947, India set up its Intelligence Bureau which was known strangely as DIB from Director Intelligence Bureau the same as in Pakistan with the mission to do internal and external spying. (Actually no spy agency has a formal charter of duty) Under one BN Mullick it became a bit of a monster because he stayed on for 17 years, somewhat like Edgar Hoover of the FBI. Mullick wanted General Maneckshaw punished for anti-national activities while refusing to appear before the court of inquiry he wanted to use to punish Maneckshaw!
RAW was created after the defeat at the hands of China in 1962 because IB had been found wanting in uncovering what the Chinese were up to. Mrs Indira Gandhi went ahead and created RAW in 1968 but did not give it under the oversight of Ministry of Defence. Like all rulers of South Asia, she wanted the spooks reporting to her only. The cause is suspicion of individuals out in the field of politics and institutions overarching society. After politicians were tailed and made to feel hounded, RAW was in for some drubbing, which took place when Morarji Desais Janata Party came to power in 1977. The wounds of Emergency caused cuts in RAWs budget, which caused the then RAW chief to resign.
RAW undermines and subverts Pakistan. If you want to know what RAW does, read Pakistani authors like SM Hali who report that RAW could have bought the blue print of Pakistans Kahuta facility but for Morarji Desai who refused to sanction the money to bribe the Pakistani mole and let the RAW project die. RAW egged LTTE on only to find that it had wronged Sri Lanka to an extent where it hurt Indias interests.
The book challenges the Pakistani writers claim that 35,000 RAW agents crossed into Pakistan between 1983 and 1993. Whether or not they did, the claim has never found credence in Pakistan. The whole spying business appears to be a joke because those who do intelligence appear to be so unintelligent when they break cover and speak to a TV audience or write in newspapers. Indias B Raman is a god example of that but there are many here too. *
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan
