The birth of R&AW resembled the completion of a complex puzzle. The core team [Rameshwar Nath] Kao gathered around him had painstakingl...
The birth of R&AW resembled the completion of a complex puzzle. The core team [Rameshwar Nath] Kao gathered around him had painstakingly helped him bring it together. Sankaran Nair, MBK Nair, IS Hassanwalia and PN Banerjee were some of his frontmen.
One of the rules that Kao had insisted upon during the formation of the agency was that nothing be written down.
Even the status reports prepared for the prime minister would be typed out based on memory, and the document would be hand-delivered to Gandhi by Kao himself. The rule was implicit – no copies, no rough notes, no trail.
Hence, when Kao called for a meeting with his core team, the visual was contrary to the popular image of a meeting between high-ranking Intelligence officers. There were no large boards with writing all over them, no notepads strewn on the table, and no files stacked on top of each other. It was just the spies and the spymaster, discussing strategy.
“Knowledge is power,” Kao said in one of the early meetings, addressing the core team assembled in front of him. “and the proverb holds true for Intelligence agencies more than any other entity. Where the IB failed, we have to succeed.”
The one thing that...
