Articles By B Raman
The Khalistani Terrorism
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpt: The Kaoboys of R&AW | Date: 30 Apr , 2022
In the first few years after India’s independence, the Sikh migrants from Punjab constituted the largest single group of Indian origin in the Indian diaspora in the UK, the US and Canada. Some...
Intelligence: Past, Present and Future
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpts: Intelligence: Past, Present and Future | Date: 02 Dec , 2021
All over the Western world, till the Second World War, intelligence agencies were viewed and grudgingly accepted as a necessary and unavoidable evil. Nothing more. It was their performance during...
Role of R&AW in Liberation of Bangladesh
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpt: The Kaoboys of R&AW | Date: 27 Nov , 2021
Covert action capability is an indispensable tool for any State having external adversaries. Its purpose is not just collection of intelligence, but the protection of national interests and the...
Role of R&AW during Emergency
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpt: The Kaoboys of R&AW | Date: 15 Apr , 2021
When Kao had come to Paris to introduce me to Alexandre de Marenches, he was in receipt of a top secret coded message from a senior leader of the Congress (I), a Kashmiri, who was known to be...
Leh: Those magnificent Kaoboys on mule back
By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 01 Apr , 2021
In the external intelligence division of the Intelligence Bureau, headed by B.N.Mallick, DIB, and subsequently post-1968 in the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW), headed by R.N.Kao, Leh was a...
Mumbai 26/11: Islamabad's brazen attack
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpt: Mumbai 26/11 | Date: 26 Nov , 2020
The war of civilization between the Muslims and the infidels has begun in Indian territory. So said the first statement issued in the name of the so-called Indian Mujahideen (IM) in November,...
The Assassination of Indira Gandhi
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpt: The Kaoboys of R&AW | Date: 20 Sep , 2020
Till 1985, the IB was the over-all in charge of the security of the Prime Minister — while he or she was in Delhi as well as during his or her travels in India and abroad. The IB’s...
Mumbai 26/11: A day of infamy
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpt: Mumbai 26/11 | Date: 26 Nov , 2019
Even while holding talks with the US on peace in the Pacific, the Japanese Empire secretly and treacherously planned and carried out massive surprise attacks from the air and the sea on Pearl...
R&AW and Bofors
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpt: The Kaoboys of R&AW | Date: 28 Sep , 2019
I was posted in Geneva as Counsellor in the Permanent Mission of India (PMI) to the UN organizations based in Geneva from April 1985 to May,1988. I handled work relating to the International...
The Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpt: The Kaoboys of R&AW | Date: 05 Nov , 2018
A few months after I had retired and settled down in Chennai, the late S.A. Subbiah, who had succeeded me in Geneva and subsequently became the head of the Sri Lanka division in the headquarters,...
Rajiv Gandhi and R&AW
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpt: The Kaoboys of R&AW | Date: 25 Oct , 2018
During the little over five years he was the Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi had three chiefs of the R&AW. G.C.Saxena, an IPS officer of the UP cadre,who had taken over as the chief in April, 1983...
Indo-French intelligence cooperation: High expectations, poor results!
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpt: The Kaoboys of R&AW | Date: 26 Aug , 2018
The 1971 war highlighted two major deficiencies of the R&AW. The first was its poor capability for the collection of maritime intelligence in the Indian Ocean region. The second was its lack of...
Angry & Bitter with the State Department
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpt: The Kaoboys of R&AW | Date: 25 May , 2018
Throughout my 26 years in the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), India’s external intelligence agency, I was known as a man with a poker face. As someone, who showed no emotions or passion on...
Counter-Terrorism: Points for Action by the International Community
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpt: TERRORISM-Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow | Date: 21 Oct , 2015
(Text of a paper submitted by the author in July, 2004, to a High-Level panel on “Threats, Challenges and Change” chaired by Mr Anand Panyarachun, former Prime Minister of Thailand set up by...
Spy vs Spy: When R&AW lost
By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 14 May , 2014
A spook spends his working life in a cloistered world—protecting himself, his relatives, his feelings and his joys and sorrows from unwanted curiosity. The special bonds that one develops in this...
26/11: Pak Army Irregulars attack Mumbai-I
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpt: Mumbai 26/11 | Date: 24 Nov , 2013
In 2008, India faced six major acts of terrorism in Indian territory outside J&K. Of these, four in Jaipur (May), Bangalore (July), Ahmedabad (July) and Delhi (September) were committed by some...
Chinese Prime Minister’s visit to India
By: B Raman | Date: 15 May , 2013
Prime Minister Li Kequiang of China, who took over in March last, is to visit India, Pakistan, Switzerland and Germany during his first round of overseas visits after taking over as the Prime...
China: Time for a change of strategy
By: B Raman | Date: 03 May , 2013
It is more than two weeks now since a platoon of the PLA of China moved about 19 kms into Indian-claimed territory in Eastern Ladakh which, according to India, is on its side of the Line of Actual...
China pre-empts India’s possible use of the Gilgit-Baltistan card
By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 01 May , 2013
In an article in rediff.com of December 20, 2010, I had stated as follows: “China, which had never openly questioned the Indian estimate of the length of the common border before, is now...
India-China Border Dispute
By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 23 Apr , 2013
The continuing (since April 15,2013) Chinese troop intrusion ( about 20 troops) 10 kms into Indian territory near Burthe in the Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO) area of Eastern Ladakh in the western sector...