The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane

This book deals largely with those aspects of the working of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), of which the author had personal knowledge while serving in the organization for 26 years. The book traverses through India’s contemporary history—most importantly the 1971 war; insurgency in the Northeast, Punjab, and Kashmir; the Emergency; the war in Afghanistan; and the intelligence imperatives and dispensation under Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai, Rajiv Gandhi, V.P. Singh, Chandra Shekhar, and Narasimha Rao. Written with the purpose that a knowledge of the role played by R&AW in those events would possibly enable a better understanding of its strengths and weaknesses, it painstakingly avoids over-statements, exaggerations and spins.

B. Raman joined the Indian Police Service in 1961 and served in Madhya Pradesh as a police officer from November 1962 to July 1967. He joined the External Intelligence Division of the Intelligence Bureau of the government of India in July 1967 and moved to the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) of the Cabinet Secretariat, when it was created in September 1968 as an external intelligence agency of the government of India. He served as the head of the Counter-Terrorism Division of the R&AW from 1988 to 1994, and has been a member of numerous intelligence groups. He testified on terrorism before the US House Armed Services Committee in 2002, and before a subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee in 2003. He is the author of four books—Intelligence: Past, Present & Future, A Terrorist State as a Frontline Ally, The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane and Terrorism: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow—all published by Lancer Publishers of New Delhi.