khoji parkSpy · New Delhi and East Pakistan · 1968–1971
The Quiet Office Behind a Very Public War
The organisation was young when its biggest early test arrived.
Read in slides1. An agency with a new brief
In 1968, India created the Research and Analysis Wing as a separate external intelligence organisation. Rameshwar Nath Kao became its first chief. The new agency emerged after earlier national-security setbacks had exposed weaknesses in intelligence, and it had to establish methods, relationships and institutional confidence while dealing with immediate regional problems.
The organisation was young when its biggest early test arrived.
2. A crisis across the border
In 1971, Pakistan’s political crisis became a military crackdown in East Pakistan. Violence and displacement sent millions of refugees toward India, turning a neighbouring state’s internal conflict into a major Indian humanitarian and security concern. Kao’s agency operated within that wider emergency rather than independently creating the forces driving events in Bengal.
The border could separate governments without containing the consequences.
3. Building relationships
R&AW helped establish links with Bengali resistance groups and supported intelligence collection and assistance to the Mukti Bahini. Such work involved networks, training and coordination, much of which remains only partly documented publicly. The organisation’s contribution can be recognised without claiming that one secret plan alone determined a war involving millions of people and several governments.
The quiet work mattered, but it was not the whole struggle.
4. Information for decisions
Indian leaders needed assessments of Pakistani capabilities, regional conditions and international reactions. Intelligence helped inform those decisions, alongside diplomacy, military planning and the realities of the refugee crisis. Kao’s position placed him close to major choices, but a responsible narrative does not invent private conversations with the prime minister or attribute every successful decision to a hidden briefing.
The most important contribution could be information rather than a visible operation.
5. War becomes overt
Open war between India and Pakistan began in December 1971. The fighting in the east ended rapidly with the surrender of Pakistani forces in Dhaka and the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent state. Military operations, Bengali resistance and diplomatic circumstances all shaped that outcome, giving the intelligence effort an important but bounded place in the event.
Years of crisis culminated in days of decisive fighting.
6. A reputation grows in private
Kao became closely associated with the agency’s early successes and the Bangladesh episode. Unlike battlefield commanders, an intelligence chief rarely leaves a fully visible operational record for the public to inspect. Later admiration therefore needs to be balanced with the limited disclosure surrounding particular activities and the contributions of colleagues whose names are less widely known.
The reputation became public while much of the work stayed hidden.
7. The office behind the photograph
Images of surrender made the war’s result visible, but preparation also occurred through less photogenic institutional work. Kao’s story is about building an agency and helping it function during a regional crisis. It is more credible as a history of coordination and intelligence than as a claim that one solitary spymaster secretly created Bangladesh.
The famous photograph had a background that the camera could not capture.