R. N. Kao Totally Explained

Everything about R N Kao totally explained

Rameshwar Nath Kao (1918-2002) was a spymaster and the first chief of India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) from its founding in 1969 to 1977. Kao was one of India's foremost intelligence officers, and helped build RAW. An intensely private man Kao was rarely seen in public after his retirement. A very cautious and reserved person, throughout his life, he was photographed only twice.
He held the position of Secretary (Research) in the Cabinet Secretariat of the Government of India, which has been held by all R&AW directors since. He had also, during the course of his long career, served as the personal security chief to Prime Minister Nehru and as security adviser to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. He also founded the Aviation Research Centre (ARC) and the JIC.

Early years

Kao was born in the city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh on May 10, 1918 to a Kashmiri Pandit family who immigrated from Srinagar district. He was brought up by his uncle Pandit Triloki Nath Kao. Encouraged to pursue education, he'd his early schooling in the city of Baroda, in the Bombay Presidency. Here he did his matriculation in 1932 and intermediate in 1934. In 1936, he attained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lucknow University. He then chose to pursue a Masters degree in English Literature at Allahabad University. He completed his Master of Arts degree some time before 1940.
Kao then, for a while, took up a job in a cigarette company floated by Pt. Jag Mohan Narain Mushran, the then Chief Justice of the Benaras State. He also took classes in Law in Allahabad University but left when he joined the Indian Imperial Police in 1940 after passing a competitive examination. His first posting was in Kanpur as an Assistant Superintendent of Police.

Early Career

Kao was deputed to the Intelligence Bureau (I.B.), on the eve of Independence when it was being reorganised under B.N. Mullick. He was put in charge of VIP security, which included the task of looking after the security ring of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Sometime in the late 50s he was sent to Ghana to help the then government of prime minister Kwame Nkrumah set up an intelligence and security organisation there.

Kashmir Princess Probe

Kashmir Princess was a Lockheed L-749A Constellation aircraft owned by Air India which exploded in midair and crashed into the Pacific Ocean on April 11, 1955 while en route from Bombay, India and Hong Kong to Jakarta, Indonesia, carrying delegates to the Bandung Conference. 16 of those on board were killed; three survived.
Investigators believed that the explosion had been caused by a time bomb placed aboard the aircraft by a Kuomintang secret agent who was attempting to assassinate Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, who had been scheduled to board the plane to attend the conference but had changed his travel plans at the last minute.
Kao, along with British and Chinese agents, probed the circumstances leading to the crash of the jetliner. His work with the Chinese earned him a letter of recommendation from Zhou En Lai.

As RAW Chief

Founding and Establishing RAW

After the intelligence failure of the Indo-China war, on his return from Ghana, he was made the first director of the newly formed Aviation Research Centre at Charbatia, Orissa, that chiefly concentrated on TECHINT collection. Kao was handpicked by Jawaharlal Nehru himself, who knew him well, from his years as Nehru's Head of Personal Security.
   The Sino-Indian War and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 caused the restructuring of the country's intelligence apparatus, since real-time foreign intelligence had became a political necessity. The IB was considered to have become something of a behemoth, and was bogged down by internal operations and politicization.
   In 1968, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who had then also begun tightening her grip on the Congress party, bifurcated the Intelligence Bureau to form the Research and Analysis Wing. The IB would be involved in domestic intelligence gathering, while the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) was created as India's primary external intelligence agency. Its mandate was to monitor the world in general and South Asia in particular.
   Kao was chosen as the head of the new organization, with a rank of Secretary(Research) in the Cabinet Secretariat, a post that all RAW Chiefs occupy. As its founder-chief, Kao was given the task to built up RAW from scratch. He spent the next nine years as the head of the organisation.
   He took over RAW at a time when things were beginning to hot up in the subcontinent. His tenure, which began in 1968, lasted for nearly a decade and marked the closest association that an Indian prime minister has ever had with the country's intelligence chief. He had unlimited access to Indira Gandhi. She reposed complete faith in him. "Normally, Kao's was the last appointment of the day with Mrs Gandhi, when all her other engagements were finished," remembers a politician close to the Gandhi family.

Bangladesh liberation war period

Towards the end of the 1960s, when the problems in East Pakistan began to escalate, the meetings with Indira Gandhi became more and more frequent. Recalls long-time Kao associate Victor Longer: "Intelligence is the only government business that depends upon the spoken word. Sometimes you can understand signs and body language. Kao had that rapport with Mrs Gandhi." The PMO's inner group of Kashmiri advisors D.P. Dhar, P.N. Haksar and T.N. Kaul now had another Kashmiri, Kao, for company.
   While what transpired at the meetings can now only be a matter of conjecture, Kao's own team, notably Shankaran Nair and current Jammu and Kashmir governor (and Former RAW Director) Gary Saxena, sized up the emerging scenario in what is now Bangladesh with precision. What was worked out wasn't just the larger picture but the little nuts and bolts—contingency plans and micro details. The idea of India training and equipping the freedom fighters of Mukti Bahini was evolved meticulously.
   During this period RAW played a very important role in the liberation of Bangladesh. They gave logistic support to the Mukti Bahini during the initial stages of the war.
   Indian operatives would get into East Pakistan, arm the local population and capitalise on the frustrations brewing within. Ashok Raina, in his book Inside RAW, writes: "Another RAW assessment sent to the prime minister spelt out the need for surgical intervention for the reports that came in gave positive indications that Pakistan was preparing for war. RAW received the green signal. RAW established guerrilla training camps along the border and began to train an illegal army."
   According to Gunaratna, the Bangladesh operation took place in two phases: covert subversion and military intervention. "Phase one was coordinated by Kao and phase two by Manekshaw, both reporting directly to Indira Gandhi," he said.
   During the 1971 war, intelligence was thorough enough that the Indian Air Force could bomb the room in which the East Pakistan Cabinet was in session. Naval commandos were able to blow every single Pakistani ship in the Chittagong harbour.
   Kao maintained close connection with the new nation. In May 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sent him to Dhaka to warn Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of his impending assassination by some in his Army.. The first lecture took place in 2006 on the fifth anniversary of the death of R.N. Kao. Writer-diplomat Shashi Tharoor delivered the first annual lecture. In 2007 Kumar Mangalam Birla delivered the second annual lecture, he focused on the shortage of people with the right skill set, in and out of the government. He counted the scramble for talent as one of the issues that looms the largest — globally and in India — over organisations in the private and public sector.

Further Information

Get more info on 'R N Kao'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://r__n__kao.totallyexplained.com">R. N. Kao Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.