India’s intelligence culture and strategic surprises: spying for South block

Abstract

Dheeraj Paramesha Chaya examines India’s intelligence culture by drawing from archives, author interviews with senior Indian intelligence officers and secondary sources. Exploring specific cases of Indian intelligence failures and strategic surprises, he argues that intelligence culture is the key factor to understanding ‘intelligence-surprise dynamics’. Chaya further argues, ‘Western theories of intelligence performances and strategic surprises’ have limitations when applied to India (p.4). A foreword by Vikram Sood, former head of India’s foreign intelligence service Research and Analysis Wing from 2000 to 2003, praises the book by describing it as ‘perhaps the first academic work on India’s foreign intelligence culture’ and ‘sets the record straight with archival information and elite interviews’ (p.x). Indeed, the book provides insight into Indian intelligence, covering nearly 2,000 years, and includes insightful interviews with Indian intelligence figures (the named interviewees are listed in the appendix). The book is organized into four topical sections consisting of nine chapters, not including the introduction and epilogue. The first part explores theoretical aspects of Indian intelligence, definitions and a literature review, noting how a cultural analysis of Indian intelligence provides insight into intelligence successes and failures. Chaya explains, ‘It is necessary to understand the philosophies and thought processes governing a nation’s security processes to ideally locate and understand the role played by its intelligence agencies’ (p.25). The second section explores the evolution of intelligence from the second and third centuries before common era (BCE) until the start of post-colonial Indian intelligence. Beginning with Kautilya (375–283 BCE) and his ancient statecraft treatise the Arthashastra, Chaya explains knowledge was vital for state survival and ‘knowledge culture’ was the basis of the Kautilyan state. Turning to British colonial intelligence in India before 1947, he argues that Kautilyan thought remained ‘the basis for statecraft until the advent of the colonial rule’ which disappeared due to the ‘requirements of the colonial state’ that had a ‘reactive intelligence culture’ focused more internally than externally (p.64). Chaya describes how after independence in 1947 the colonial intelligence culture continued, which was marked by mainly responding to threats and shaped by the intelligence managers in contrast to the Kautilyan state’s ‘top-down’ approach. Moving to more recent events, the third part examines the 1962 Sino-Indian War, the 1971 IndoPak War and the 1999 Kargil War. First analysing the background and failures that led to China’s 1962 undetected infiltration of India, Chaya concludes