Rediff

New Delhi, Jul 23: A 290-page book, due to hit bookshelves next week, could set the cat among the pigeons of India's intelligence and political communities.

rediff.com columnist B Raman's memoir, The Kaoboys of R&AW -- Down Memory Lane (Lancers Publishers), will be the first-ever look at the triumphs and defeats at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.

The Kao in the title refers to Rameshwar Nath Kao, the legendary Indian spymaster who set up R&AW on then prime minister Indira Gandhi's [Images] instructions in 1968 as an entity separate from the Intelligence Bureau.

The agency was initially established with 15 officers -- the Kaoboys, so to speak -- including Raman. By the time Morarji Desai, who succeeded Indira Gandhi as prime minister in 1977, forced Kao to leave R&AW, the Kaoboys had grown to 150 officers, almost all brilliant practitioners of the art of espionage and intent on preserving India's interests at all cost.

Raman, who served R&AW for 26 years under 10 chiefs and seven prime ministers, retired as an additional secretary and worked on some of the agency's most important cases.

"I had been thinking for a long time of writing a book on how India's intelligence agencies function, about Mr Kao," Raman told rediff.com in a telephone conversation from his home in Chennai.

"Two years ago, several publishers approached me about writing such a book, but I did not agree. Then (publisher) Shakti (Bhatt) spoke to me and said that no one had written such a book in India, that there had been books written by former intelligence officers in the United States and the United Kingdom. I then thought I should put down all my thoughts."

Tragically, Shakti Bhatt, who inspired Raman's book, passed away suddenly on March 31, aged just 26.

The book, says Raman, will trace R&AW's evolution from the day it was set up, not chronologically, but via an objective assessment of the important milestones in India's national security landscape -- from the events leading to the Bangladesh war in 1971, the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv, the terrorism in Punjab, the Bofors deal among other events.

"It may be controversial," concedes Raman, "since it is a book that has not been attempted before, and since it looks at the political and professional role in R&AW."

"But it is not an expose," he adds, "it is an explanation of R&AW, both its spectacular successes as well as its failures."

What worries him is that in the current media environment of often sensationalist reporting, the media may focus on merely the agency's failures. "I hope that the media and public will look at the book holistically," he says, "not merely dwell on the negative aspects of R&AW's functioning."

"It is a constructive view of how intelligence agencies function," he continues, "the first time such a book is being published."