Rameshwar Nath Kao (10 May 1918 – 20 January 2002) was an Indian spymaster and the first chief of India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) from its founding in 1968 to 1977.
Kao was born in the holy city of Benares (now Varanasi) in United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh) on 10 May 1918 to a Kashmiri Pandit family who migrated from Srinagar district of Jammu and Kashmir.
[8] Kao took classes in Law at Allahabad University but left when he joined the Indian Imperial Police in 1940 after passing Civil services examination.
[9] 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.
[10] Kashmir Princess was a Lockheed L-749A Constellation aircraft owned by Air India which exploded in midair and crashed into the Pacific Ocean on 11 April 1955 while en route from Bombay, India and Hong Kong to Jakarta, Indonesia, carrying delegates to the Bandung Conference.
Investigators believed that the explosion had been caused by a time bomb placed aboard the aircraft by a secret agent of the Kuomintang, also known as the Chinese Nationalist Party, 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's closeness to Indira Gandhi had aroused deep suspicion among the political class about his role in the Emergency.
When Morarji Desai's government came to power after the Emergency, Kao was under no illusion about how the new set of politicians— who had publicly attacked Indira Gandhi for spying on them— would react to his presence.
Kao created the National Security Guard (NSG),[15][16] during the Punjab militancy during the 1980s, to address the needs of the Government of India to counteract terrorism within the country.
On his return from Ghana, he was made the first director of the newly formed Aviation Research Centre at Charbatia, Odisha, that chiefly concentrated on TECHINT collection.
The Intelligence Bureau of India (IB) was considered to have become something of a behemoth, and was bogged down by internal operations and politicisation.
[20] 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.
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.
Recalls long-time Kao associate Victor Longer: "Intelligence is the only government business that depends upon the spoken word.
While what transpired at the meetings can now only be a matter of conjecture, Kao's own team, notably Shankaran Nair (former R&AW Director) and Girish Chandra Saxena (former R&AW Director and Jammu and Kashmir Governor), sized up the emerging scenario in what is now Bangladesh with precision.
After Pakistan launched Operation Searchlight, R&AW played a highly important role in the Creation of Bangladesh.
Amidst the mass killings and brutal rapes, Indian operatives would get into East Pakistan, arm the local population and capitalise on the frustrations brewing within.
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.
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.
Kao is a legend among the Indian and South Asian Intelligence community, for his creation of the R&AW as a formidable force in such a short time from its inception.
[23] 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.