For the country’s serving and retired top brass in the police and intelligence circuit as well as a shortlist of media persons, it was a tea party with a difference. The occasion was the first R N Kao memorial lecture and the venue, the out-of-bounds headquarters of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in the CGO complex.Outgoing RAW Secretary PKH Tharakan acknowledged the rarity of the occasion when he welcomed Shashi Tharoor, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, to deliver the lecture and admitted that it was the first time anyone outside RAW had been formally invited into the building. “The parameters of confidentiality may need to be redefined,’’ he said to the gathering in the RAW auditorium.Seated in the front row were Nalini Kao, wife of the organisation’s founder, and other members of the Kao family. Other invitees, who mingled with serving and retired sleuths for a sumptuous high tea, were Cabinet Secretary BK Chaturvedi, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and the Intelligence Bureau Chief PC Halder. It was former RAW Chief and Governor Girish Saxena who added a sentimental touch to the afternoon when he fondly recalled stringent sleuthing practices RN Kao had imbibed in his aides who were called “Kaoboys.” Tharoor, who was seen by many as an unconventional choice for delivering the lecture, initially pulled a few punches on the irrelevance of the obsessive secrecy with which RAW functions and then convincingly argued on the subject of his lecture: “India and Global Security: Leveraging Soft Power.” In fact, he said RAW’s founder himself might not have approved of the subject. “Soft power may seem an odd topic to speak about in a lecture that memorialises a famous intelligence chief. Intelligence is thought of as the job of hard men: what has softness of any sort got to do with it?” He argued how the facelessness of RAW may be working to the disadvantage of the organisation and spoke about how even a Hollywood filming had recently been allowed inside the CIA headquarters. “RAW’s exact locus within the Indian strategic establishment has remained a puzzle even to well-informed observers,’’ Tharoor noted. “Our diplomats are not noted for valuing intelligence inputs in foreign policy making; our internal intelligence institutions, including the police and the army, do not want RAW’s expertise in counter-terrorism to amount to meddling in issues of internal security. I think it is a great pity, if secrecy has gone to the point where many who serve in RAW themselves do not have a sense of their own history.” During a question-answer session, however, Tharoor was quick to point out that his case for making RAW as accountable and being audited like any other Government organisation was his personal view and that eventually, individual societies had to define or redefine the parameters of functioning of intelligence agencies. On how as an emerging super power India manages to leverage soft power, Tharoor gave the examples of the tremendous reach of Indian cinema, culture and cuisine but added, “I have little patience for those who would naively suggest that soft power can solve all our security challenges. That is absurd: a jihadi who enjoys a Bollywood movie will still have no compunction settling off a bomb in Mumbai, every time there is a Babri Masjid or a pogrom like the savagery in Gujarat in 2002, we suffer a huge setback to our soft power. “Those who condoned the killings in Gujarat have done more damage to India’s national security than they can ever begin to realise. India must reclaim its true heritage in the eyes of the world.’’ The memorial lecture was also the occasion for an introduction of the incumbent RAW Secretary, Ashok Chaturvedi, who delivered the vote of thanks. He takes over the reigns of the organisation next month.
