R. N. Kao

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 one of India's foremost intelligence officers, and helped build R&AW.

Kao 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 Jawaharlal Nehru and as security adviser to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

He also founded the Aviation Research Centre (ARC) and the Joint Intelligence Committee.

An intensely private man, Kao was rarely seen in public post-retirement.

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.

He was brought up by his uncle Pandit Trilokinath Kao.

Encouraged to pursue education, he had 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 master's degree in English Literature at Allahabad University.

He completed his Master of Arts degree some time before 1940.

Rameshwarnath Kao was also known as Ramji amongst his friends and colleagues.

A fiercely private man, he was rarely seen in public.

He knew too much to make a public statement or write a book.

Some attribute this to a life devoted to adventure and espionage which made it very difficult for him to mingle publicly.

He was a recluse leading a heavily guarded life in his New Delhi bungalow, very rarely giving interviews.

Kao took classes in Law at Allahabad University but left when he joined the Indian Imperial Police in 1940 after passing Civil services examination.

His first posting was at Cawnpore (Kanpur) as an Assistant Superintendent of Police.

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 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.

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 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, along with British and Chinese agents, probed the circumstances leading to the crash.

His work with the Chinese earned him a letter of recommendation from Zhou Enlai.

Count Alexandre de Marenches, erstwhile head of the French external intelligence agency, or SDECE (Service For External Documentation And Counter-Intelligence) as it was then known, named Kao as one of the 'five great intelligence chiefs of the 1970s'.

About Kao, whom he knew well and admired, Count remarked: "'What a fascinating mix of physical and mental elegance! What accomplishments! What friendships! And, yet so shy of talking about himself, his accomplishments and his friends.'" Alexandre praised the way Kao had built up R&AW into a professional intelligence organisation and made it play a key role to change the strategic face of the Indian Subcontinent within a span of three years of R&AWs formation.

Kao, for a while, took up a job in a cigarette company floated by Pt. Jag Mohan Narain Mushran, the then Chief Justice of the Benares State.

In 1977, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was toppled when the Congress was defeated in the elections by the Janata Party.

Kao's closeness to Indira Gandhi had aroused deep suspicion among the political class about his role in the Emergency.

However, Kao had privately advised Mrs. Gandhi not to declare emergency.

From 1989, Kao dedicated his time largely to the task of restoring the dignity and honour of the Kashmiri Pandits.

He interacted with various political leaders and the Indian government to see that the Kashmir problem was not forgotten.

He died in 2002 at age 84.

He is survived by his wife, Malini Kao, to whom he had been married for 60 years, and daughter Achala Kaul.

Kao was well-liked in the international intelligence community.

His professionalism was well regarded by his colleagues and the Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi.