B Raman: India's foremost terrorism and security analyst will be missed

Bahukutumbi Raman, one of the founders of Indian external agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and India’s foremost security and terrorist expert better known as simply B Raman, died of cancer in Chennai on Sunday evening at the age of 77, leaving a void in India’s strategic circles. I interacted with him on many occasions and had the privilege of appearing with him on panel of experts on various TV news channels – he giving his views from Chennai while I from the studio. In some of my one-to-one conversations I found him brusque and snappy. But I never minded it because I have always believed that a genius has to be different from average persons like me and an ignited mind like B Raman has a right to wear an attitude.[caption id=“attachment_878231” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] B Raman. [/caption] The world used to look forward to read B Raman’s pithy assessments and insightful analyses after every terror act in India – and there far too many terror acts since he took to writing after his retirement in 1994. One only has to go through southasiaanalysis.org, the website of leading Indian think tank South Asia Analysis Group where his analyses used to routinely appear. It was no secret that of the over ten thousand hits the SAAG website has been getting daily (an impressive number of hits for any privately-run think tank), the majority were because of B Raman’s articles. Chidanand Rajghatta has summed up B Raman’s analytical skills aptly in an unusual black humour vein in Times of India today thus:

His last tweet on May 30, as he battled the final stages of terminal cancer, read, “Hanumanji willing, shd be back home coming Saturday.” But as his life ebbed away over the last fortnight, Bahukutumbi Raman might have noted, in his usual dry and dispassionate manner, that (1) Hanumanji was not around (2) Hanumanji must have had other pressing matters and (3) One should prepare for scenarios without Hanumanji. That’s the standard government memo template he used for many years to convey matters of great strategic pith.

This is precisely how B Raman used to write, narrating his points in numbered paragraphs. His last full-fledged analytical piece appeared on 15 May, a few days before his hospitalization. It was on Chinese Premier Li Kequiang‘s visit to India. The operational part of his advice to the Government of India in this context was as follows: “Ever since Xi Jinping took over as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in November last year, he has been talking of the need for a border settlement ‘as early as possible’. The previous leaderships used to talk of the need for time and patience in reaching a border accord and for not allowing this to come in the way of the development of the bilateral relations in the economic and other fields. India had been going along with this formulation of the past leaderships. “From the various remarks of Xi on Sino-Indian relations since he took over, it would seem that he wants a time-frame for finding a border accord without allowing the pressure for a time-frame coming in the way of strengthening relations in other fields. The recent intrusion, in this regard, could be interpreted as an attempt by the new leadership to press the need for a solution ‘as early as possible’ without letting the negotiations drag on endlessly. “It would be in India’s interest too to work for a border accord ‘as early as possible’. At the same time, India should not accept the Chinese formulation that the absence of a border accord should not come in the way of the economic and other relations. This formulation has immensely benefitted China… We should also make it clear that relations in the economic and other fields cannot improve without satisfactory progress in the border talks." B Raman hated the Americans for their duplicitous behaviour and protecting Pakistan even when it was clear to them that the Americans were being taken for a ride by Pakistan’s security establishment. Indian intelligence officials had repeatedly cautioned the Americans about the true intent of Pakistan—and B Raman was foremost in sensitizing the Americans about this—but Washington routinely ignored the Indian warnings. Chidanand Rajghatta has given a telling account of the American duplicity. Raman’s antipathy towards the Americans took roots in the aftermath of the 1993 Mumbai blasts choreographed by Pakistan through Dawood Ibrahim. Raman, who then headed RAW’s counter-terrorism division and had visited Mumbai after the serial blasts, was given access to evidence gathered by the security agencies which showed how the Pakistanis were double-crossing the Americans. Now read this what Rajghatta has written:

Among the evidence gathered by the police were detonators and timers that were of American origin. On the advice of then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, Raman said he shared this evidence with US experts, and at their request, allowed them to take the material back to America. Bad mistake, he later regretted. A few days later, Raman said, the Americans gave an unsigned report saying the detonators and timers were of American origin and were part of stock given to Pakistan during the Afghan war in the 1980s. The report gratuitously added this did not necessarily mean the terrorists got them from the ISI. It pointed out that in Pakistan there was a lot of leakage of government arms and ammunition to smugglers and expressed the view that the terrorists might have procured them from the smugglers. “When I asked them to return the detonator and the timer as promised by them they replied that their forensic experts had by mistake destroyed them. They did not apparently want to leave any clinching evidence against Pakistan in our hands,” Raman wrote later. ‘‘This was a bitter lesson to us that in matters concerning Pakistan one should not totally trust the US. They would do anything to ensure that no harm came to Pakistan."

I talked to two former top RAW officials who worked very closely with B Raman and had been great friends with him till he breathed his last: Dr S Chandrasekharan, who retired as the number two of RAW, and Bhaskar Roy, who retired from RAW as a joint secretary. I asked them whether they would agree that B Raman was the most celebrated Indian strategic analyst after K Subrahmanyam. Both of them said Raman and Subrahmanyam worked in different fields—Raman in counter-terrorism, counter-espionage and security issues while Subrahmanyam on geo-political, diplomatic and strategic issues—but Raman’s contribution to the Indian strategic culture and ethos was second to none. Chandrasekharan disclosed that Raman had made a huge contribution in drafting the report of the Kargil Review Committee headed by Subrahmanyam and had given his valuable inputs to the Government of Review in the latest National Security Review. Raman had drafted large parts of this report which was submitted to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about two months ago, Chandrasekharan told this writer. However, the latest national security report has not been made public yet. The writer is a Firstpost columnist and a strategic analyst who can be reached at bhootnath004@yahoo.com.