Under PM Modi's leadership, India boosts external intelligence capabilities significantly

India may not be behind Nijjar’s killing but it has indeed acquired the capability to do so during Modi yearsAn interesting report has surfaced from the British news agency Reuters this week. According to a piece published on their website, in the last few years there has been a considerable change in the capabilities of Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), India’s foreign intelligence service. In these years, R&AW has enhanced its capacity to conduct operations in the Western countries even before the allegations were levelled by the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who has accused India of eliminating terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Vancouver. As a part of this report, the journalists at Reuters have spoken to retired as well as serving officials in R&AW who have confided to them how after the 26/11 attacks in 2008 in Mumbai, India has prepared its intelligence agency to be more assertive especially in the western setups. One of the main reasons to do that as pointed out by a current official in the report was India’s failure to secure extradition of an American citizen (David Headley) who was an accused in the terror attack. Because of West’s general indifference to India’s security concerns, R&AW has decided to be more proactive on western shores to gather actionable intelligence regarding potential threat to India’s national security. However, it is important to note that all the six officials interviewed for the piece by Reuters have firmly denied that R&AW conducts any targetted killings as alleged by Prime Minister Trudeau on the floor of Canadian Parliament. As per them, conducting targetted killings on foreign shores is not a part of RAW’s mandate. The report particularly notes that since 2014, a qualitative change has come in India’s intelligence capabilities owing to Prime Minister Modi’s resolve to embolden country’s national security apparatus. Unlike the previous governments, the Modi government has shown more propensity to offer material resources and political support to R&AW. This reminds of the past days of India’s intelligence establishment when R&AW was caught in an abyss of decay but political masters were busy looking the other way. Between 2004-2014, R&AW had witnessed one of the worst phases in its history since getting set up in the late 1960s to keep a watch on China after the 1962 debacle. Year 2004 was particularly difficult as an Indian spy Rabinder Singh, serving as the joint secretary of R&AW defected to the United States in June of that year. He faked identity to fly from Kathmandu to the US but the local R&AW unit in Nepal did nothing despite credible information on his escape. Then another mole was found in R&AW when cybersecurity experts at the agency were found sharing sensitive information with their counterparts in the American intelligence agency, the CIA. As if two back-to-back incidents of moles within the agency passing on classified information to the US weren’t enough, the lack of political support by Manmohan Singh government in the form of its decision to halt certain activities led to a phase of low confidence within the agency. Many top officials at the agency were also quitting accompanied by a lack of investment in upgrading RAW’s capabilities by the ruling dispensation. Not to mention, a proposal approved by Singh government that sought to allow government officers from other services to join R&AW on permanent deputation basis which threatened to dilute the quality of talent pool at the agency because of officers who were joining RAW only for plum foreign postings without having any real aptitude to serve in an intelligence setup. These officers who were coming on deputation were also more likely to be spy-trapped unlike the officers who came through the Research and Analysis Service route. In one of the pieces Praveen Swami, journalist and strategic affairs expert notes that the Manmohan government was wary of giving political backing to R&AW’s proposals despite a slew of attacks against India including the one in Kabul at the Indian Embassy in 2008. In the same piece he also notes how things went further downwards when Shivshankar Menon became National Security Advisor in the year 2010 who chose to be even milder than his predecessor MK Narayanan. The unfortunate reality of UPA government’s political inaction hit hard when it was revealed that despite having concrete inputs regarding a possible attack on Mumbai hotels, no pre-emptive action was taken that later culminated into the deadly 26/11 attacks. In comparison to the previous government, Prime Minister Modi’s tenure has come as a pleasant surprise on national security front. Dheeraj Parmesha Chaya, an expert on Indian intelligence currently teaching at Hull University in Britain calls it a result of 26/11 attacks that gave a wake-up call to the previous regime which till then had maintained a lackadaisical approach towards intelligence. In a conversation with me, he compared India’s post-2008 focus on intelligence to the post 1962-era when China shocker in the war had led to creation of specialised agencies such as Special Service Bureau, Special Frontier Force and Aviation Research Center that were later absorbed into RAW in 1968. In the last decade, not a single major terrorist attack has taken place in any of the big Indian cities- something which was a norm during the UPA years. A huge credit for this also goes to the covert operations undertaken by India on foreign shores. Former RAW Chief NK Sood calls it a reflection of India’s growing strength as well as a political willingness to back it. Chaya also opines the same while addressing the normative debate regarding targeted killings. He explains that until 2001, West was clear on targeted killings and a ban on the same remained in place. In fact, United States was even critical of Israel’s practice of conducting such operations. However the war on terror after 9/11 changed the American stance on targeted killings with them become an accepted practice. Chaya notes that the CIA’s Directorate of Operations even had a ‘targeting officer’ to collect actionable intelligence for such operations. However, the normative framework around targeted killings is once again changing. He explains that West now wants to have it both ways where it is criticising Russia as a rouge state for carrying out targeted killings, but it masks its own operations as necessitated by the larger fight against terrorism. This is why according to Chaya, the Western commentators are indulging in ‘literary gymnastics’ to justify their terrorists as terrorists and India’s terrorists as mere dissidents who are being targeted by the Modi government. But there is a wider consensus among intelligence experts including Chaya that as India will grow in stature, it will be able to earn more norm-shaping capability that will provide legitimacy to its future actions. Since 2020, many enemies of India have met their end in multiple countries including Pakistan, UK and Canada. Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar is not alone to lose his life to multiple bullet shots in Canada. In June, another Khalistani Avtar Singh Khanda had succumbed to suspected case of poisoning in a hospital in the UK. Paramjit Singh Panwar, chief of Khalistan Commando Force, a banned terror organisation was also shot dead in Pakistan in May this year. Last year Zahoor Mistry, a terrorist involved in the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane from Kathmandu Airport in 1999 was murdered by unidentified gunmen in Karachi. Ripudaman Malik, an accused in the 1985 plane bombing in Canada was also shot dead last year. The list also includes Islamic terrorists such as Bashir Ahmad Peer and Syed Khalid Raza who have been shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Pakistan. All these individuals held strong anti-India sentiments, but that does not justify linking their deaths to India without any shred of evidence, as Prime Minister Trudeau did. What is true, of course, is that Indian intelligence gained more authority and capabilities under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi. The author is a PhD from the Department of International Relations, South Asian University. She writes on India’s foreign policy. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. 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