An Unexpected Education
In 1993, as a law student at King's College London, my intellectual world was dominated by statutes, case law, and jurisprudential theory. Yet amid this formalism, I found myself increasingly drawn to a different kind of narrative: the opaque, morally complex, and strategically vital domain of intelligence.
This interest did not emerge from fiction, but from history specifically, the rare and often understated writings of Indian intelligence professionals. It began through encounters with works by B. N. Mullik, B. Raman, and R. N. Kao. These were not novelists crafting dramatic plots, but practitioners documenting fragments of real operations, institutional evolution, and geopolitical tensions. What they offered was not spectacle, but insight.
The Men Who Wrote the Record
The writings of B. N. Mullik — particularly his multi-volume My Years with Nehru provided my first serious exposure to intelligence as a historical discipline. Mullik served as Director of India's Intelligence Bureau during critical post-independence years, documenting events such as the Sino-Indian conflict and the Kashmir question with a blend of administrative detail and strategic reflection.
What struck me most was not what was written, but what was deliberately left unsaid. Intelligence writing operates within constraints legal, ethical, and national. As a law student, I recognised parallels with redacted judgments or sealed evidence. The absence of information was itself meaningful, forcing the reader to infer, contextualise, and critically analyse.
B. Raman brought me closer to intelligence's operational reality. Part of the founding generation of India's external intelligence agency and later head of its counter-terrorism division, his writing carries a distinctive quality a fusion of anecdotal recollection, strategic critique, and historical documentation. One of his most compelling arguments concerns the necessity of preserving institutional memory. He lamented that intelligence officers rarely write memoirs, leading to a loss of historical knowledge. This resonated deeply with my legal training, where precedent and recorded reasoning are foundational.
No exploration of Indian intelligence is complete without R. N. Kao the architect of the Research and Analysis Wing. As founding chief of R&AW in 1968, Kao built an organisation from scratch in response to earlier intelligence failures. His tenure coincided with some of the most consequential events in South Asian geopolitics, including the 1971 war and the creation of Bangladesh. Yet paradoxically, Kao himself wrote very little. Much of what we know comes from secondary accounts and the recollections of colleagues like Raman.
For an aspiring writer, this posed both a challenge and an opportunity. How does one craft compelling narratives about individuals who deliberately avoided the spotlight? The answer lies in historical synthesis.
What Law School Taught Me About Spycraft
Studying law at King's College inadvertently prepared me for understanding intelligence literature. Both disciplines rely on the evaluation of incomplete information. In legal practice, one rarely has access to absolute truth instead, one constructs arguments based on available evidence, precedent, and inference.
Similarly, intelligence writing operates within a framework of partial disclosure. Facts are often classified, timelines obscured, and motivations contested. The reader must engage critically, piecing together a coherent narrative from disparate sources.
This methodological overlap led me to a crucial realisation: good spymaster fiction cannot be built on imagination alone. It requires the rigour of historical research and the discipline of evidentiary reasoning.
History as the Foundation of Imagination
The popular image of espionage emphasises action, gadgets, and intrigue. But the writings of Mullik, Raman, and others reveal a different reality — one grounded in patience, analysis, and long-term strategy. Raman's accounts highlight how intelligence operations are often reactive rather than proactive. Mullik's memoirs demonstrate how intelligence assessments influence but do not determine political decisions. Kao's career illustrates the importance of organisational design and leadership.
Without this context — the Cold War dynamics, regional conflicts, bureaucratic structures — any fictional portrayal risks becoming superficial. Historical knowledge provides authenticity, complexity, depth of characterisation, and narrative credibility.
My journey from law student to writer involved a conceptual shift. Initially I approached these works as historical documents. Over time I began to see them as narrative frameworks — structures upon which stories could be built. The writings of Mullik, Raman, and the legacy of Kao serve as anchors in this process. They provide the raw material from which fiction can emerge, while also imposing constraints that remind the writer of the ethical and practical boundaries within which intelligence operates.
Looking back, my interest in Indian intelligence was not a departure from my legal studies, but an extension of them. Both fields demand analytical rigour, attention to detail, and an appreciation for complexity.
Without historical knowledge, spymaster fiction risks becoming hollow — detached from the realities it seeks to depict. With it, however, it can achieve something far more compelling: a narrative that is not only engaging, but intellectually credible.
And that, ultimately, is why extensive reading is not optional, but essential.
