“A leader is best when people barely know he exists…when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will all say: We did it ourselves.”
Rameshwarnath Kao was born in the city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh on 10 May 1918 to a Kashmiri Pandit family who immigrated from Srinagar district. 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.
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 was well liked in the international intelligence community. His professionalism was well regarded by his colleagues and the Prime Ministers Nehru and Indira Gandhi.
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, the 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.
In this chapter we have covered the early life of the ‘Legendary Spy’, in next we will cover the threatening career of R. N. Kao.
-Shikhar Swami