Govt Revamps National Security Advisory Board, Ex-RAW Chief Alok Joshi Appointed Its Chairman
Last Updated:
The government has revamped the National Security Advisory Board in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack.
The government on Wednesday revamped the National Security Advisory Board and appointed Alok Joshi, former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), as its chairman.
Six more members, including retired servicemen from the armed forces and diplomacy, have been inducted into the board.
The new members include former Western Air Commander Air Marshal PM Sinha, former Southern Army Commander Lieutenant General AK Singh, and Rear Admiral Monty Khanna. Rajiv Ranjan Verma and Manmohan Singh are the two retired members of the Indian Police Service. Retired IFS officer B Venkatesh Varma is also among those in the seven-member board.
The latest development comes in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack in Kashmir that killed 26 people, including a Nepalese national on April 22.
First Published:
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scroll.in
17 hours ago
- Scroll.in
When US media feared ‘another Cuba' in the Himalayas and Indian Ocean
In the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, the United States viewed Cuba as one of its main security threats as well as an ideological opponent. At the start of the decade, it had tried to invade Cuba along with Cuban exiles in what is called the Bay of Pigs invasion, but failed miserably, leading to a loss of face. For a while after that, Cuba became shorthand in American media for small neighbours of larger democracies that were either flirting with communism or getting closer to a major communist power. Both Nepal and Sri Lanka were described in US media reports as 'India's Cuba'. This was a time when the John F Kennedy administration in the US saw democratic India under Jawaharlal Nehru as a friend and the kingdom of Nepal as teetering towards communism. In a report for the news agency United Press International, its foreign correspondent Patrick J Killen called Nepal 'India's Cuba' and 'India's 'Castro'' a 'beadless non-communist king'. Killen, who worked in Asia for 30 years, said the relations between India and Nepal were rapidly deteriorating as the Himalayan kingdom moved towards China's camp. 'A few years ago, Nepal was known principally for its high mountains (Mt. Everest), its abominable snowman (the Yeti) and its tough export (Gurkha soldiers),' Killen wrote in February 1962. 'Today, its 9.5 million people have awakened to the fact that their Arkansas-sized country is jammed between Asia's two cold war giants, India and China.' In March 1960, Nepal's India-educated Prime Minister BP Koirala had visited China's capital city Peking, now called Beijing, and a year later, the two countries settled their border dispute. 'Although most Indians were favourable to Koirala, he helped push Nepal to the road to neutralism,' wrote Killen. Whatever his successes, Koirala was deposed in 1960 in a coup d'état by King Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev and imprisoned along with his colleagues. The king suspended the constitution, abolished the parliament, banned political parties, and took over the reins of the country through the Panchayat system. Nehru lamented this setback to democracy, which irked Nepal, prompting sharp official and public reactions. 'To make the point unmistakably, Nepalese students demonstrated in front of the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu in January and an effigy of Nehru was burned in a nearby town,' wrote Killen. Some in Nepal even blamed India for a clumsy assassination attempt on King Mahendra when a bomb was hurled at his jeep by Nepali Congress member Durgananda Jha during a visit to Janakpur in January 1962. This was a new low in the relations between Delhi and Kathmandu. 'Observers in New Delhi say the current split is the worst since Indian independence since 1947,' Killen wrote. 'One good reason, in the Indian view, is Nepal's increasing friendliness with China. On the other hand, the Nepalese feel India is too concerned with Nepal's international politics.' Of course, Nepal's concern about Indian interference in its affairs was as valid then as it is now. Killen too acknowledged that India took a 'paternal view of its tiny neighbour'. The fear of Nepal turning into 'India's Cuba' deepened after Mahendra's visit to China, where he announced that the Chinese would help build a road from Lhasa to Kathmandu. 'The announcement struck a raw Indian nerve,' wrote Killen. 'Indian newspapers were quick to point out that the agreement was a violation of the Nepal-India treaty which made it mandatory for each government to keep the other informed on third party negotiations.' The American correspondent pointed out that New Delhi's main and unspoken concern was that the Lhasa-Kathmandu road would reduce Nepal's dependence on India for its imports. In an off-the-record conversation, an Indian official told Killen, 'The trouble with the Nepalese is that they think they can deal with the Chinese the same way they dealt with us. They may find the Chinese are smarter.' Some Indian publications began to sound the alarm about Chinese presence in Kathmandu. Srikrishna Mulgaokar, the editor of the Hindustan Times, noted during a visit in 1962 that the Chinese Embassy in the Nepalese capital was 'far more generously manned than legitimate work would warrant'. In Killen's view, what was truly irking New Delhi was that 'India could pull down Mahendra's government without too much trouble and without a 'Bay of Pigs' fiasco. But New Delhi cannot afford to get rid of the king. Mahendra, as a god king, is enormously popular and is the only person who can hold together his diverse countrymen. He also is not a communist, but communism could fill the vacuum should he be removed.' This is exactly what transpired 46 years later once the monarchy fell, although Indo-Nepal relations never deteriorated to the level of US-Cuba ties. Ceylon's turn Apart from Nepal, Sri Lanka too was on the US radar. In a widely-syndicated article in 1962, Victor Riesel, who was best known for his columns on labour issues, wrote about the tensions between the US and Ceylon. In that article, Riesel called Ceylon 'India's Cuba' and blamed 'Trotyskite Socialists' for the turn of events. 'You soon will be hearing about 'Adam's Bridge,'' Riesel wrote. 'It's not a bridge; it's a chain of shoals, which connects India to the island republic of Ceylon, somewhat like the U.S. and Cuba. The similarity is strengthened by the swiftness with which Ceylon is becoming India's Cuba.' Published two months before the Cuban missile crisis, Riesel's article was hard on Ceylon. 'Fascinating place, Ceylon,' he said. 'Its prime minister has insulted President Kennedy. Its government has mocked our ambassador, Frances E. Willis. It's real boss is the prime minister's nephew, the tough 31-year old finance minister, Felix Bandaranaike, who is dedicated to seizing millions of dollars worth of American property, terrorizing the free press, baiting the U.S. and promising that Ceylon will go down the road to socialism.' Ceylon, at the time, was not a republic. It had dominion status in the Commonwealth of Nations with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. Many of its post-independence leaders would frequently make public statements aimed at the domestic audience without paying heed to the diplomatic ramifications of their words. In the mid-1950s, for instance, Prime Minister John Kotelawala, did not hold back when expressing opinions about Nehru. In 1962, Sirimavo Bandaranaike – who had made history by becoming the world's first woman prime minister – annoyed Washington with her actions. That summer, the US embassy in Colombo tried to get Ceylon to renew a pact that gave the country the right to use the Voice of America transmitter. But Bandaranaike ignored the request, prompting the US ambassador to seek White House's intervention. Kennedy wrote a letter requesting Ceylon to renew the pact and asked Willis to deliver it to Bandaranaike, but she refused to give the ambassador an appointment for 16 days. 'After making us look silly in her island republic the size of West Virginia (with 10 million people), she finally permitted our ambassador to present Mr. Kennedy's memorandum,' Riesel wrote. Although Bandaranaike finally agreed to renew the pact, the Americans took the delay and the prime minister's attitude as an insult to Kennedy. This was at a time when Ceylon was receiving around $70 million in developmental assistance from the United States. 'This aid is continuing,' Reisel said. 'And we buy hundreds of millions of dollars worth of rubber, tea, cocoanut and other materials from Ceylon. We could buy this from other nations in the Orient.' Ambassador Willis had an unpleasant time in Ceylon and was constantly humiliated. On one occasion, when she had to travel to a conference in Delhi, the Ceylonese government 'deliberately made her take inferior means while the ambassadors of smaller nations, including Switzerland, were given first rate facilities,' Riesel wrote. He felt this was done 'deliberately so the U.S. would lose face at the crowded airport and in government circles which chuckled over the ease with which we were drubbed'. It did not help the matter that the Sirimavo Bandaranaike government nationalised the assets of American companies Caltex and Esso (along with Shell) under a policy meant to take control of the petroleum industry and break the monopoly of foreign giants. Riesel said the Ceylonese were 'real merry' when they discussed the 'seizure of the oil properties, gas stations and harbour bunkering facilities' of Caltex. 'They were turned over to the government-owned Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, which in turn leased the American property to the Soviet Union.' Two other things angered the US. One was Bandaranaike's attempt to mediate between India and China during the 1962 war. And the other was the growing prominence of Trotskyite labour union leader NM Perera, who had returned to Colombo after obtaining a PhD from the London School of Economics. In an attempt to court him, Washington gave Perera a 'no-strings attached' leadership grant to visit the United States. But while he accepted the offer, he broke away from the group after meeting two influential American union leaders and returned home via Cuba. 'Dr. Perera is a Trotskyite, which means that he stands for world revolution,' Riesel wrote. 'Trotsky was to the left of Stalin and would have made Mao look like a paper tiger.' Riesel called on Washington to stop financing Ceylon and 'to tell the Ceylonese to jump in the Indian Ocean'. Neither Sri Lanka nor Nepal ever turned into 'India's Cuba', notwithstanding the warnings from Riesel and Killen. But their relations with the United States remained uneven, going through periodic ups and downs.
India Gazette
a day ago
- India Gazette
CPI-M delegation visits Uri to support shelling-affected residents; slams govt for inadequate compensation, neglect
Uri (Jammu and Kashmir) [India], June 11 (ANI): A delegation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), including the party's General Secretary MA Baby, visited Uri in Jammu and Kashmir's Baramulla district to meet people affected by shelling by Pakistan. CPI-M General Secretary MA Baby expressed reservations over the compensation amount of Rs 1.3 lakh given to the affected residents. 'The situation here is highly distressing, as you would have seen with the drone and shelling attacks. The government has only given Rs 1.3 lakh as compensation, which these days cannot even buy a proper door and window. This is highly deplorable, and we strongly disagree with the government's attitude. The democratic process has been destroyed here. Omar Abdullah is the Chief Minister; this is a Union Territory, and Modi and Amit Shah are controlling everything. We heard that the review meeting conducted with the Lieutenant Governor excluded the Chief Minister,' he said. He further addressed the plight of the people affected by shelling, saying, 'An eight-member family has been given a small room--this attitude of the government needs to change. We, MPs from West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, and other corners of the state, came here to raise the plight of people in border areas. We demanded a special session to discuss it, but the Prime Minister refused. He didn't even attend the all-party meeting, only giving lectures here and there.' One of the delegates, CPI-M leader Mohamad Yousuf Tarigami, said, 'The people living in border villages should have access to bunkers for their safety. We have come here to express solidarity and tell them we stand with them. We assure them that we will be their voice in Parliament.' The visit followed shelling by Pakistan in the civilian areas of Jammu and Kashmir post Operation Sindoor, which was conducted on May 7. The operation was conducted in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 people, including a Nepalese national. India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7 and struck nine terror sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir in response to a ghastly terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam. After the attack, Pakistan retaliated with cross-border shelling across the Line of Control and Jammu and Kashmir as well as attempted drone attacks along the border regions, following which India launched a coordinated attack and damaged radar infrastructure, communication centres, and airfields across 11 airbases in Pakistan. After this, on May 10, an understanding regarding the cessation of hostilities between India and Pakistan was announced. (ANI)
The Print
2 days ago
- The Print
From Brutus to hero—How former Sikkim CM Dorjee's image changed in state's history
Sidhu was a well-connected IPS officer. He was the son-in-law of then Foreign Affairs Minister Swaran Singh under Indira Gandhi when he took up his posting in Gangtok in 1973 as the head of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). Sidhu noted that Gandhi's approach to foreign policy was quite different from that of her father, and by this time, Jawaharlal Nehru's key foreign policy and intelligence advisers, TN Kaul and BN Mullik, had given way to Kewal Singh and RN Kao, masters in the strategic game. But the most significant factor was the forceful personality of Indira Gandhi. In fact, Sidhu states clearly in the Preface that one of the reasons he wrote the book was to resurrect the reputation of Dorjee, who had led the movement for democracy in Sikkim. After spending years in political wilderness in Kalimpong ( where I met him both as SDO of Kalimpong and later as the CEO of Himul Milk Project), he received the Padma Vibhushan – India's second highest civilian award in 2002 and the Sikkim Ratan in 2004. If Datta Ray's book Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim had portrayed the Kazi Lhendup Dorjee as the ungrateful Brutus who betrayed the trust of the Chogyal to become the first Chief Minister of the new state, GBS Sidhu's book Sikkim: Dawn of Democracy reversed the stand. After India's decisive military victory of 1971, which changed the cartography of South Asia, she was determined to assert India's role as the dominant regional power. The UN recognition of Bhutan took her by surprise, and the foreign office got quite an earful as India was not consulted on this move. Sidhu highlights Chogyal's antipathy toward his Nepali subjects – whom he felt were outsiders, but by then they were 75 per cent of the population. The more he supported the claims of Bhutias and Lepchas as the first inhabitants of Sikkim, the greater was the anti-Chogyal feeling in the majority community. This was also the key point stressed by BS Das, in his book The Sikkim Saga (1984), the Administrator of Sikkim present along with Sidhu during the period of turmoil. According to Das, had the Chogyal accepted the peaceful transition to adult franchise with a Nepali majority assembly and accepted the position of a constitutional head with symbolic powers per the 1973 arrangements of Sikkim as an Associate state of India, the applecart might not have been rocked. However, Das also admits that there was a lack of ground-level coordination among the different agencies of the government of India. There's also Sikkim: Requiem for a Himalayan Kingdom by the Scotsman Andrew Duff (2015), who was trying to trace his grandfather's travel to the Sikkim Himalayas undertaken over a century ago. He had access to the weekly letters of the Scottish Headmistresses of the Paljor Namgyal Girls' school in Gangtok. Both Martha Hamilton and Isabel Ritchie had maintained their journal, and also wrote regularly to their family in Scotland. These letters and journal entries give a first-hand, contemporaneous account of the events in Gangtok from 1959 to 1975, including the fairytale marriage celebrations of the Chogyal with Hope Cooke. Of course, the perspective is largely that of the royal palace, as the missionaries were often invited to dine with the royal family and shared some of their confidences. However, to be fair to Duff, he also gives the viewpoint of the other dramatis personae, including Kazi Saheb, in his narrative. In Kolkata, at a literature festival in 2016, I spoke to Duff. The focus of the book is not political – but the major events do find a fair coverage in its pages. Also read: Sikkim's accession to India has 6 stories. And 3 strong-willed women India's 22nd state In 2021, Ambassador Preet Mohan Singh Malik, who had been posted in Sikkim in the late 1960s, penned his memoirs under the title Sikkim: A History of Intrigue and Alliance in 2021. He delves deep into history and has a keen interest in historical reasoning. Even before listing the contents, he quotes professor and former Ambassador of India to China KM Panikkar: 'But a nation can neglect geography only at its peril.' The thesis advanced in the book is that India under Nehru neglected 'geography'. But in hindsight, Panikkar too can be accused of giving a clean chit to the Chinese Communist Party's 'imperial ambitions' concerning the non-Han nationalities. In fact, Nehru's China policy was shaped, over and above the protestations of the Secretary General of the foreign office, Girja Shankar Bajpai, by the dispatches from Panikkar, who was, in many ways, a fellow traveller. The 18 chapters are divided into three parts: Britain, Tibet and Sikkim; Britain and its perfidious dealings with Tibet; and India, Tibet, and Sikkim. Malik combines insights into the erstwhile kingdom's unique history with the intriguing story of how Sikkim became India's 22nd state. He examines the often-fraught relationship between the Lepchas (Rongpas) — its original inhabitants — and the Bhutias, people of Tibetan origin who established institutions of religion and governance, and founded the Namgyal dynasty that ruled Sikkim until it became a part of the Indian Union. He also traces the clash of both with the Nepali settlers who would eventually form the majority. Last, but not least, let us look at a book written by Biraj Adhikari, an insider: Sikkim: The Wounds of History (2010). As his name suggests, Adhikari is a Sikkimese of Nepali origin. He was a school-going teenager when he had to learn a new national anthem and salute a new flag. He writes about the dilemma of talking about the 'merger' in public, while calling it an 'annexation' in private conversation. Adhikari is not an apologist for the Chogyal either – he points out that for all his pretensions of sovereignty, the Chogyal always held an Indian passport. Adhikari blames the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi for describing the 1956 Chogyal trip to New Delhi as a 'state visit', and playing the Sikkim National Anthem on his ceremonial arrival. His book talks about the multiple dilemmas faced by his generation. Are Sikkimese full-fledged Indians, especially in the context of 371 F? Well, even though Sikkimese have all the privileges of Indian citizenship, what about Indians living in Sikkim? They are denied several privileges reserved for Sikkim state subjects—preferential access to education, employment and land rights and exemption from the payment of income tax. As Sikkim grows at a double-digit pace, it would certainly attract many more non-Sikkimese Indians, and a demographic change of a magnitude similar to the one in the latter half of the 19th century may be in the offing. And if demography is indeed destiny, then those currently enjoying the privileges of being Sikkim state subjects may resist the extension of similar rights to the rest of their countrymen. Adhikari tried his hand in the democratic polity of Sikkim—but was always second in the hustings. However, he was always an influential voice in Sikkim poetics – having been associated with Sikkim National Congress, Sikkim National Peoples Party, and Hamro Sikkim. But he hopes for a closure to the apprehensions which many people in this state, with a fragile demography, are legitimately concerned with. One hopes that this extended essay gives us an insight not just into the facts of the case, but also about the multiple perspectives that shape our understanding of the events in the past. History, as they say, is always in the making. Sanjeev Chopra is a former IAS officer and Festival Director of Valley of Words. Until recently, he was director, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. He tweets @ChopraSanjeev. Views are personal. (Edited by Ratan Priya)
