Book Review (Non-Fiction) The Indian Spy

THE INDIAN SPY

Mihir Bose

Aleph Books 2017                                                                                                       350 Pages

In the course of their clandestine activities, the attitude of spies towards their ostensible masters can evolve towards antagonism. However, the late Bhagat Ram Talwar code-named Silver, the protagonist of The Indian Spy, started off working AGAINST British interests before working for them.  But then, the only quintuple secret agent of World War 2, Agent Silver also “worked” for Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and the USSR...

After a successful track record of feeding disinformation to the Axis powers at the behest of his Soviet masters, Silver was offered to the British as an asset in place. Scarcely able to believe such a valuable gift, the Raj made full use of his talents.  He was rewarded for broadcasting fictitious military information thrice daily from the Viceroy's palace in New Delhi with a nice residence and paid holidays.

No James Bond manqué (though his wartime handler was one Peter Fleming, older brother of 007 creator Ian), short and lean Silver’s rather nondescript appearance masked a shrewd, resourceful, opportunistic and quick-witted operator, besides a protean master of disguise. The author’s commitment to journalistic veracity often clashes with unreliable accounts from the manipulative master dissembler himself – but such is the nature of a successful spy.

Defying the Gunga Din stereotype of unquestioning servility towards our late colonial overlords, Agent Silver began his career in espionage as a radical nationalist dedicated to clandestine subversion of the British Raj. Departing further from stereotype, though of Punjabi-Pathan stock, he was a Hindu, the son of a respected wealthy landowner, Gurdasmal, who despite the honours he received from the British had no love for the Raj. The execution of his adored elder brother Hari Kishan for accidentally killing a policeman during an assassination attempt against the British Governor of Punjab helped push the young Silver towards membership of the anti-imperial fringe communist Kirti party.

Silver’s first major coup was in successfully conveying the fugitive Subhash Chandra Bose from house arrest in wartime Kolkata to Kabul in neutral Afghanistan. His fluency in Urdu and Pashto enabled him to masquerade convincingly as Rahmat Khan, a supposedly Afghan cook, courier and guide. This proved to be but the first of 24 spying missions that shuttled between Peshawar and Kabul, with the slippery Silver eluding capture and certain death in the lawless tribal badlands between British India and Afghanistan.

Mihir Bose’s fascinating book lucidly recounts the murky exploits of a real-life Kim who operated in a very fraught wartime environment well beyond the imaginings of even Rudyard Kipling. As a serious work of popular history, The Indian Spy constitutes a necessary antidote to the rose-tinted view of empire peddled by the likes of Niall Ferguson and Lawrence James. 

No uncritical admirer of the British Raj, the author shows how political circumstances often make for strange bedfellows – and how an Indian communist significantly helped a fading empire he initially opposed against the Axis powers, under orders from Moscow.