Spying in south Asia: Britain, the United States, and India's secret Cold War

In October 2024, the United States charged a former Indian intelligence officer with murder-for-hire and money laundering charges around a failed plot to kill a Sikh US national advocating for an independent Sikh state to be carved out of India. In this and other cases, the US, alongside Canada, drew attention to India's foreign intelligence work against Sikh dissidents, upsetting broader international relations and bringing intelligence to the fore of national debate. India's emergence as a significant economic and political player has led, among other things, to concerns about its intelligence activities. The message is that, in pursuing its aims, India's government sees the risks of ‘covert action’ in the affairs of neighbouring states and international partners as ‘acceptable’ (p. 13). As Paul McGarr argues in Spying in south Asia, the Cold War shaped India's modern-day use of intelligence. The role of secret intelligence in India's post-imperial history has been poorly understood and little studied. McGarr draws on a wealth of knowledge on the subject to document the British and US intelligence community's covert activities in post-colonial India, shedding light on the impact of the so-called hidden hand on India's political discourse and wider international relations. This way, the book makes a major contribution to Cold War history and to the broader understanding of intelligence liaison.

In the early Cold War, as the sun set on the British Raj in 1947, officials in Britain's security service (MI5) put considerable time and energy into developing a new post-colonial relationship with India. The United Kingdom's physical retreat from the subcontinent was not matched in the world of the secret services. Intelligence liaison was important to preserve British interests and MI5's new Security Liaison Officers faced pressure from the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6) on the nature of this new partnership. While London played a significant part in early Cold War relations with India, the US played an ever-increasing role thereafter. Crucially, India offered western spy agencies favourable conditions to establish contact with disaffected Soviet officials or to entice defections, causing upset to the Indian government.

The broader argument of McGarr's work is that western intelligence partnerships with India carried considerable benefits—but also risks. In public, India's new leaders were eager to play up their divergence from the colonial past, while maintaining cordial relations behind closed doors. Just as with any other international partnership, mutual interests drove liaison. Both India and the US saw communist China as something to be countered. India's geostrategic position and Sino-Indian tensions could be exploited for Washington's gain. Equally, US concerns about India's place in the Cold War could be exploited for self-interest. As useful as these links were, this covert partnership caused considerable embarrassment for some; Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's tirades against the imagined—though sometimes real—activities of the CIA encountered blowback when domestic newspapers pointed to the Indian government's long-established relationship with the agency. Awkward ‘prime ministerial amnesia’ set in (p. 189). More destabilizing was the real, largely inflated, involvement of US and UK officials in India's internal affairs, which was ‘misguided and self-defeating’ (p. 3). McGarr concludes that British and US activity in India was often ‘misdirected, maladroit, and counterproductive’ (p. 262). The activities of the CIA and other organizations, such as the UK's Information Research Department, forced a Soviet response that quickly achieved the opposite of what western officials had wanted and that exploited widespread domestic concerns. During elections in 1967, India's politicians eagerly competed to create the most outrageous anti-CIA lines to further their case. According to the US State Department, India had become the epicentre of widespread eastern bloc information activities towards the end of the Cold War. Soviet propaganda played up the CIA's influence over Indian politics and even the most sincere US officials could not overcome the all-pervasive view that the US meddled in India's internal affairs. The hidden hand of the US became, therefore, a ‘convenient scapegoat … for the country's ills’ (p. 255).

The conclusion is that, while India's links to US and UK spies had benefits, western involvement in India was often counterproductive. Ultimately, it amplified a culture of ‘conspiracism’ in India and facilitated the growth of Soviet influence in India, something that western intervention was trying to prevent (p. 265). While such conclusions may be challenged in future, McGarr has written a fascinating account of how India came to grips with western intelligence after it gained its independence, and how the secret Cold War struggle played out in New Delhi. This is a meticulously researched book that widens the focus of intelligence partnerships beyond the Anglosphere. While the world of spies is at the heart of the book, McGarr says much more about India's broader Cold War perspective. A highly recommended read.