2025/07/29 by Andrew Muldoon · 2 voices
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics #South Asian Studies and Conflicts #Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
paper · doi:10.1093/dh/dhaf052
openalex publication_date 2025/07/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Paul McGarr opens his work with a reference from John le Carré’s Smiley’s People, recounting the brief meeting between George Smiley and his Soviet counterpart, Karla, in a sweltering Indian jail. As McGarr ably demonstrates, the Anglo-American intelligence world certainly had an interest in South Asia, though, like the Smiley episode, this attention did not translate into definite results most of the time, nor did either participant feel comfortable at home in India. The encounter between Smiley and Karla in India in the 1950s does underline the fact that both British and US intelligence operatives and planners saw post-independence India as a fertile ground for carrying out Cold War propaganda and provocations (the Soviet services agreed). As McGarr notes, these activities did not take place in a vacuum, but instead in an India striving both to establish itself as a non-aligned power, and to protect itself from regional rivals like Pakistan and China. From Jawaharlal Nehru on, Indian politicians seemed willing to publicly condemn any neo-imperial Western attempts to influence India, but at the same time, they relied on these intelligence services to provide vital information. At one point in 1974 the Indian government was simultaneously trying to expel US citizens accused of espionage, and inquiring behind closed doors if the CIA director might visit New Delhi to forge a closer relationship between his and the Indian intelligence service. India was hardly the first, or only, post-colonial state to grapple with, and improvise on, its relations with former colonial rulers to access resources without publicly compromising themselves.