BOOK REVIEW: OUR KIND
OF GAMES BY A. S. DULAT
In the world of intelligence, information is power, trust is
provisional, and what remains unsaid may matter more than what is revealed. A.
S. Dulat’s ‘Our Kind of Games'
invites readers into this elusive world, where political calculations, personal
relationships and competing loyalties intersect in the troubled landscape of
Kashmir. Written by a former head of R&AW, the book draws its appeal from
the author’s proximity to events and his familiarity with the people who
inhabit the shadowy space between official policy and covert engagement.
A.S. Dulat served as the head
of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), India’s spy agency, under Prime
Minister A.B. Vajpayee. He later joined Vajpayee’s Prime Minister’s Office
(PMO), where his job was to ‘monitor, manage, and direct’ the government of India’s
peace initiative in Kashmir.
Dulat writes with the
ease of a seasoned raconteur, turning recollections and conversations into an
accessible narrative. Yet the book raises a question beyond the fascination of
its subject: how much can an insider’s memoir reveal about a world built on
secrecy, and how much of what it reveals will remain significant once the
stories have been told? The foreword by Dr Farooq Abdullah deserves particular
mention for its lucidity, clarity and convincing presentation. Written in a
direct and accessible style, it provides an effective introduction to the
political and human complexities surrounding Kashmir. Abdullah’s foreword complements
Dulat’s narrative by establishing a context for the recollections that follow.
One of the book’s principal strengths is its narrative style.
Dulat writes in a conversational, unpretentious manner, making a specialised
and frequently secretive subject accessible to the general reader. He relies on
dialogue, anecdote and personal recollection rather than elaborate explanations
of intelligence procedures. The result is a narrative that moves with
considerable ease. His professional experience lends authority to many of his
observations, while his willingness to recount personal encounters gives the
book a human dimension. His prose is not especially ornate, but it serves its
purpose: Dulat knows how to hold a reader’s attention without making the
subject unnecessarily forbidding.
The personalities who populate the narrative contribute to
its appeal. Ranjit Soni, a central intelligence officer in the account, is
joined by figures such as Avatar, Shahbaz, Dilshada, Jaanseb, Qureshi, Mrs Jain, Imran,
Major Ali and Rehana. Their interactions illuminate the complicated relationships
that emerge in an atmosphere of suspicion, political uncertainty and competing
interests. Dulat understands that intelligence work depends not only on
information and strategy but also on reading people, assessing motives and
recognising the limits of personal trust. These characters lend movement and
human interest to the narrative. Some, however, could have been developed
further as individuals. They serve their purpose within the unfolding account,
although not all acquire the psychological depth necessary to remain vividly in
the reader’s memory.
The book’s wider significance lies in its evocation of
Kashmir during the turbulent 1990s, when militancy, targeted killings,
political instability and widespread fear transformed the lives of ordinary people.
At that time, Dulat headed the Intelligence Bureau in Srinagar. Dulat’s
recollections of innocent people killed during this period bring back an
atmosphere of anguish and uncertainty that remains deeply embedded in Kashmir’s
collective memory. His descriptions can stir both nostalgia and pain: nostalgia
for the familiar world that existed before violence shattered everyday life,
and pain for the human losses, broken relationships and vanished certainties
that followed. Such nostalgia is never uncomplicated. For Kashmiri Pandits, in
particular, memories of the Valley are inseparable from the trauma of mass
displacement and the loss of their ancestral homes. Dulat’s account is most
affecting when it moves beyond the calculations of intelligence work to
acknowledge the human cost of political violence. These passages remind us that
behind the terminology of security, strategy and negotiation lie individual
lives, often irreparably damaged by events over which ordinary people have
little control.
Equally illuminating is Dulat’s conversation with an
illiterate Shikarawallah who recognises him. The encounter is striking in its
simplicity and human significance. It suggests that even in a profession defined
by secrecy, anonymity and carefully managed identities, individuals may be
remembered by people far removed from official institutions. It reminds a
reader that history is not experienced exclusively by political leaders,
policymakers or intelligence officers; it is also observed, remembered and
endured by ordinary people whose lives become entangled in larger events.
Nevertheless, Dulat’s account remains one perspective on a
complex historical period. An intelligence officer’s recollections can reveal aspects
of decision-making and personal interaction that formal histories may overlook,
but they cannot, by themselves, provide a comprehensive account of Kashmir’s
political history or adequately represent the varied experiences of its people.
The book is best read as an informed insider’s testimony, valuable for its
particular vantage point but necessarily selective in its coverage and
interpretation.
A more difficult question concerns the publication of
intelligence-related recollections. Memoirs by former intelligence officials
can serve the public interest by making institutions and their past activities
more intelligible. Yet such writing requires particular care. Hostile intelligence
agencies or organisations may attempt to connect names, incidents, note patterns
and relationships to draw conclusions about operational practices, vulnerabilities
or sources of information. This possibility does not establish that Dulat has
disclosed classified material or compromised any operation. It does, however,
underline the need for discretion. A former senior intelligence official has a
responsibility to consider not only the historical interest of an anecdote but
also the possible consequences of placing it in the public domain. The
challenge is to preserve the value of personal testimony without inadvertently
providing information that could be misused. This is a legitimate question
about professional responsibility, not a reason to dismiss intelligence memoirs
as a genre.
Another noticeable feature of the book is the recurring
presence of alcohol, particularly Old Monk rum. These references help establish
the informal atmosphere in which conversations take place and sometimes lend
the narrative a recognisable social texture. They suggest how professional
relationships may develop outside formal meetings and official settings.
Nevertheless, the frequency of such references occasionally draws attention
away from the more substantial issues under discussion. This is a reservation
about emphasis and composition rather than a judgement on the author’s personal
habits.
The principal limitation of ‘Our Kind of Games’ concerns its
lasting impact. Dulat is an engaging storyteller, and many of his recollections
hold the reader’s attention. Yet the immediacy of an anecdote does not always
translate into deeper reflection. The episodes invite questions about loyalty,
morality, political judgement and the human cost of conflict, but these
possibilities are not invariably explored in sufficient depth. Readers seeking
a sustained historical analysis or a searching examination of the ethical
dilemmas inherent in intelligence work may therefore find the book less
conclusive than its subject promises. Its strengths lie primarily in
recollection, observation and narrative accessibility rather than systematic
analysis.
This distinction matters because a book about intelligence
operations has the potential to do more than recount encounters and describe
personalities. It can examine the tension between national interest and
individual conscience, the limits of secrecy, the uncertain boundary between
negotiation and manipulation, and the consequences of decisions made with
incomplete information. Dulat’s professional experience gives him a vantage
point from which to explore such questions. At times, however, the narrative settles for telling the story rather than fully examining its wider
implications. The result is readable and informative, but not always as
intellectually probing as the subject might lead one to expect.
Dulat succeeds as a conversational narrator and an informed
witness, though less consistently as an interpreter of the larger historical
and moral questions surrounding his subject. The book should not be judged as a
comprehensive history of Kashmir or a systematic study of intelligence
operations; it does not set out to be either. Its achievement is more modest:
it brings readers closer to the people and informal networks behind a largely
hidden sphere of public life, while occasionally recovering the human anguish
that can disappear beneath the language of strategy and security. It holds the
reader’s attention and, in passages recalling the suffering of the 1990s,
evokes emotions that extend beyond the world of intelligence. Yet its insights
do not always linger after the final page. It is an engaging account of a
secretive world, with moments of genuine human poignancy, even if it does not
fully translate that access into lasting literary or intellectual
significance.
(Avtar Mota )
Based on a work at http://autarmota.blogspot.com\.
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