The ‘Research and Analysis Wing’ (R&AW) was established on September 21, 1968.
R&AW is more than 50 year old agency and is the Foreign Intelligence Agency of India, which was established after the Intelligence failure of Sino-India War. RAW’s motto is ‘धर्मो रक्षति रक्षित:’, which basically translates in English as ‘he who does not observe Dharma is destroyed, while he who follows it, is meticulously protected’. In this context, Dharma stands for the nation i.e. India.
The first Director of R&AW was ‘Rameshwar Nath Kao’ and has served the tenure of 9 years. In this phase, the National Agency became the part of Global Intelligence Community. Initially, the agency was formed to focus only of Pakistan and China, however, with passing time India spread its hand as the global agency. The main purpose of forming the agency was to gather the information’s from other countries which could harm India like in counter-terrorism, promoting counter-proliferation, promoting India’s foreign strategic interests, and advising Indian Policymakers.
During the initial phase, the organization was formed with only 250 people and an expense of about $400,000. But with passing time the agency evolved a lot and now its staffing and budget have been kept secret. Indian agency R&AW directly reports to the Prime Minister instead of the Ministry of Defence. Initially, R&AW used to hire its candidates for Intelligence Bureau, Indian Police Service, and Indian Military or Revenue Departments. But now, the recruitment process becomes a lot simpler than earlier it used to.
R&AW is not liable to answer or inform to the Parliament of India on any issue at any time. This keeps the department out of the reach of the Right to Information Act (RTI). The headquarter of the reputed agency is in New Delhi, and the current chief is “Samant Goel” an IPS officer of 1984 batch. R&AW is considered as one of the primary instrument of India’s National Power. Almost all the activities and functions of R&AW are highly classified and confidential unlike other International agencies CIA, MI6, and others who have many of their activities declassified.
