A.S. Dulat

Amarjit Singh Dulat (A.S. Dulat) is a former head of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), India’s external intelligence agency. After retirement, he was appointed adviser on Kashmir in the Prime Minister’s Office and served there from January 2001 to May 2004. During this time, he accumulated a vast reservoir of goodwill with Kashmiris of all shades. As Jane’s Intelligence Digest put it in 2001, ‘Well known for his social skills, Dulat preferred dialogue to clandestine maneuver’s.’ In his heyday, Dulat was referred to as ‘Mr Kashmir’.

Dulat was born in Sialkot, Punjab, in December 1940. After India’s partition, his father Justice Shamsher Singh Dulat relocated his family to Delhi. After schooling in Delhi, Simla and Chandigarh, Dulat joined the Indian Police Service (IPS) in 1965, and then the Intelligence Bureau (IB) in 1969, where he served for almost thirty years. At the IB he headed the Kashmir Group during the turbulent 1990s till he joined and headed the R&AW.

He is the author of Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years (2015; co-authored with Aditya Sinha), The Spy Chronicles: R&AW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace (2018; co-authored with Lieutenant General Asad Durrani and Aditya Sinha), A Life in the Shadows (2022) and Covert (2024).

Praise for books by A.S. Dulat:

“Sometimes, books take on a life of their own because of the way they capture the zeitgeist or tap into a subject that is central to the lives of millions of people.” – Hindustan Times

“The book in the eye of a storm, The Spy Chronicles has created sharp divisions in the ranks of stakeholders in the subcontinent.” – Sushant Singh at The Indian Express

“The conversations between the two professionals are packed with significant details and rare nuggets of insight into the operations of both clandestine agencies. It is a revealing look into the internal politics of both the RAW and the ISI, but also how the two agencies view each other.” – Deepali Pant Joshi at Financial Express Leisure