Military Digest: How Indian Army’s Intelligence Corps was born in backdrop of a possible …

Contrary to the assumption within certain quarters of the Intelligence Corps, the corps was not conceived as Corps of Guides in 1846. It was, in fact, raised as a nucleus of an Intelligence Corps, which was to be a part of the Corps of Guides with April 1, 1906, as the date of raising.

Archival documents accessed by The Indian Express show that a proposal for the formation of a nucleus of Intelligence Corps in India was formally made by the officiating Adjutant General (AG) Maj Gen A A Pearson on September 26, 1904, in Simla on directions of Field Marshal Kitchener, the Commander-in-Chief of Indian Army.

“His Excellency the Commander-in-Chief has recently had under consideration the existing system under which (1) the collection of intelligence is carried on in time of peace, and (2) the measures which ought to be adopted in order to amplify it in time of war, and has come to the conclusion that the first is very defective, and that the second are practically not existent. I am therefore directed by His Excellency to submit this question for the careful consideration of the Government of India,” the proposal by Maj Gen Pearson reads.

The existing Intelligence Branch had been built up piecemeal from what, prior to 1881, was a small Topographical Section of the Quarter Master General’s Department. From 1881 onwards, the staff was increased periodically to enable it to compete with the increase in routine work, and the branch was reorganised in 1892.

The AG’s proposal noted that the Branch has had to rely on such information afforded by the Foreign Department for trans-frontier intelligence, resulting in the compilation by many hands of disconnected scraps of information, mostly of a political nature, which eventually, perhaps, saw the light as somewhat heavy, disjointed, and indigestible Intelligence Branch publications.

“The passive character of the Intelligence Branch has therefore proved particularly baneful in many respects and has practically left the collection of all information, civil and military, in the hands of the Political officers,” the AG said.

He added that with all planning at Army HQs being done related to a possible war with Russia, it is probable that the policy of leaving intelligence work so largely in civilian hands might very well prove disastrous.

“His Excellency strongly recommends that the nucleus of an intelligence corps consisting as a beginning of— one British officer, one Native officer, five Native non-commissioned officers-to be sanctioned from 1st April 1905,” the proposal reads.

“This nucleus would be attached to the Corps of Guides, the officer commanding which corps would be instructed to enlist specially, as vacancies occurred, not less than 30 men of trans-border races, such as Ghilzais, Tajiks, Persians, Turkomans, Usbegs, and natives of Bokhara, Badakhshan, and Afghan-Turkestan. These men would be thoroughly trained for one year, and, on 1st April 1906, would, with the sanction of Government, become supernumerary in the corps and employed on extended reconnaissance and secret service duties,” the AG said.

Intelligence Corps in later years

The Indian Intelligence Corps, for practical purposes, came into being in 1942, when Lieutenant-Colonel J C de Vine took over the Indian Wing of the Intelligence School as Commandant, Indian Intelligence Corps and Chief Instructor FS Wing. This expanded into the Indian Intelligence Corps Depot.

Lieutenant-Colonel A A Mains of the 9th Gurkha Rifles, who served in the pre-partition Indian Intelligence Corps, has written extensively about how the corps came to be organised or reorganised.

In the immediate period before World War 2 there were no Intelligence units or personnel in India other than Staff Officers at Army HQ and Battalion Intelligence Officers. Intelligence in Army HQ was the responsibility of a combined ‘Directorate of Operations and Intelligence’, under a Brigadier as Director.

The total staff consisted of a Deputy Director, one General Staff Officer (GSO) I, seven GSO 2s, eleven GSO 3s, one attached officer and two Interpreter Officers. There were no Intelligence Staff Officers in Command, District or Brigade HQs. Intelligence work was usually undertaken by the most junior GSO, who had invariably passed the Staff College, but who had had no specialised Intelligence training.

It was possible for District and Brigade Commanders to pull in extra officers as Attachés General Staff or Brigade Intelligence Officers, and this was usual in Frontier brigades. These officers were not graded Staff Officers but ‘Extra Regimentally Employed’ and received no extra staff pay.

Each infantry battalion or cavalry regiment had an intelligence section of some six Other Ranks under a Sergeant/Havildar. During exercises on the Frontier, a junior subaltern in British units or the Educational Jemadar (a regimental Viceroy’s Commissioned Officer), in Indian units, acted as unit Intelligence Officer.

The widespread anti-government agitation of the early 1930s led to the appointment of Military Intelligence Officers (MIOs) in the more sensitive areas. These were Army officers who had attended a Command Intelligence Course, seconded to the Civil Police, who gave them the police rank of Additional Superintendent: an officer with the police powers of a Superintendent but who was not in charge of a District. They carried out liaison between the Army and the Police and also acted as ‘Field Agents’ of the Intelligence Bureau.

There was no Intelligence School or other centralised training agency. In 1941 the Operations and Intelligence Directorate in Army HQ was reorganised into two separate Directorates. The first Director of Military Intelligence was Major-General W L Cawthorne, a post which he occupied until nearly the end of British rule.

The Indian Intelligence School was finally opened at Karachi in January 1941 with three Instructors-Major J Campbell, RIASC, Commandant and Instructor Class B, and Captain Majumdar, 16th Light Cavalry, and Capt Mains, 9th Gurkha Rifles, as Instructors Class C.