Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:09:46.486Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Quiet Americans: The CIA and the Onset of the Cold War in South Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2024

Paul M. McGarr
Affiliation:
King's College London
Get access

Summary

During the first two decades following India’s independence, the CIA had a complex, and often conflicted relationship with the ruling Congress party and the Indian media. Despite public and private criticisms levelled at the Agency by Jawaharlal Nehru, a number of CIA covert operations in the subcontinent were undertaken with the full knowledge and support of India’s intelligence service and senior figures within the Congress Party: In Kerala, in the late 1950s, the CIA worked with the Congress Party to destabilise a democratically elected communist administration; following an abortive Tibetan uprising in 1959, India’s Intelligence Bureau chose to ‘look the other way’ as CIA aircraft transited through Indian airspace in support of Agency sponsored resistance operations in Chinese-controlled Tibet; and CIA operatives spirited the Dalai Lama out of Lhasa and into northern India. This chapter probes the genesis and evolution of the CIA’s relationship with India during the Agency’s so-called ‘golden age’ in the long 1950s, when a series of major US covert operations were conducted across the globe, in places such as the Congo, Guatemala, Iran, Indonesia, and Tibet.

Type
Chapter
Information
Spying in South Asia
Britain, the United States, and India's Secret Cold War
, pp. 76 - 99
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×