The National Identity XXV: Doval Durbar

Inside the offices of India’s most powerful ever bureaucrat

Durbar — /ˈdəːbɑː/

noun

• the court of an Indian ruler
• a public reception held by an Indian prince or a British governor or viceroy in India

The Delhi Durbar of 1911 — attended by the Sovereign, George V, himself. This points to the importance of India, the jewel in the British Empire. Calcutta was replaced by Delhi as India’s capital at this Durbar (Image is more than a 100 years old, no copyright infringment)

Since I penned this — Ajit Doval has been elevated to Cabinet rank in June 2019 (from a Minister of State rank) on par with members of the Cabinet Committee on Security; further validation of his standing and ‘zero-doubt’ policies. The office of a Chief of Defence Staff has been created and Article 370 was revoked from Kashmir on August 5, 2019.

1 | Inept Politicians

Ajit Doval is a name almost every Indian has familiarised herself with. If not in the most recent context of reforms to the formerly defunct, but now revived, Strategic Policy Group, then most definitely when he was appointed National Security Adviser in 2014. The recent reforms to the Strategic Policy Group, the SPG, place Ajit Doval, as NSA, as its chairperson. The move, in itself, is innocuous since the SPG has existed for over 20 years but its ramifications are wide. The SPG includes the Chiefs of Staffs of the three Armed Forces, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and a handful of other powerful bureaucrats among…