DHARAMSHALA: Dr. Ajit Kumar Doval was appointed as the new National Security Advisor (NSA) of India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. He was appointed as the NSA to PM on 30 May 2014. He was formerly the Director of Intelligence Bureau (IB) and played various important roles during his highly acclaimed career as an intelligence officer.
Dr. Doval has spent the last several years, after retiring from his intelligence career, as the director of the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), a right-wing think tank. Since then, he has written extensively on India’s security challenges and foreign policy, as well as on the Tibetan refugee community and the Tibetan political situation.
He has also written an article on his blog about the historic devolution of political authority by His Holiness the Dalai Lama towards an elected Tibetan leadership led by Sikyong Dr. Lobsang Sangay in 2011. He has expressed hope and admiration at His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s decision to devolve political power to the younger generation, lauding it as pragmatic and democratic.
“The Dalai Lama’s divestment of power in favour of the Kalon Tripa is viewed pragmatically, enabling the Tibetan cause not to become co-terminus with his life span. With the realisation that it may be a long struggle, this act has transformed the Tibetan issue into a people’s movement and left it to the common Tibetans and their elected representatives to carry it forward.”
“In Lobsang Sangay, the new Kalon Tripa, he has found a leader who is young, articulate, well educated with international linkages and acceptable to the younger generation. His leadership qualities inspire hope and confidence among struggling Tibetans. Finally, the numbers of Tibetans in exile may not be large but they can be powerful catalyst of a change in Tibet,” he wrote.
As Director of the Vivekananda International Foundation, he has also hosted Sikyong Dr. Lobsang Sangay at an informal interaction on ‘Tibet: Assessment of Recent Developments’ in June 2011, complimenting him on his election to the highest office of Tibetan polity.
Doval played key role in major operations in India, including anti-insurgency operations in Mizoram, Punjab and Kashmir; chief negotiator with the hijackers of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in Kandahar in 1999; rescue of Romanian diplomat Liviu Radu and Operation Black Thunder in Punjab in 1989.
