A spy called ' Silver '

 

Bhagat Ram Talwar, code named Silver, spied for Britain, Germany, Russia, Japan, and Italy for five years during World War II. His story is chronicled in the book, Silver: The Spy Who Fooled the Nazis, by Mihir Bose. Based in Kabul, Talwar had transmitting machines in his house that directly linked him to German officials in Berlin, raking in money from several countries and fooling all of them.

 

Peter Fleming, the brother of Ian Fleming who worked for British military intelligence, hired Talwar, unaware he’d hired a master of deception. Based in Delhi, Fleming ran double agents against the Axis powers. In this position, he “handled” Talwar, who called himself Rahmat Khan. From the landed gentry of what was then the North West Frontier of India, Talwar’s real interest lay in independence for India. This would have been clear to the authorities in London had they checked his background: Britain had hanged Talwar’s brother for his part in the death of a policeman during an assassination attempt on the governor of Punjab in 1931. Talwar had left school with only a basic education and, unlike most middle-class Indians, spoke broken English. He was a prominent member of an organization called Kriti Kishan, the communist movement in India.

 

He frequently journeyed to Afghanistan by foot through the Khyber Pass, an often hostile route. Fleming fretted for his safety, once begging him not to go because of the presence of a man who may have blown his cover. But Silver went, befriended the man, and invited him for dinner in Kabul. He later told Fleming that he served a curry mixed with tiger’s whiskers, which caused his dinner guest internal bleeding. “It was the last meal he ever ate,” Talwar remarked.

 

Though the class differences between Talwar and his handler were immense, the two men shared a love of deception and got on well. But Talwar beat Fleming in the game, hiding his loyalty to the Kriti Kishan, to which he sent much of the money he’d earned from foreign employers.

 

​Talwar executed a coup against the Raj, smuggling Subhas Chandra Bose, the wanted nationalist leader, out of India. The original plan was for him to get to Moscow, but, when that failed, Silver got him to Berlin, where he met Hitler and other German officials. Bose eventually entered Japan, raised an army from captured Indian prisoners of war to fight the British, and then died in an airplane crash.

 

After the war, India gained independence and Britain divided the subcontinent before leaving. In the factional violence that followed, Talwar and his Hindu family had to flee to India from newly created Muslim Pakistan.

 

In 1948, Talwar disappeared from public life. He appeared 25 years later at an international seminar on Subhas Chandra Bose in Calcutta, dapper in a suit, where he chatted with a German Abwehr agent he had sparred with and hoodwinked in Kabul.

 

Little has been written about the espionage and other military achievements of colonial subjects, performed often at great risk to themselves. This book provides some recognition of the achievements of these men and women.