The Walk to Kabul, January 1941
The Kirti Kisan man who walked Subhas Chandra Bose out of India in January 1941, and then worked for five intelligence services at once
In January 1941 Bhagat Ram Talwar guided Subhas Chandra Bose on foot from Peshawar across the North West Frontier to Kabul, with Bose disguised as a deaf and mute Pathan. He then stayed in Kabul and spent four years as an agent, codenamed Silver, handling German, Italian, Soviet, Japanese and finally British intelligence at the same time. The record shows what he did and leaves open why, and this lesson keeps that question open rather than closing it.
Four Men Leaving Peshawar
It is the middle of January 1941, somewhere on the road out of Peshawar towards the Khyber Pass. The nights are cold enough to crack the skin on a man's hands. Four men are walking west into tribal territory on the North West Frontier, and one of them is not what he looks like.
He is dressed as a deaf and mute Pathan. He says nothing, because he cannot risk his accent. His companion does the talking for him, and tells anyone who asks that the silent man is his cousin, travelling for a cure.
The silent man is Subhas Chandra Bose. Eight days ago he was in his own house at 38/2 Elgin Road in Calcutta, under police watch. He is the most closely followed Indian in the country, and every police station between Calcutta and the frontier has his photograph.
The man doing the talking is a young party worker from Ghalla Dher village in the Mardan district. His name is Bhagat Ram Talwar. He is a member of the Kirti Kisan Party, a communist peasant and workers' party in Punjab, and he has never met Bose before this journey. He has been handed the most dangerous cargo in India and told to get it across a frontier he knows and Bose does not.
He gets him there. What he does for the next four years is harder to hold in your head than the walk, and it is the reason this lesson exists.
Why Him
Bhagat Ram Talwar was born at Ghalla Dher, near Mardan in what is now Pakistan, early in the twentieth century. He was in his twenties when he made the Kabul walk. He grew up in a family that was already in the fight. His elder brother Hari Kishan Talwar shot at the Governor of Punjab, Sir Geoffrey de Montmorency, at a convocation at Punjab University in Lahore in December 1930. The Governor was wounded. A police officer was killed. Hari Kishan was hanged at Mianwali jail in June 1931.