South Asia and Beyond

Rashtriya Rifles: India’s Bulwark Against Insurgency

Nitin A. Gokhale
May 9, 2020
1
1 minute read

NEW DELHI: It’s been at the heart of India’s counter-insurgency/counter-terrorism operations for three decades now. Rashtriya Rifles, which draws troops from different branches of the army, has been carrying out operations against terrorists in close coordination with the J&K police and the paramilitary. It has a strong intelligence network across the Kashmir Valley and is embedded in its rural hinterland. Troops of the Rashtriya Rifles have been leading from the front against the proxy war launched by Pakistan. Last week in an anti-terrorist operation in J&K’s Handwara, five security personnel laid down their lives. They included four personnel of 21 Rashtriya Rifles and a police officer. In this episode of Simply Nitin, StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale describes the circumstances under which the Rashtriya Rifles was formed and why it’s unique.

Nitin A. Gokhale

Author, thought leader and one of South Asia's leading strategic analysts, Nitin A. Gokhale has forty years of rich and varied experience behind him as a conflict reporter, Editor, author and now a media entrepreneur who owns and curates two important digital platforms, BharatShakti.in and StratNewsGlobal.com focusing on national security, strategic affairs and foreign policy matters. At the beginning of his long and distinguished career, Gokhale has lived and reported from India’s North-east for 23 years, writing and analysing various insurgencies in the region, been on the ground at Kargil in the summer of 1999 during the India-Pakistan war, and also brought live reports from Sri Lanka’s Eelam War IV between 2006-2009. Author of over a dozen books on wars, insurgencies and conflicts, Gokhale relocated to Delhi in 2006, was Security and Strategic Affairs Editor at NDTV, a leading Indian broadcaster for nine years, before launching in 2015 his own digital properties. An alumni of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii, Gokhale now writes, lectures and analyses security and strategic matters in Indo-Pacific and travels regularly to US, Europe, South and South-East Asia to speak at various international seminars and conferences. Gokhale also teaches at India’s Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), the three war colleges, India's National Defence College, College of Defence Management and the intelligence schools of both the R&AW and Intelligence Bureau. He tweets at @nitingokhale

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1 Comment

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L Vishwanathan says:
May 23, 2020 at 9:04 pm

Thank you so much. Very informative indeed. I have a suggestion please. Maybe some more time could be given towards explaining the topography/ map of the place under discussion. Though, the topography has surely been explained in a simplistic manner, some more time could be given for orienting the listener to the map. Once again my compliments on a very absorbing coverage of an issue that comes to haunt us as a nation time and again with no end in sight.