How Ajit Doval failed as the national security advisor

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Editor's note: Who is the second most powerful figure in the Indian government? If you answered Amit Shah, you are wrong. That position belongs to Ajit Doval, India’s national security advisor. In the hierarchy of the Indian state, the office of the NSA, inaugurated in the 1990s, has evolved into an institution that is second only in stature to the Prime Minister’s Office. Within its relatively short history, Doval—who was granted a second successive term with a promotion to the cabinet by the prime minister three years ago—has consolidated himself as the most predominant bureaucrat in India’s republican history. What sets Doval apart is not only his influence but also his fame: in the annals of Indian officialdom, he is the first celebrity. More than a celebrity, actually: trailed by groupies, fawned over by Delhi hacks and memorialized in memes, Doval is closer to a head of a personality cult. And his biography, as detailed by members of the cult, is a fabulous chronicle of impossibly intrepid bravado. There he is, at the beginning of the 1980s, going for a stroll inside …