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H.E. Vikram Kumar Doraiswami
H.E. Vikram Kumar Doraiswami joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1992. Prior to joining the Indian Government, he worked for one year as a journalist. He has a Masters’ Degree in History from the University of Delhi. After his in-service training in New Delhi from 1992-1993, Doraiswami was posted to the High Commission of India in Hong Kong in May 1994 as Third Secretary. He learnt Chinese, taking an elective diploma in that language at the New Asia Yale-in-Asia language school of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was posted to the Embassy of India in Beijing in September 1996 where he served for nearly four years. Upon returning to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in New Delhi in 2000, Doraiswami was appointed Deputy Chief of Protocol (Ceremonials). After two years he was seconded to the Prime Minister’s Office. He later served as Private Secretary to the Prime Minister of India. In 2006, he was posted to the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations in New York as Political Counsellor and in October 2009 he served as India's Consul General in Johannesburg, South Africa. In July 2011, Doraiswami returned to the MEA in New Delhi,l where he was Head of the Division for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). During this period, he was also Coordinator for the Fourth Summit meeting of BRICS in New Delhi in March 2012. From October 2012 to October 2014, Doraiswami was Joint Secretary of the Americas Division of the MEA. He became Ambassador of India to Uzbekistan in October 2014, before being assigned as India’s Ambassador to the Republic of Korea in April 2015. Upon completion of this assignment, he returned to Headquarters in July 2018, serving as Head of Division for Bangladesh and Myanmar. In April 2019, he was tasked with setting up a new Division at MEA for the Indo-Pacific. Following a promotion in December 2019, he was designated Additional Secretary responsible for International Organisarions and Summits.
Session
Operation X: The War that Changed the Indian Subcontinent
Sandeep Unnithan and Commodore AW Chowdhury in conversation with Commodore Srikant Kesnur and opening remarks by H.E. Vikram Kumar Doraiswami, The High Commissioner of India to Bangladesh
Commemorating the anniversary of the 1971 war between East and West Pakistan, Operation X written by Capt MNR Samant and Sandeep Unnithan is the untold story behind one of the world’s largest covert naval wars. Naval Commando Operations (X) was the Directorate of the Naval Intelligence’s code for a series of complicated guerrilla operations directed against the maritime jugular of the Pakistan Army in erstwhile East Pakistan. These innovative sabotage missions, executed with specially-trained East Bengali college students, were part of India’s assistance to the Mukti Bahini guerillas in the months preceding the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war , NCO(X) used the largest number of maritime saboteurs in the history of modern naval warfare to achieve its objectives. Author Sandeep Unnithan, Executive Editor of India Today, has also written the book Black Tornado: The Three Sieges of Mumbai 26/11. Commodore Abdul Wahed Chowdhury of the Bangladeshi Navy was the Chief of Operation Jackpot, one of the three operations undertaken by the Bengal Mukti Bahini along with the Indian government. In a conversation with naval historian Commodore Srikant Kesnur, they discuss the inner world of this conflict and its many intricacies.