Siddhartha Thorat's Blog

Indian Action thrillers Some thoughts

I started out writing my first thriller, Operation Fox Hunt, to bring information about our security forces in a lucid entertaining manner to a wider audience. India lacks strategic culture. but strategic culture for a society is an acquired taste. Without information, and orientation, it cannot appear. So there was a space for those there.

Since my teens I have been fascinated by the action thrillers that originate in the USA. I always wondered why we didn’t have access to the repository about our armed forces and Secret services like readers from US or UK had to theirs. I wanted to read about action by men named Rajesh rather than Roy,- I wanted the stories to have the stories of our opponents and our friends not some far off countries, especially when the enemy in those books was the Soviet Union, our ally.

The Cold war and the earlier WW2 had created a huge curiosity for information about the secret services and how they worked. The exploits of OSS and British Secret services and their impact on the WW2 conflict also bought realization to the citizens about enormous effect of the secret services on conflicts and the impact they had on the conflict.

The Cold war also bought with it the intrigues associated with secret services. The lack of direct confrontation led to "secret operations" been given higher billing in press and public discourse. Many great heroes were created, and authors used this background to paint literary pictures. Popular fiction authors like Ken Follett , Jack Higgins, Leon Uris, Tom Clancy among many others came to fore. they entertained and informed.

The same was missed in India. One reason being the "mai-Baap Sarkar" attitude of successive governments while dealing with citizens. The other being the lack of transparency by government institutions and services. From the 1947 operations to the present situation in Ladakh, the governments have hidden truth from the citizens, and they are jittery to release the same lest it snowballs to present. So the BJP covers up Congress actions in 1962, IPKF or even the actions during various counter insurgencies and it’s the other way around with Congress for BJP times- Kargil or the Air India Hijack. The "army morale" is the fig leaf that covers all. The other part is the construct of our intelligence agencies, staffed and lead by IPS officers looking for cushy foreign postings or those shunted out of "powerful" roles in the State administration where money is to be made and political currency for power earned.

Even though the South Asian region has been at the center or fringes of the conflicts since last seventy-five years, materials that authors could use was limited. Now with social media and OSNIT communities, that is changing. There is a fresh canvas to write and think about. Additionally the advent of OTTs like Netflix and Amazon Prime are encouraging a new geners of stories that can be told. With audience having tastes beyond the Saas bahu and love stories gener. A new set of audience, who would want toe extend their new found intrests to other mediums is emerging

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My personal endeavor has been to use the medium of fiction thrillers to inform readers about our security services and those around us while entertaining them at same time. I believe that some may graduate from interest raised through the stories I write to more serious studies in strategy and international relations. This August, I was able to bring to market my second novel, same gener. >