This is a biography, telling the true and remarkable life story of Ajit Kumar Doval — India's fifth and longest-serving National Security Advisor, its most celebrated intelligence officer, and one of the most extraordinary patriots in the history of independent India. Written in twenty chapters across six thematic parts, the book follows Doval from his childhood in the mountain village of Ghiri Banelsyun in Uttarakhand, through his education at Ajmer Military School and Agra University, his entry into the Indian Police Service and subsequently the Intelligence Bureau, and across five decades of undercover missions, diplomatic negotiations, counter-insurgency operations, and high-level national security work that has shaped India's strategic posture and protected its people through some of the most challenging periods of the nation's post-independence history.
The book covers the full arc of his career — his five years undercover in Mizoram, his role in Sikkim's peaceful integration with India, his seven extraordinary years operating in Pakistan, his infiltration of the Golden Temple during Operation Black Thunder for which he received the Kirti Chakra as the first police officer ever to do so, his decade-long engagement with the Punjab insurgency, his involvement in all fifteen Indian Airlines hijackings including the IC-814 crisis in Kandahar, his retirement years building the Rashtriya Raksha University and the Vivekananda International Foundation, and his three terms as National Security Advisor during which he oversaw Operation Hot Pursuit in Myanmar, the resolution of the Doklam standoff with China, the Balakot airstrikes following the Pulwama attack, and Operation Sindoor in 2025. The book concludes with an exploration of the cultural legacy of Doval's life — including his depiction by Paresh Rawal in Uri: The Surgical Strike, the character of Ajay Sanyal played by R. Madhavan in Dhurandhar and its sequel, and the Epic TV series Adrishya — before ending with a reflective final chapter on the life lessons his story offers to every young Indian reader.
Written in a warm, engaging, prose style that is remains genuinely compelling for all age readers. This is a book that educates, inspires, and challenges its young audience to think seriously and personally about what it means to love one's country and to serve it with everything one has.
