ABSTRACT
The fate of India was a constant preoccupation both for the Comintern plotters in Moscow, Berlin and London, and for their adversaries in Whitehall and Delhi. Several of the senior figures in the British intelligence establishment had cut their teeth in countering subversion in India, including Sir David Petrie, the Director of the Intelligence Bureau from 1924 to 1931, and the author of a secret report, Communism in India 1924—1927, who was later to be appointed Director-General of MI5 from 1940 to 1946. One of his subordinates, Felix Cowgill, updated the document in 1935 for Petrie's successor, Sir Horace Williamson, and later was posted back to England to SIS's counterintelligence branch, Section V then headed by Valentine Vivian, who himself had retired from the Indian Police in 1925 after nineteen years of experience.
