How Ajit Doval Turned ‘Demonetization’ Into A ‘National Security Weapon’

• Why would a seasoned spymaster choose to wait instead of acting?
• Why would a man who has walked into terrorist dens alone decide that silence is the safest option?
• What kind of regime makes truth itself a liability?
• And why do the loudest critics of demonetization never talk about what it did to Pakistan’s fake currency war against India?

Most importantly — who really suffered when the racket was finally choked: the common man for a few weeks, or an ecosystem that thrived for decades?

The Counterfeit War India Never Saw

For most Indians, fake currency was a headline, a nuisance, an abstract “problem.” For the security establishment, it was something else entirely: a slow, silent economic attack. Not a neighborhood xerox shop printing bad quality duplicates. Not shady basements with crude scanners. This was industrial-grade counterfeiting.

High-quality fake Indian currency notes — so close to the original that even machines struggled to detect them — were being pumped into India through porous borders, hawala channels, and terror networks.

The scale ran into multi-crore operations. The objective was not just profit. It was destabilization. Every note that slipped into circulation:

• Fuelled terror logistics and recruitment.
• Greased corruption and black money circuits.
• Quietly weakened trust in the Indian rupee itself. 

But then came the shocker. This was not just Pakistan’s ingenuity. This was India’s betrayal.

The Ultimate Betrayal: When Power Sold the Plates

Somewhere in the corridors of power, far away from borders and bunkers, a deal had been struck. Not in Karachi. Not in Dubai. Inside India. The allegation within intelligence circles was chilling:

Original Indian currency printing plates — the holy grail of any counterfeit operation — had been compromised.

Not stolen from a warehouse. Not hacked from a system. But allegedly sold. Sold from the inside. Sold with access. Sold with authority. And not by a small cog in the machine — but by a senior minister in power.

Think about what that means for a moment. You are not just fighting an enemy across the border. You are fighting a betrayal sitting at the very heart of your own system.

Now imagine you are Ajit Doval.

You know what is happening. You know how deep it runs. You know who all are indirectly protected by that minister and that political ecosystem. You also know that if you act under that regime, it is not just your job at stake. It is your entire ability to fight future battles. So, he said one line that summed up both frustration and foresight:

“Kabhi koi sarkar aayegi jisko desh ki chinta hogi… tab kuch karenge.”

Someday a government will come that truly worries about the nation… then we will act.

This was not cowardice. This was strategic patience.

Strategic Silence: When Waiting Is Also Warfare

Chanakya never struck blindly. He waited for the right king, the right moment, the right climate. Only then did he unleash his full strategy. Doval’s silence was in that same tradition. Because under a government that is compromised, three things happen if you act:

• The truth is buried.
• The whistleblower is sacrificed.
• The network becomes even smarter and more secretive. 

So, the operation shifted from “strike now” to “wait for a government that will back the strike.”

Years passed. Fake notes kept moving. Terror modules kept receiving funding. Black money and hawala agents remained well-fed. And somewhere across the border, Pakistan smirked. Their attack on India was running on Indian-designed plates. Then, the political weather changed.

2014: When the Board Reset

In 2014, a new government came to power with a clear mandate and a nationalist plank.

You may agree with them. You may disagree with them. But one thing is undeniable: they were not obliged to protect the old network. This matters more than people realize. Because you cannot dismantle a nexus that the ruling ecosystem itself depends on. Now, for the first time in years:

• There was political will to take a hit for the country.
• There was appetite for disruptive decisions.
• There was alignment between the security apparatus and political leadership. 

The stage was set.

All that was needed was a move that would:

• Break the supply chain of fake notes.
• Render stockpiled counterfeit currency useless overnight.
• Cripple terror funding without crossing the border. 

That move came in November 2016.

2016: Demonetization as a National Security Strike

Most people debated demonetization as an economic move. GDP. Cash crunch. Long queues. Liquidity. Informal sector. All of that is real. All of that is valid to debate. But that is only half the story. The other half lies in the underworld — where economic models are handwritten in hawala diaries, not Excel sheets.

On that November night, when Rs.500 and Rs.1,000 notes were declared invalid:

• Fake currency warehouses turned into garbage overnight.
• Stockpiled high-quality counterfeit notes — print-perfect, border-smuggled, Pakistan-enabled — became colourful scrap.
• Terror outfits that relied on fake notes suddenly found themselves choking for liquidity.
• Hawala kingpins who operated on trust plus cash suddenly had “trust” but no “cash.”
• Networks that had built an entire parallel economy on counterfeit notes saw years of “inventory” vanish in a single announcement.

This was not just about black money lying under mattresses. This was about a war chest going up in smoke. A war chest that funded:

• Arms procurement
• Recruitment
• Safe houses
• Bribes and local support networks 

And here is the beauty of the move from a security standpoint:

• You did not need to bomb any camp.
• You did not need to cross any border.
• You did not need to expose any undercover assets. 

You simply changed the rules of the game inside your own currency system.

“What About the Inconvenience?” — The Convenient Blindness

Yes, there were queues. Yes, there was discomfort. Yes, daily life was disrupted. But here is the uncomfortable counter-question:

Those who scream “inconvenience” the loudest — why are they so silent about:

• Who allegedly sold the plates in the first place?
• Which political ecosystem allowed this racket to run for years?
• Who looked away when fake notes were being pumped in as a weapon, not just as a scam?
• Who got rich while Pakistan experimented on India’s economy with India’s own tools? 

It is easy to sympathize with a farmer standing in a queue. It is necessary to. But it is intellectually dishonest to talk only about him and conveniently ignore:

• The terror modules deprived of their oxygen.
• The hawala networks abruptly paralyzed.
• The cross-border handlers staring at stacks of useless paper. 

Ask yourself:

• Why did certain political parties, ecosystem “intellectuals,” and media houses go into overdrive to paint demonetization only as a failure?
• Was it purely ideology?
• Purely economics?
• Or was there a deeper fear —
• That a long-protected money pipeline had just been blown apart?

Who Really Lost That Night?

Let us be blunt. The average citizen lost:

• Time.
• Convenience.
• Short-term comfort. 

But the entrenched networks lost:

• Decades of stored counterfeit inventory.
• Stable, predictable channels of terror funding.
• A tried and tested method of undermining India’s financial confidence.

Which loss is more painful to a nation? And which loss do critics obsess over in TV studios?

Final Thoughts: Learning to See the ‘Invisible’ War

Ajit Doval did not suddenly wake up in 2016 and discover fake currency. He had seen it years before. He had traced its trail. He had understood its source. He also understood something most people miss:

• Sometimes, waiting for the right political climate is also part of national security strategy.
• Sometimes, a currency decision is more of a security doctrine than an economic reform.
• Sometimes, standing in a queue for your country is less sacrifice and more participation in an invisible war.

The next time someone dismisses demonetization with a lazy “it failed,” ask:

• Are we measuring failure only in quarterly GDP charts — or also in how many terror pipelines were silently cut?
• Why is there so much noise about inconvenience — but so little curiosity about who sold those plates and who protected that ecosystem?
• If fake currency was a weapon, was demonetization not a counter-strike?
• And most importantly — do we want leaders who protect networks, or leaders who are willing to take political risk to dismantle them?

Because in the end, the real question is not: “Was demonetization comfortable?”

The real question is: “When your country is under slow, silent attack, do you want comfort — or courage?”