As August 15, 1930, the agreed-upon date for full Indian independence, drew closer, a palpable tension settled over the subcontinent. The British, despite the treaty, could not easily stomach the loss of their crown jewel. Their intelligence agencies, particularly the India Office's Political Department and MI6, ramped up covert operations, desperately attempting to destabilize India and perhaps find an excuse to delay or even reverse the transfer of power.
Their tactics were insidious: funding separatist movements in regions like the Northwest Frontier or the princely states, stirring communal tensions through disinformation campaigns, attempting to incite labor unrest in Bharat Corporation's vital factories, and outright industrial sabotage – tampering with machinery, sabotaging supply lines, or spreading rumors of design flaws in Adav's products.
But Adav was prepared. His "Ghadar intelligence network," painstakingly cultivated over a decade, was no longer just a collection of passionate revolutionaries. It was now a highly organized, professional intelligence apparatus, operating with a chilling efficiency. Integrating seamlessly into the nascent Indian security forces being quietly established by the Swarajya Party, these agents formed the backbone of India's counter-intelligence.
They had infiltrated key British administrative offices, deciphered their communication codes, and cultivated informants within British military garrisons. They knew the plots before they were hatched, identified the agents before they could act. Every attempted act of sabotage was either preempted or quickly contained, often appearing as "unexplained accidents" or "minor delays" to the public. The British, to their frustration, found their efforts consistently thwarted, their agents vanishing or simply proving ineffective, leaving them with no clear targets to retaliate against.