Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (29 page)

Over a time I succeeded in programming him to align his group with the Youth Congress and build up his political base. I did not believe that Sanjay’s IYC was a paragon of virtue. The entire nation was being stripped of its moral coating and the tenets of constitutional democratic values were being trampled under innumerable constitutional amendments and ordinances. For strange reasons Indira Gandhi had allowed herself to be imprisoned behind the misdeeds of her son. But that was a power base which fascinated Khatiwada. He discovered a window of opportunity in Sanjay Gandhi.

At one point of time, around July 1975, I was struck by a bout of depression. I came to know from reliable sources in Delhi that Indira and Sanjay were using the Intelligence Bureau and the R&AW to fabricate reports against the opposition leaders. Even I was asked by a senior officer of the IB to submit reports against the pro-Chinese activities of the former king and CIA operations in Sikkim from its Calcutta and Kathmandu bases. I declined to oblige, as I had no clue about such CIA and Chinese operations in Sikkim. Much was made out by the R&AW representative at Gangtok when a Japanese straggler was picked up by my boys from a prohibited stretch of land near Nathu La, the pass between Indian Sikkim and Chinese Chumbi valley. Even the toughest of sleuths could not stick a CIA stamp on him. He was one of those maverick tourists who preferred to do the most unexpected thing at the oddest possible time.

My reluctance to frame the Chogyal was not viewed kindly by my regional boss in Calcutta. I was telephonically admonished for my ‘non compliance’ of orders from the top.

At this point of my emotional crisis an unexpected telephone call from Siliguri allured me to drive down to the bustling town and meet my RSS friend in a village hut at Sukna. On transit from Assam to Varanasi, his spiritual home, the friend direly needed financial support. He did not endorse my idea of quitting the job and joining the JP movement. His reasoning was simple: some soldiers fought at the front while the others fought from the rear. He advised me to act as a rearguard soldier. The small monetary help that I could render to my friend helped me toning down my singed psyche. In fact, I drove him down to Bihar border in my office vehicle and helped him boarding a truck from Kahribari for Thakurganj in Bihar.

However, my depression forced me to consult Sunanda about the feasibility of my resignation from the IPS and joining the JP movement. She appreciated my sentiments but pointed out that we had raised a family and she was not equipped to fend for herself and the kids in my absence. What was my priority, my depression or the welfare of my family? She was unwilling to go back to her parental home and counselled me to try to see the positive sides of the emergency. I quite did not agree with her, but I understood the values of her reasoning. I did not have any anchor besides my job. I had no parental home and I did not inherit family largesse. I stood alone by myself and I was fully responsible for the welfare of my family, which I had agreed to raise and take care. I could not abandon them. I struggled a lot to quieten down the quarrelling squirrels within me, albeit temporarily.

All said and done, I still believed that India has not had its encounter with a more dynamic prime minister than Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, minus the emergency aberration, which I liked to believe, was hastened by a spate of extra-democratic agitations of her political opponents, some of whom were suspected to have been inspired by outside forces. A person of complex character as Indira was could not be judged by her follies alone. India needed her at that glorious and inglorious moment of history. Oh! What a history it was to live with! I had closer encounter with her in her worse days and in the end of it all I strongly feel that she alone cannot be blamed for all the ills of India. She was the tallest person among the pygmies around her and the shamelessly emasculated later day political breed.

However, as 1976 unfolded the emergency rampages of Sanjay and his cronies, I received a strange visitor at Gangtok. This person, a journalist of sort, was a frequenter to the durbar of Kazi along with a saffron clad Buddhist monk, a self-styled Bhikkhu. The journalist was a regular visitor to the palace of the Chogyal but shunned him as a plague after the merger of Sikkim. The journo managed a news and feature agency, and was more of a trader, trading his intellectual properties with the highest bidders. I had definite information about his linkages with the diplomatic personnel of some Euro-American countries. That he traded information with them was well established by the Delhi and Calcutta based spooks. In later day India, during Indira’s elder son’s regime he had assumed the role of a troubleshooter in the Darjeeling hills and later managed to get a berth in the Indian Parliament. The Bhikkhu too had managed to climb up the corridors of power, enter the portals of the Parliament, and secure a seat in one of the prestigious commissions of the government of India. Such climbers are not strangers in the durbar type democracy in India. Like every clever dog they enjoyed their sun while it shone. No bitter feelings!

The so-called journalist dropped in at my modest residence sometime in April 1976, when Sanjay was busy with Indira’s 20-point programme, sterilisation and demolition missions. He revealed over a glass of Sikkim Supreme whisky that he had an important message for me. The message was not very complicated. All that I was supposed to do was to persuade Narbahadur Khatiwada to form a unit of the Youth Congress and support the actions of the leading light of India’s destiny, Sanjay Gandhi. He carried another verbal message for me. I should influence the former Chogyal to write a letter to the Prime Minister supporting Sikkim’s merger and submitting to the supreme leader of the country. I listened to the peddler patiently and saw him off with a smile painted on my face and surging rage inside.

Next morning I sent a telex message to Delhi detailing the messages personally carried by the journalist trouble-shooter and asked for their orders. Delhi maintained deafening silence and after a couple of days I received a cipher message that advised me not to transmit such sensitive messages over the fragile telex route. They were silent on the issues I had raised.

Managing Khatiwada was not a big problem. The redoubtable Kazini had thought of peddling R. C. Paudyal, a minister in Kazi’s cabinet, as the rightful Youth Congress leader. Moreover, Khatiwada was still smarting under the political wounds that he suffered after the merger of Sikkim. Touted as the adopted son of Kazi Lehndup he had expected a berth in the cabinet. But Kazi was averse to the idea of promoting a firebrand Nepali leader. He preferred to depend on more pliable and rootless leaders. However, I had succeeded in softening Khatiwada to a great extent and he finally identified himself with the Sanjay brigade, albeit temporarily, when the later accompanied Indira to Gangtok on November 19, her birthday. I would like to narrate that story a little later.

Carrying the message of Delhi to the Chogyal was a difficult task. As I understood the former king, the Chogyal was a man of honour. The Chogyal was a tougher nut than Delhi presumed him to be. He listened to me with an impassive face as that of the
Avalokiteshwara
(Buddha) on the
tankha
(scroll painting) at his back.

“How could you come to me with this request?” he finally asked, “I thought you are an honourable person.”

“I’m an honourable person,” I replied, “I’m carrying a message to you. You can kill the message but not the carrier.”

“Than tell Delhi that I’ve killed the message,” he replied with a laughing face, “I respect the carrier.”

We parted as friends and the youthful Crown Prince was at hand to see me off at the outer court.

I spent the entire evening to draft a cipher message to Delhi to convey the instant rejection of the idea carried to me by the so called troubleshooter of the inner court of Sanjay. Delhi, as usual, maintained deafening silence.

Having done what I had to do I did not decry the decision of the Chogyal. He was correct from the position he spoke. I thought it was rather demeaning to demand a formal letter of submission from the former king without discussing an acceptable compensation package. The use of a very lowly placed officer for such a wild sounding mission was also inappropriate. My bosses in Delhi were not amused by ‘my failure’ to accomplish a delicate mission.

I did not have the time to ponder over those earth shaking matters as my own earth had started rocking violently again at the home front. Sunanda had fallen violently sick due to uterine haemorrhage and needed emergency medical attention. She had later undergone total hysterectomy at a Siliguri nursing home. On that critical occasion the former Chogyal sent down a
khada
(silken scarf) sanctified by the
rimpoche
of the Pemayangtse monastery.

The Chogyal’s friendly demeanour did not blunt my intelligence antennae. He was a consummate diplomat and parlour magician. He could charm his way through the narrowest eye of a needle. It was a different matter that his American wife and meaningless noises from some world capitals misguided him. He, like many contemporaries had failed to judge the sharpness of the scimitar of Indira Gandhi. That was the biggest mistake of his life. But he knew the art of manoeuvring the small time politicians of Sikkim. He was in touch, through his charming lady lawyer Rajkumari Bhubaneshwari, and a Calcutta based Bengali journalist, with some of the leading Indian leaders incarcerated in different jails. Some of them had even assured him of a review of the ‘rigged referendum’ orchestrated by the Chief Executive, the ‘devils on deputation’ and the mandarins of the foreign office. I have no intention of dissecting the ‘referendum process’ and the tactical and strategic tools applied by Delhi to achieve the merger simply because that part of the history etched by Indira Gandhi can not be washed away from the tablet of time by normal political process.

However, my human assets had adequately warned me about the new role of a puppeteer assumed by the Chogyal. He had succeeded in reconnecting the cords to some of his tested political puppets and a few new converts, who were disillusioned with Kazi. K. C. Pradhan, a mercurial but warm hearted person led the new cheer group and was followed by N. K. Subedi, L. B. Basnet and N. B. Bhandari.

Political gems and stars did not stud the government of L. D. Kazi. Most of the ministers were politically immature and they had very little idea about the art of administering a strategic state like Sikkim. The system basically depended on the ‘guidances’ formulated by the Governor and the dynamics fabricated by the officers on deputation. Some of the ministers often quoted the Governor on the floor of the assembly when asked questions on developmental activities and allocation of fund. I recall an occasion when Narbahadur Khatiwada pulled up a minister for taking shelter behind the coat tails of the Governor on the issue of additional power generation in the state. The house regaled in laughter and the Speaker C.S. Rai had to expunge the minister’s reply from the proceedings of the day.

Inefficient they were not in recognising the colour of the treasury bills received from Delhi. The impoverished former Himalayan kingdom was flooded with money, from plan and non-plan budgetary allocation provided by Delhi. Merger manipulated through corruption was destined to plunge into the crevices of corruption, which pervaded the political and the administrative structures. I had witnessed the impact of easy money in Manipur and Nagaland and was left with no doubt that sooner than later Sikkim would be transformed to a cesspool of easy money and corruption.

The former Chogyal hadn’t missed the glaring fault line that was widened by the day between the easy-money rich coterie close to Kazi and the impoverished legislators and the political figures deprived of the opportunities thrown open by Delhi. He had started exploiting the fault lines deftly. A few members of the legislative assembly belonging to the ruling party and some prominent members of the opposition teamed up with the royalists and started questioning the roles of the ‘desh bechuas.’ Kazi was not able to plug the rumbling protests and his advisors came up with the suggestion of detaining a few of the Chogyal followers under the infamous Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) that was being applied mindlessly to suppress the opposition political movements in the rest of India.

I briefed Governor B. B. Lal about the blueprint of the new conspiracy by the former Chogyal after obtaining Delhi’s approval. He took immediate corrective measures by partially taking care of the fault lines. L. D. Kazi took care of the moneybags dreamt of by some of the disgruntled elements in his party and the award of lucrative civil contract projects rekindled a few of the opposition lights. They understood better the language of money than the language of ‘patriotism’ preached by the Chogyal.

The small business of managing Sikkim did not reflect the earthshaking events taking place in Delhi. Indira had postponed the Parliamentary elections in February 1976, as she wanted more time to consolidate the gains of the emergency. The entire opposition was put behind the bars and Sanjay had almost taken over the reins of the country. She postponed the elections again in November 1976 reportedly under pressure from Sanjay. However, she took out time from her ‘emergency commitments’ and flew down to Gangtok on November 19th, her 59th birthday along with Rajiv, Sanjay, Maneka, Sonia Gandhi, and her kids. Governor B. B. Lal hosted them. It was a great day for Sikkim.

The elite of the capital were invited to join Indira and her family over a luncheon party at the Raj Bhawan lawns. Sunanda and I were invited too along with a couple of other senior officers. I had chanced to see Indira in Manipur and once again in Delhi. Personally she impressed me with her dynamic patriotism and irrepressible urge for doing the good things for the country. I was dismayed by the declaration of the emergency and the repressive actions that followed.