Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (42 page)

In my discussions with the political luminaries who surrounded Indira and a few questions she had fired at me during a meeting on horse trading in Haryana and discussions on the bleak election prospects in Delhi I gathered an impression that the Prime Minister of India had reached the tethered end over the style of functioning of her home minister. The openhearted rustic Sikh had no idea when to disengage from soured political operations. His hunger for the hot seat in Chandigarh had made him oblivious to the facts that the jinn of Sikh separatism had burst out of the bottle crafted by him and his one time mentor Sanjay. The leaders of Indira Congress had reopened India’s big fault line in Punjab and Pakistan had already started wading through the muddy waters.

Indira had realised the gravity of the situation and she sincerely wanted to put her home minister behind some restraining cage. The most convenient cage was the President’s Palace over the Raisina Hills. Indira had succeeded in caging her blundering political troubleshooter but she did not have any strategic idea to get out of the hell fire of Sikh militancy started by her son’s creation. The hellish fire finally consumed her.

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I was often consulted on the election scenario in Delhi. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) was due to go to the polls for electing its councillors in May 1983. By that time Rajiv Gandhi was in full command of the backroom operations of Indira Congress and the government run by his mother. He had emerged as the second most powerful political figure.

Rajiv and his aides worked on a foolproof strategy to resurrect the party’s sullied performance in Andhra Pradesh and Haryana. His office prepared a list of candidates in which most of the followers of Sanjay were sidelined. M.L.Fotedar prepared another list in consultation with his coterie of acolytes. The followers of Sanjay prepared a list of their own and made desperate efforts to attract Indira’s attention.

My company directed me to study the desperately contradictory lists and to prepare one that could ensure a respectable contest against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidates. The BJP was expecting a thumping victory and shaking up the rocking foundations of Indira Congress. The party banked mostly on Hindu backlash against Indira’s inability to contain the fire of Sikh militancy. They were poised to exploit the local issues and the raw memories of emergency excesses. The media was against Indira and she had very little space to take cover.

I prepared a composite list after discreet consultations with the factional, caste, community and religious leaders and leaders of different linguistic groups. Such an operation could not be done in complete secrecy. This was not a novel task. The Intelligence Bureau had been usually tasked for vetting electoral lists and for studying prospects of the ruling parties. Similar is the practice in the States where the state intelligence branches and the CIDs are tasked to study the prospects of the ruling party. The Indian democracy has refused to discard some of the vestiges of the past. The custodians of democracy have rather added on new armours to maintain political hegemony over the system.

The politicians sniffed my scent in no time. They thronged around me with requests to accommodate their candidates. Leaders like Jagdish Tytlar, H.K.L Bhagat, Jagdish Anand, Jagpravesh Chandra and Bhagwat Jha Azad, a minister in Indira’s government, milled around my residence at Bharati Nagar. Some of them even tried to shower on me financial and other material benefits. My stark decision to remain poor and a struggling intelligence operator saved my soul. I refused to harvest gold out of the political quagmire in which I was put by circumstance at a critical moment of Indian history. But it had become impossible to maintain privacy of my family life. Most of the factional leaders lingered on at my home and were often invited to the luncheon or dinner table.

I must admit that the entire field machinery of the Intelligence Bureau was mobilised to help Indira Congress to win the minor but crucial municipal elections. R.K. Dhawan acted as the point man and I was advised to cooperate with him unabashedly. I did what was expected of me and I have reasons to believe that I did my job exceedingly well to the annoyance of the coterie around Rajiv Gandhi and M. L. Fotedar. There were irresponsible talks about ‘Dhawan-Dhar’ magic that won the crucial election for Indira Congress. Nothing was far from the truth. I did not do anything that an intelligence operator in my position was not supposed to do. It was an in thing and I did not dare to remain out of the in-circle of the day. Was there a choice? No. There was no choice, unless I preferred to rot in an insignificant corner of the IB or don the uniform again only to be haunted by the Marxists.

A faction in Rajiv coterie and the lobby headed by Fotedar and V.S Tripathy duo were left with bruised wounds as the candidates selected by them were not given electoral nomination by the party. Some of the Sanjay acolytes were given preference over choices made by Rajiv’s friends and Fotedar faction. These apolitical politicians had initiated the process of ‘collecting fund against election ticket.’ They had no place to hide their faces.

That’s what made them to gang up and influence Rajiv Gandhi to demand my scalp. The perverted argument that I had given preference to Sanjay’s men had influenced Rajiv. It did not matter that Indira Gandhi cleared a winning list prepared by me on behalf of the Intelligence Bureau and she had scrupulously followed some of strategies suggested by me. They were in no position to dump R.K. Dhawan, not as yet. But he too was considerably marginalized.

The only option left to Rajiv acolytes and Fotedar-Tripathy axis was to punish me and weaken Dhawan. I have reasons to believe they were responsible for removing me unceremoniously from the key post of SIB Delhi and to substitute me by a relative of V.S. Tripathy, the officer whom I happened to replace at the Russian counterintelligence desk.

I was not hurt by the decision to pull me out. What were the bureaucrats for if they were not subjected to such pulls and pressures, especially in a system in which the intelligence machinery was an integral part of the masters of the day? I was hurt by the manner I was haunted out of the office of the SIB. J.N. Roy (Kohima colleague) was originally posted as my successor. But this was shot down by Fotedar lobby on grounds that Roy was associated with Shah Commission. He was removed within three days. The final choice fell on a relation of V.S. Tripathy.

My successor was ordered by V.S. Tripathy to ‘take over’ the office in my absence. He did so with vengeance, remodelling my office room within two days and taking possession of all secret and top-secret files. The day I went to hand over charge he was gloriously seated in the remodelled room. I declined to hand over charge to him and passed on some of my sensitive human assets to my former deputy.

In the meantime T.V. Rajeswar tried to help me by offering a posting to Dacca. I declined the offer on grounds that my family in former East Pakistan had played prominent roles during the independence struggle. My cover posting to Dacca would not remain under cover for more than seven days. The R&AW wanted to make some cosmetic change to my name to camouflage my identity. I politely disagreed with the funny practice of the external intelligence organisation. Rajeswar himself was posted out as the Lieutenant Governor of Arunachal Pradesh.

I hanged in a limbo till Indira summoned me in September 1983 through R.K. Dhawan. She exhibited extreme kindness, enquired about my wife and children and finally thanked me for assisting her in Delhi elections. As I stood up to say goodbye to the Prime Minister she asked me to stay put and asked if I would like to accept a posting to the Indian High Commission in Canada. I was dumbfounded by the gesture. I had never gone to her and Dhawan with my bag of humiliation and decided to fit myself in the new desk job I was offered.

She was the first to say goodbye and wish best of health and prosperity for my family and me. I walked back into the room of R. K. Dhawan and was told to wait for my orders to join the ministry of external affairs on deputation. I have no doubt that R.K. Dhawan had taken initiative to rescue my career and reputation. I thanked the friend, who himself was being pushed to the walls.

I was overawed by the gesture, though I did not appreciate the decline in her political career and her faltering actions on different fronts. Did Sanjay’s death affect her unique capabilities? I presume it did.

That was my last meeting with the much loved and hated lady Prime Minister of India, the last link with India’s freedom struggle and the last of the intellectually and philosophically inspired Nehrus.

We boarded a flight for Ottawa on October 22, 1983, despite opposition from a section in the MEA and last minute obstacles created by a coterie in the PMO.

I did not expect a foreign posting and had never lobbied for it. I enjoyed operational intelligence. But my family was thrilled over the unexpected posting. I too reconciled to the idea of remaining out of India for a while and allow the things to cool down. Very little I did know that India would never be the same after Indira was forced to a corner to order Army action into the Golden Temple and achieve physical riddance of the Frankenstein created by Zail Singh and her son Sanjay.

Punjab had again sucked me into its orbit when I returned to India in 1987. I was straight away pushed into the orbit of intelligence operations in Punjab. That is a different story that will like to relate in greater details.

The three years that I served in the IB’s subsidiary unit in Delhi had transformed me to a cosmopolitan intelligence operator from a tribal area specialist. I had lost my moral innocence in Manipur itself, but Delhi’s grill fire had taught me that this mythological and historical city had changed very little. It thrived on conspiracy, thuggery and merciless power struggle. The format of governance had perhaps changed, but not the style. The ethnic and religious flavours of the high-strung players had evolved to history. But the there was hardly any difference between the durbars of Jehangir and the Viceroys and that of Morarji Bhai and Indira Gandhi. Sanjay had filled in the gap left by some of the lesser day Mughals, who believed more in fencing with scimitar than the weapons of statecraft.

The bureaucrats too had not changed for the better. They were typified by durbar protocol, worshipping the deity in power and carrying kirsch under their sleeves. Like minuscule wiring inside power motors they performed the functions of intricate connectivity between the politicians and the social powerhouses like the criminals, caste barons and industrial tycoons. The resultant juice flowed both up and downstream.

There was no place for independent players at the top and near-top layer of the system. Indira had added the new concept of ‘commitment’ in the bureaucratic system. Jawaharlal and Lal Bahadur did not tamper with the system and its nuts and bolts. They had carried out a few cosmetic changes to the inheritance they were endowed with by the British system. None of them had tried to indigenise the system to make it more compatible with the democratic and secular system of the Republic of India.

Indira had the vision as well as the strength. But her infallible faith in the eternal continuity of her dynasty had blinded the vision that she inherited from Jawaharlal. She and Sanjay had tinkered with the system and had done nothing to arrest the inexorable slide. A small functionary like me, placed at a key position had very little option but to swim along with the tide. Most post-independence bureaucrats were not born with lion hearts and inviolable will. They had to coat themselves with different varieties of Teflon.

I too had gathered Teflon coatings, but of a different kind. I had carried out certain immoral and illegal orders. I acted against the spirit of democracy and constitutional sanctions. But it must be remembered that I belonged to an agency, which was, and still is, beyond the pales of democracy and constitutional liberalism. This organisation is run according to its own rules and whims of the masters of the day. I acted as a Roman while I was in Rome.

But I had not allowed personal corruption to sully my soul. Intelligence operators and certain varieties of bureaucrats are bound to trample the constitution and law of the country unless they are made accountable to the elected representatives of the country, through overseeing committees of the Parliament. They will continue to dance to the tunes of the masters of the day till the political system in the country brings these organisations under specific Acts of the Parliament.

But I had not lost my admiration for Indira Gandhi. History had given chance to the leaders outside the Nehru-Gandhi family. But they had wasted that mandate by quarrelling like wayside simians for the spoils of power and office. She was still the tallest amongst the dwarfs. But her faith in injunctions, infallibility and intrigues had weakened her faith in democracy. She had a chance to offer India a modern political and administrative system. But she too had allowed the history to tumble through the degenerating process. She preferred to thrive on degeneration rather than fork lifting India to the standard of developed democracies of the West. But I still believed that in the absence of the Indian genius to throw up a more sustainable leadership she was the best choice, though a fog of disillusionment had started descending inside me.

Perfection is an idea. It is hardly achievable. My second tenure in Delhi offered me the opportunity to learn more tricks of the mysterious world of TechInt. I was fascinated by the immense potential of the use of electronic gadgets in generating intelligence and in denying intelligence to the inimical forces.

IB’s inventory of the cute miniatures of video, audio, and radio equipments was very limited. It did not have access to satellite communication, interception and imagery. We were yet to encounter miniature cameras, scanners, copiers and bug busters. The restrictions imposed by the government on import of these items of intelligence generation baffled the people in the trade. But the baboos and master processors in the Union Home and Finance ministry often feigned that they were the best assessor of the national security requirements. Most of the proposals did not even go past the joint secretaries. The Director, Intelligence Bureau, can be imagined as a crude and spooky crook, but he is the most helpless person in matters of administrative and financial powers. The politicians and the top bureaucrats never allowed to that useful bedroom spook to have its own wings.