Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (19 page)

As intelligence professional I had succeeded in locating and motivating some Meitei youths, who had taken upon themselves the task of reconnecting the youths with the mainstream. Some of them later drifted into active politics. But their efforts were neutralised by the emergence of Chinese and Pakistani inspired outfits like the People’s Liberation Army, People’s Liberation Army of Kangleipak (PREPAK), Kangleipak Communist Party, Poirei Liberation Front, Kangleipak Socialist Army, the Red Army, Revolutionary People’s Front and Indo Burma Revolutionary Front. The mainstream political forces in Manipur and the policy planners in Delhi had continued to treat the upsurge as law and order problems. More troops were inducted and less economic developments were carried out. Haunted by unemployment and lack of opportunity, the Meitei youths continued to swell the ranks of the terrorists. They were keenly observing the outcome of the negotiations between the NSCN (IM) and the government of India.

During my later visits to Manipur I gathered impressions that the Meitei youths were fed up with the political skulduggery, all pervasive corruption and apathetic attitude of Delhi. Some of them had become disillusioned with the terrorist activities and simply did not know how to trace back their steps. Manipur, I found, was cliff hanging in the hope of constructive approaches from Delhi and better navigation of the state by its own political oarsmen. All that this tortured State requires is a genuine healing touch devoid of threat of dismemberment by the demand for greater Nagaland. Such touch should be pregnant with concrete programme for better communication, industry, and easy market approach in mainland India and abroad for its products, desiccation of the reign by corruption and absorption of the spirit of the far east of India in the mainstream political and social philosophy. The Indians must prove by their act that they are worth living with. The North East and other ethnically simmering areas must get a feeling that India is different from the forgotten Empire. A nation’s geography and history are determined by its capability to protect and promote its citizen and not by its constitution, law, armed forces and moralistic and patriotic jargon.

Has post-independence India lived up to that universal truth of nationhood?

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I understand that I do not want to script down all that I experienced in Manipur and I must put an end to, albeit temporarily, the story of my tryst with Manipur. Let’s get back to the murky side of the workings of the intelligence organisations. The ‘
I
’ in this narration is not meant for self-glorification. It is a carrier of a definite message; the message of blatant misuse of the intelligence organisations by the rulers of the day. The Indian ruling class has continued to treat the agencies like the Intelligence Bureau as departments of the government, which are not controlled by any Act of the Parliament and are not accountable to any statutory body, except the Prime Minister and the Home Minister. The Indians have a right to know how the rulers and their game-tools spend their money in the name of securing the country through kitchen maids like the IB, R&AW, and CBI.

Manipur, my most favourite playground, was not destined to flourish in peace. The statehood movement had a roller-coaster ride, often violence taking precedence over democratic process. The looming war with Pakistan, however, compelled Indira Gandhi to declare on September 3, 1971, in the Lok Sabha that her government had accepted in principle the demand of the people of Manipur, well after 22 years of merger of the princely state with India. As I stated earlier the 21st state of India, Manipur, was inaugurated by Indira Gandhi on January 21, 1972. B. K. Nehru was appointed as the governor of the state, but D. R. Kohli was asked to stay put for a while.

However, behind the scene, the Congress party and the government of Indira Gandhi had left no stone unturned to install a Congress government in the state, even well before the inauguration of the new state.

This game was not new to the working philosophy of Indira Gandhi. As the President of the INC she had started this game with Kerala. Her major and minor political rivals had later emulated this new domino game, which subverted much of the Constitutional propriety of the intended federal structure of India.

I never thought that in a small state like Manipur the big players in Delhi would play such a wild game of political expediency. Manipur was at the vanguard of combating Naga insurgency and coping with the new thrust of militancy initiated by the frustrated and disillusioned youths of the Valley. It required sustained economic development and not political skulduggery.

The Congress party normally suffers from claustrophobia once it is denied power by the people. The same trend was noticed in Manipur. The president of the Indian National Congress and lesser party leaders frequented the state to explore the possibility of installing a party government through defection. Their foreplays were fortified by no less an official personality than the Union Home Minister.

On occasions I was summoned to the Raj Niwas to meet the queer houseguests of the Lt. Governor, some of them politicians and some public servants. In two such crucial meetings with Om Mehta and the Union Home Secretary I was asked to explore the feasibility of toppling the government headed by Mohammad Alimuddin.

I was believed in doggedly following my professional pursuits. Some of these professional operations had exceeded the limits of legal sanction. However, I never violated the constitutional and legal restraints put on a public servant. Those were the days when I enjoyed professional excellence and moral innocence. The weighty politicians and bureaucrats from Delhi had simply asked me get involved in an illegal activity. I consulted my superiors in Delhi and was ‘guided’ to a course of action that assured ‘silent cooperation’ with the minister and the secretary. I was utterly confused. The quarrelling squirrels in my conscience fought with each other for a while and the victorious one finally told me not to cooperate with Delhi’s plan. I decided to seek reversion to my state cadre, made a trip to Calcutta, and approached the IGP, Ranjit Gupta, to take me back to the state. I met him at his official residence on two occasions and pressed for my reversion. I had no doubt that Ranjit Gupta had taken up my case with Delhi, but the Union Home Ministry and the IB had turned it down on the plea that I was an ‘earmarked’ officer and my services could not be spared for the state.

On my return to Imphal, around November 8, I found an emissary of Delhi (no name please) cooling his heels in the Raj Bhawan. I was closeted with him for a couple of hours during which we exchanged notes on the ‘disgruntled’ MLAs of the ruling combination. After analysing their political track record and individual propensities an assessment was made by the dignitary that it was possible to initiate the process of toppling Alimuddin and install a Congress led government.

One thing that surprised me was the use of the office of the Governor and the official representative of the President of India for petty political purposes. The Governors of the Indian States are political appointees and they are freely used by the rulers of the day to achieve their political agenda. They have treated this Constitutional position to promote political interests of the ruling elite. Most of these Governors are now being treated as contingency paid daily workers.

Another dignitary, who carried a couple of fat brief cases, followed the political functionary with whom I interacted intensely. That was my first encounter with the brief case culture. They evaluated the worth of each MLA and appropriate price tag was put on each head. Some of my professional friends in the Congress and opposition parties helped in carrying out the evaluation process. When asked to carry the brief cases to the concerned targets I refused and pointed out that some political points men should be used to accomplish that delicate task.

In the meantime the IB sounded me about the possibility of change of my station. They suggested that I should take over the Nagaland charge and relieve J.N.Roy, who was slated for assignment to a better pasture

While I battled with my personal establishment problems of shifting to Kohima a big gun arrived at Imphal and ordered that his ‘high command’ had decided to roll the toppling ball. I consulted Delhi again and was advised to complete the operation from Kohima. I handed over charge of the Imphal station to my successor, shifted to Kohima, and made flying trips to Imphal to help the big political and official guns from Delhi to initiate the toppling process.

I was required to personally contact the disgruntled members of the legislative assembly and interact with them along the guidelines received from the emissaries of Delhi.

Mohammad Alimuddin could not save his government and the Congress too could not cobble up the requisite majority. The fiasco ended in another spell of central rule. I understand that some of the members of the Assembly had backed out for two reasons. The carrier from Delhi did not pass on the exact number of briefcases to them. He, an official in the Home Ministry, had reportedly reserved some of the brief cases for his rainy days. The MLAs were pressured by the Meitei extremists not to wreck the Alimuddin government, of which Yangmasho Shaiza, a relative of A. Z. Phizo’s niece was a prominent member. It is worthwhile to note that Rishang Keishing, a prominent Tangkhul Naga leader and a sworn competitor of the pro-Phizo Shaiza family, had spearheaded the move to topple Alimuddin.

Mohammad Alimuddin was justified to some extent to declare in a public meeting, that I was responsible for pulling down his government. He had led a delegation to Delhi for lodging a complaint against me. As it was expected, all these complaints were buried under cynical smiles.

Did I rue or relish the rape of my conscience? It’s difficult to give a clear answer. Conscience more often triggers off painful chemicals than pleasant aroma. Conscience cannot float in a vacuum. It interacts constantly with the empirical world that surrounds an individual. Degree of reaction and the solid state of the amorphous feeling called conscience are determined by social and economic factors and the bondages one is placed in by the circumstances.

Standing now, where I am, I feel that I had witnessed a strange metamorphosis of my personality. My initiation to politics at a younger age had left an unquenched thirst for that coveted fruit. I was still latched to the RSS type politics. The partition blues were yet to heal and my Hindu identity was still a major factor in the making of my approach to politics.

But my meeting with R. K. Dhawan, Indira Gandhi and a couple of other important political leaders had strengthened my appreciation for Indira Gandhi. It was strengthened after the creation of Bangladesh and total defeat of the Pakistan Army. The memories of bitter migration from East Pakistan never stopped haunting me. I could agree less with Atal Bihari Vajpayee that Indira had emerged as the Goddess Durga. I suffered a split in my political perception. I did not like the ‘dynastic’ rule, yet I admired Indira Gandhi. I pined for the values of the RSS, yet I did not develop a faith that they could give a stable national government.

That I could pull down a government in Manipur, contain the hill insurgents and subdue the valley extremists had added a few layers of vainglory to my ego. However, my inner self suffered some abrasions. The seeds of anti-congressism, my latent sympathy with the Hindu causes and my preference for armed social revolution, as propounded by the Naksalbari head master Jagadananda Roy did not evaporate with my induction to the IPS and my association with the IB.

Short of hating myself I started making conscious compartments inside my mind, where I thought, I could stash away the conflicting cross currents and earn my bread, say my prayers and make my conscience sleep peacefully. That was an impossible balancing game. I had often failed in that wizardry. Conflicting currents, which swirled around and inside, very often overwhelmed my subterranean conscience. Often I bled in silence. That was perhaps the ultimate price an intelligence operator, who had not metamorphosed into a zombie, was required to pay.

I left Manipur with a mixed bag of feelings. Our son had completed his first year on his journey on the arrow of time. On the fifth year of our marriage we developed a divine bondage of love that transcended the religious rituals. Professionally I had strengthened the process of learning. Manipur was a unique theatre for learning.

For me it was a unique learning process. I experimented with a lot of techniques of creating HumInt assets deep inside the Naga, Mizo and Meitei underground movements. I chanced to locate some of the talents active in these organisations and won them over mostly by identifying myself with the causes they fought for. Such pseudo identification had enabled me to square up with their psychological strata and gain entry into their realm of fantasy and quasi-reality. I always tried to honour my commitment to my human agents. The Intelligence Bureau, I noticed with anguish, simply believed in the theory of paying the price and getting the job done. They did not teach the mechanism of psychological attrition and honouring the human commitments. They did not teach the technique of smooth separation from important HumInt assets. On a couple of occasion I was pushed to the abyss of danger by IB’s policy of not claiming its sources, the proverbial ‘lost baggage.’

It’s not that I did not believe in the established policy of paying the correct price and getting the job done. There were several human assets, well entrenched in the political parties, print media, government servants and elements those loitered on the fringe of insurgency and terrorism. They were paid well either on piece basis or as regular retainers as long as they were useful. These were routine professional agents.