Read Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer Online
Authors: Maloy Krishna Dhar
Another funny incident that had almost landed me in trouble was related to the use of serving and gifting of rum, whisky and other alcoholic drinks to our professional friends. This also involved a sharp escalation in the cash payments to the agents and friends from the secret service funds. Most of our field officers operated a large number of ‘contacts’ and paid them paltry sums like rupees 30 to 50. I had carried out a study of the intelligence input of such agents. In addition to cash payment from the secret service fund they were allowed to draw rum from the official quota for entertaining their friends. My study produced shocking results. Most of such reports were scrounged from the surface and our officers barely succeeded in penetrating even the outer most layer of the underground.
I made out a case supporting sharp increase in secret service payment to the deserving ‘agents’ and ‘friends’, provided our officers succeeded in penetrating the regional underground structure. This had brought in vast improvement in the coverage and helped the IB in curtailing wasteful expenditure.
Nonetheless, I was summoned to Delhi to explain the sharp increase in secret service fund expenditure and expenditure on drinks. The Joint Director responsible for supervising the sacred trust of SS funds interrogated me for over an hour. I explained that rum and whisky were the legal tenders in Nagaland and most of the Nagas liked their drinks as much as they liked their Christ. He was not amused. I was advised not to serve more than three pegs and to keep an account of how many pegs were served to which guest. I tried to protest. But Joshi, a prudent officer, restrained me. He was correct. Protestation before a pigheaded person was useless. On the issue of SS expenditure I pointed out that the Nagas had gone past the primitive days of allurement by flashy trinkets. Most of them were rich and did not care for rupees thirty. Such amount, I told him, straight away went to the pockets of the IB officers. He did not agree with me.
I was not angered by this officer’s argument. I believe he had never served in any field formation especially in a station like Nagaland and had spent most of his time in Delhi. This, I believe, could not be a valid excuse. This officer had simply closed his mind and believed that the Nagas still roamed the hill jungles in loin clothes and lived in the civilisation of hunter-gatherer. It was a fun to have him around, a specimen of anachronism, who ardently believed that counting the pennies and the alcoholic tots were the best tools for generating intelligence. I decided not to pelt stones on his glasshouse and pleaded with Joshi to cover up my ass. He did that admirably.
The absence of sophisticated technical gadgets often presented seemingly insurmountable problems. A simple Xerox machine was beyond imagination. Even in Delhi one had to fall back on the Technical Laboratory for taking out badly smeared photocopies of documents and often had to fall back on the old process of taking out manually operated stencilled copies on bad quality yellowish papers. One could not, however, depend on this archaic technology in field operation conditions. Certain documents produced by our agents during field meetings were to be returned within a couple of hours. I tried to solve the problem by taking photographs of such documents and developing the negatives in a makeshift darkroom. The arrangement did not prove satisfactory.
However, our technical boys came out with a box like contraption, which used a couple of electric bulbs and could capture the image of the documents on special thermal papers. These papers were later developed in a chemical solution. The process of taking a negative imprint and developing it required considerable time. Nevertheless, it offered a crude solution to our problems. We gained the capability of returning the original documents to our agents within a couple of hours. Much later, when I happened to head the technical wing of the IB I tried to solve this problem by acquiring a few miniature electronic copiers that could be carried by our field officers for making clandestine copies of documents during agent meetings. Some highly trained agents were also taught the technical intricacies of operating such hand-held contraptions that could be easily concealed ion their person.
I was in desperate need of using miniature radio microphones to record and transmit room conversations of some of the subjects that were under intensive coverage of the IB. Initially Delhi was not ready to share such gadgets with a remote field formation. Someone over there simply did not appreciate the seriousness of recording the proceedings of meetings of some of the underground leaders in which they were supposed to discuss the plans for sending gangs to China. An important underground meeting, which was to discuss the fresh peace initiative in 1974, was required to be appropriately documented.
I was summoned to Delhi and advised to desist from the temptation of using such sophisticated gadgets at the drop of my hat. I had to virtually hackle with the director of the Technical Laboratory and convince him that I had the requisite knowledge of operating such equipments. He relented and after painful procrastination by the controlling bosses I was given access to the treasure cove of Aladdin. The intelligence analysts in Delhi later appreciated my performance but they had stuck to their guns on the principle of maintaining the holy cow status of the technical wing. Much later, around 1986-87 M. K. Narayanan, the dynamic Director of the IB, had succeeded freeing the organisation of the shackles of the technical spooks. I think that was the time when the technical intelligence operations were slightly integrated with the operational intelligence wings.
During the fag end of my tenure in Nagaland I realised the importance of Strategic Intelligence Estimate (SIE). SIE is an established system that helps a country in preparing its diplomatic initiative, defence preparedness, orientation of state policy and maintenance of internal security. The defence forces normally carry out such intelligence estimates both in the strategic and tactical fields. I understand that some key divisions of the Ministry of External Affairs too carry out such exercises that attempt making forecasts in matters of diplomatic initiative and response.
But I did not have the opportunity of witnessing such an in-house exercise by the analysis desks of the IB. The concept of separating the operational desks from the analysis desks had crept in much later, well after 1980, when the Punjab and Kashmir operations desks were separated from the analysis desks. This tactical separation has now been accepted as the functional philosophy of the IB.
Broader intelligence estimate, both strategic and tactical, is supposed to be carried out by the Joint Director X, a position close to the heart and brain of the DIB. Originally designed to function as a brain hub of the IB and the architect of intelligence estimate this position has always been used by the IB for other mundane purposes. This position has been generally used as the hub of the Special Branch of the government of India that carries out routine enquiries against ministers, MPs, senior bureaucrats and all and sundry enquiries assigned by the PM and the HM. Most of such enquiries are related to survival of the ruling heads and the party they represent.
About 14 years later in my career I was tasked by a sensitive desk to carry out enquiries against certain ministers in the cabinet of Indira Gandhi. One of them, holding education portfolio, had allegedly received kickback in the purchase of colour TV sets for rural schools. My suggestion that the CBI and the Central Vigilance Commission should conduct enquiry against a minister was rebuffed with a single sentence: was I interested in keeping my job? I sure was. Therefore, I carried out the exercise and I believe Indira Gandhi later changed her minister.
The diversion is only by way of illustration. What is of paramount importance is drawing up of periodic SIE on different live subjects and gaping fault lines. However, the important task of national intelligence estimate, especially intelligence estimates related to the chronic trouble spots in the country and the gaping socio-political and economic fault lines has hardly been attended. I did not encounter any such estimate regarding the insurgency situation in the North East.
Going back to the troubled period in Nagaland between 1970 and 1974 the IB officers had given excellent account of themselves as fire fighters. There were important gaps in agent recruitment and intelligence generation but our daily breads were earned with ease and the image of the IB, as a prime intelligence organisation did not suffer much damage.
However, at the macro level there was very little intelligence input from Delhi encompassing the likely impacts from the developing situation in East Pakistan, internal developments in China and the Chinese strategy in Indian North East. That the pro-Chinese post-Phizo Naga leadership would emerge as the fulcrum of the insurgency movements in the North East and the internal fault lines in Assam and elsewhere would be exploited by Pakistan, China and certain pro-Pakistani forces in Bangladesh were hardly assessed and conveyed to the field formations. The insipid annual report of the Home Ministry has always been an exercise in bureaucratic skulduggery.
I must give some credit to the Armed Forces. During my discussions with the MI reps in Kohima I always gathered impressions that they were adept in making long-term intelligence estimate, not only on the defence front but also on the internal security front. At a later date the Joint Intelligence Committee was assigned the task of making such intelligence estimates, but its functioning was stifled by non-cooperation of the prime intelligence agencies. And at no point of time an effort was made to correlate the internal security estimates with the military and diplomatic estimates. Each satrap functioned inside his assumed sovereign territory, and there are reasons to believe that these leopards have not changed their spots.
*
I left Nagaland in late September 1974 with a heavy heart and great expectations. My heart was heavy because I was leaving behind a theatre where I spent the first few years of my married life with my lovely wife and where our two sons were born. I had come to love and appreciate the people of Manipur and Nagaland. I hated the idea of severing my personal and professional contacts with some of the top Naga and Meitei leadership. I very much liked to stay on to see the fruition of the new peace initiative. But Delhi’s magnanimous offer of posting me to Calcutta as the Assistant Director, Security Control, had held out a greater allurement.
My stay in Nagaland was rewarded in a dramatic way, when on the day of our departure to Gwahati I received a visitor from Phek village. He carried a wonderful woollen Chakesang shawl from Zashie Huire, the self styled President of the Federal Government of Nagaland. I still salute those valiant and chivalrous Naga, Meitei and Non-Naga tribal people who added several layers of happiness to our lives.
I had often fought wars against them. But those wars were related to national security. These were not directed against the people of the states. I think I had helped the process of integration by using the tools of subversion, conversion and equalisation of our mutual perspectives on vital national and local tribal issues. I did not only complete a tenure I accomplished some self-imposed missions.
BACK TO SANGRI-LA
The difference between a politician and a statesman is: a politician thinks of the next election and a statesman thinks of the next generation.
James Freeman Clarke.
Our momentary tryst with Calcutta, where we reported in November 1974, was haunted by mysterious destiny. The amorphous force did not want us to root in Calcutta, our city of dream. We glided and fleeted over the skies of Calcutta like
hemanta
(fall season) cloud. It left a bitter taste on our soul and re-educated us about the social realities of the so-called metropolitan, classless, and casteless society of Bengal. I would like to state, in short, that the local satraps of the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau suffered from extreme myopic caste values that reminded me of the hated
Purusha Sukta
of the Rig Veda. The IB unit was reeking with corruption and nepotism. Fortunately for us, an offer came by my way for taking up an assignment in Sikkim, the Himalayan Kingdom that had just merged with India. I decided to avail of the opportunity mainly to avoid unsavoury clashes with the caste satraps, who flaunted their Brahmanism shamelessly.
Sunanda faced immense difficulty in saying goodbye to Calcutta. She had deep emotional links with the great city. She was born in Calcutta. I was also jarred by the trauma. My life was refashioned by the city after my family migrated from East Pakistan.
I loved Calcutta, but I was not destined to live and serve in the city of our dream. We were passing clouds over the city of chance, charm and chivalry.
We drove down to Gangtok on June 9, 1975. The IB had felt the need for posting an officer at Gangtok after the ‘merger’ of Sikkim with India in May 1975. Some said it was an act of outright annexation. I do not intend to open the Pandora’s Box of political and diplomatic obfuscations that had brought to an end a 300-year old ‘religious monarchy’ tucked away in a strategic corner between India, Nepal and China. The bigger countries often dictate terms on smaller countries with different cultural and social values. India had done nothing new that had not been done by the countries of the West. India took advantage of the special treaty relations with Sikkim and exploited the democratic ambitions of the people of the protectorate. Legality of the ‘merger’ is still a suspect, if the circumstances are evaluated in the backdrop of international law and the history of evolution of relationship between British India and Sikkim.
In any case, being an integral part of India the new State required an internal intelligence infrastructure to look after the internal and counter intelligence functions. The R&AW officer was supposed to open a new shop for covering external intelligence pertaining to China. However, for a while, probably for the sake of continuity and cover I was designated as the Officer on Special Duty and not the usual designation of Assistant Director.
Most of the local political leaders, a few key local bureaucrats and members of the intelligentsia were attuned to the practices of dealing with the office of the Political Officer, which was manned by the members of the Indian Foreign Service. The OSD (Police) too acted as an adjunct to the Political Officer. The South Block office of the External Affairs handled the Sikkim affairs. They and the R&AW were the paymasters. The Sikkimese leaders and people were new to the Home Ministry and Intelligence Bureau. Nevertheless, they did not take time to understand that a new poorer paymaster had arrived with a new brief and a slimmer brief case.
In smaller and ethnically distinguished states of the North East the reckonable personages felt comfortable to deal with the Intelligence Bureau officers. They were treated as direct emissaries of Delhi. The illusion was near perfect and it worked well as long as the innocent ethnic people were not netted in the whirlpool of corruption and politics of ‘perpetual defection’. The new realities in the Indian mainland had wizened the political creatures of the smaller states and they found it easier to influence the leaders in Delhi with briefcases rather than interacting with their poor servants, the IB representatives.
I think I had lived up to the expectations of the people, both in Manipur and Nagaland and in the process had learnt the tricks of playing the games a diplomat normally played. The diplomatic content of my work provided a reliable channel sans the late night wet parties and undefined ambiguous demeanour ambivalent yes and nos. The tribal folks in the North East were used to straight and simple dealings and they expected results to follow through the highway of administrative clarity and not through the slippery alleys of slush money. I believe they have undergone major changes, changes that are brought about by easy money and growth of class division in the traditionally classless and casteless societies. Corruption has subverted the constitutional and legal process and there is nothing special about the spread of stinks to the new North East partners of our Great India.
Sikkim was different. It was a home to the innocent Lepchas and the wily Bhutias. The later excelled in Tibetan shrewdness. The Bhutias represented the ruling elite, who were close to the palace and exercised hegemony on the land and monasteries. They had become accustomed to the sophisticated and complicated relationship with the Foreign Office in Delhi and proximate direct handling by the top politicians of India. Some of the dreamers in the Himalayan protectorate aspired for upgraded relationship with India enjoyed by Bhutan. Some of them even thought in terms of attaining sovereignty like Nepal and aspired for tacit and strategic foreign help.
The Nepalese, the numerical majority but proletariat of the kingdom, hovered over the outer fringes of political and economic affairs of the country. Most of them were not even ‘Sikkim Subjects’. Nepal, like East Pakistan/Bangladesh, is a great exporter of human non-assets to India. They traversed through the lesser Himalayas and settled down in fertile pockets of Sikkim.
They were placed in a precarious situation. Across the borders in Nepal the Nepali speaking people were yet to assert their full political and economic rights. In the neighbouring Darjeeling district of West Bengal the Nepalis were placed in a different footing. They were on the threshold of bursting into the arena of real political and economic power. The big brotherly attitude of the Bengalis had alienated the Nepali-speaking people of West Bengal and Calcutta had not woken up to the developmental needs of the serene hill district. The three Ts (tea, timber and tourism) of the Himalayan beauty queen were exploited mostly by the outsiders. Very little was invested back. The Calcutta baboos rollicked in their politics, frolicked in their assumed cultural superiority, and did not consider that Bengali civilisation and culture could even exist north of the Ganges. Years of neglect had aroused sub-national ethnic aspirations and the Nepalis of Darjeeling and the Duars had taken firm steps towards asserting their birthrights. However, the Darjeeling Nepalis enjoyed greater privileges, compared to their ethnic brethren in Nepal and Sikkim.
It is not my intention to write another thesis on the merger of Sikkim or its alleged annexation. The tide of political events in Sikkim was inexorably moving towards democratic rule by the elected representatives of the people since 1963, when Palden Thondup Namgyal ascended the throne after the death of his father Tashi Namgyal. His inability to accommodate the aspirations of the people was compounded by his American wife Hope Cooke. Her dreams to transform Sikkim to an absolute monarchy had driven the Chogyal to think in terms of independent sovereign status for his country. He was also swayed away by the hollow noises made by some ‘western friends’. It would not be correct to assert that Hope Cook had conspired to stab India’s strategic concerns.
It is often alleged that this commoner turned queen American was a CIA plant. Most of these allegations are not backed by facts. The Chogyal did not choose correct timings to demand a treaty revision and upgrading Sikkim’s relationship with India. What he did not consider was that creation of Bangladesh next door and democratic movement among a section of the subjects had created an anomalous situation which compelled India to reconsider Sikkim’s treaty status afresh in the light of its stalled relationship with China. Indira Gandhi was in desperate need of doing something spectacular to retrieve her sagging political fortune. This one tigress was far superior to the assumed tigress of Sikkim, Hope Cook Namgyal, and the tigress in waiting, Kazini Eliza Maria Khangsarpa, wife of the pro-democracy leader Kazi Lehndup Dorji Khangsarpa. The Chogyal was caught up in a time warp, which had rendered the ‘merger’ of Sikkim inevitable. He had failed to see the galactic whirlwind advancing on his kingdom.
Sikkim could have been a dream come true to the queen. However, to India its strategic importance was paramount. At the height of the Cold War India could not afford to have a suspected US surrogate on its borders with China. Delhi was considered as a rouge ally of the Red USSR and the Bangladesh war had frayed as much nerves in Washington, Beijing, and London as it did in Pakistan. Sikkim provided a buffer between India and China and a friendly Sikkim was absolutely necessary for the Indian army to guard its flanks on the chicken neck area that was precariously closer to the Chumbi Valley positions of the Chinese armed forces.
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was making desperate efforts to emerge out of the shadows of defeat at Dacca and the impact of the Simla Accord, echoed noises raised by the Chogyal. The Nepal durbar too was not very enamoured by tacit Indian support to the democratic movements.
The Chogyal too failed to understand that with her decisive victory over Pakistan Indira had reached the peak of her political career. She had, however, the distinction of turning victory unto defeat. The spring of 1971 was followed by another round of drought, scarcity, post-war inflation, and rampant corruption. She was ready to secure her position by any means, be it the nuclear test at Pokharan or dalliance with the democratic aspirations of the people of Sikkim. In short, that was not the correct point of history chosen by the king and his American queen to play
mahzong
(a Chinese board game) with Indira.
Indira had other compulsions too. Between 1971 and 1975 Indira Gandhi’s political boat rocked between the crests of success and the furrows of depression. Failed monsoons, drought, and the follow up effect of the war had telling effects on the economy. The rise in oil prices also helped in pushing up inflation by 20%. Food riots broke out in different parts of the country. This was followed by innumerable industrial strikes.
Indira’s woes were aggravated by a series of controversies around Sanjay Gandhi and his Maruti car project and the Supreme Court judgement on the government’s constitutional amendments of 1971. She retaliated by superseding three senior judges and appointing her man of choice, Justice A. N. Ray as the Chief Justice of the apex court.
Indira faced another setback when the maverick politician Raj Narain filed an election suit against her for alleged electoral malpractices in the 1971 elections. January 1974 witnessed the outbreak of students’ agitation in Gujarat, popularly known as Nav Nirman movement. Her protégé Chiman Bhai Patel was dismissed and President’s rule was imposed. The JP movement launched by the veteran Gndhian and socialist Jayaprakash Narayan had started rocking Bihar and other states. The movement drew support from the left wing organisations as well as the Hindutwa forces of the RSS. The JP momentum was supplemented by the nationwide railway strike initiated by the firebrand socialist George Fernandez.
It appeared that Indira had run out of ideas and initiative. She was not yet ready to play the loser. Her critics at home and abroad had described the 18th May 1974 nuclear implosion at Pokharan as an act of desperation of a leader who had seemingly run out of options. In any case it boosted up Indira’s domestic image slightly and she managed to take complete control of the Congress organisation and install her staunch follower Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed as the President of India. Indira bounced back to political offensive, though her home front was marginally clouded by Sanjay Gandhi’s marriage to Maneka, whose social image was not considered impeccable, and whose family, Indira thought, did not measure up to the status of the Nehru-Gandhi legacy.
Spate of agitations against Indira almost all over India echoed in the hills and dales of Sikkim too. Her resolve to blunt the democratic movements inside India manifested in another form in Sikkim. Her government lent full support to the pro-democracy forces and the Chogyal failed to gauge the depth of Indira’s determination to use the Sikkim card to boost up her internal image. India watchers have often described that her wounds made her more ferocious. Her domestic compulsions had forced her to take a non-resilient attitude to the Sikkim monarch. She made the Foreign Office and the intelligence agencies to play to her tune and push the Chogyal to the deepest of political crevices. The Indian Constitutional Amendment of August 1974 had rendered the Chogyal as a mere constitutional head. Queen Cooke who returned to the USA with broken dreams had deserted him. The lonely king, a sophisticated parlour friend, was no match for the wily games of the Foreign Office, the R&AW and the huge presence of the Indian Army. He played his cards wrong.
Indira was not content with the slow progress of the democratic movement as she was more violently pilloried by the fast pace of the democratic agitations at her home turf. Her dramatic option in Sikkim resulted in marching of the contingents of the Indian Army to Gangtok and invasion of the palace on April 8, 1975. This was followed by a cleverly manipulated referendum on April 14 that returned an overwhelming verdict in support of Sikkim’s merger with India. Barring a handful of collaborators most Sikkimese had no illusion that the referendum was manipulated and rigged. It indeed was. It is presumed that the true history of the ‘merger’ of Sikkim would be chronicled by a non-partisan historian in due course of time.