Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (27 page)

Some of the old-school bureaucrats and political elements loyal to the former Chogyal were pushed to the periphery and were shunned by the ‘loyal’ Indians. The line of communication had snapped and politicians like K. C. Pradhan, N. B. Bhandari, and L. B. Basnet were avoided as plague. A few bureaucrats like Jigdal Densappa, M. M. Rasaily, and Karma Topden supposedly close to the palace were on suspect list.

The Bhutia and Lepcha villagers were none too happy to see their ‘spiritual king’ being treated as dirt and kept confined to his palace. The heads of several monasteries too were smarting under the impression that India had done wrong to their king and ‘dharma.’

As an intelligence operator I could not afford to merge myself with the two extremes of the collage. I had a tough job in selling the IB to an administration and a political system, which were attuned to the wavelengths of the other segments of the government of India.

The police commissioner, an Indian appointee, had to shift his loyalty to the new government and had the unpleasant tasks of policing over the elements loyal to the former bread giver, the king of Sikkim.

*

P. R. Khurana, a colourful senior IPS officer from Madhya Pradesh, replaced Bajrang Lal, the incumbent police commissioner. Khurana did not blink to tell me in our first meeting that the ‘Director Intelligence Bureau had given him a carte blanche’ to draw upon the intelligence resources of the local IB detachment. The revelation was followed by a verbal order that I should report to him every week and share all the intelligence that my office generated. He did not think twice to treat me as a direct subordinate and summon my total ‘loyalty.’

The proclamation did not amuse me. It had created several complications in the coming years. But I did not have the guts to ask the DIB (S. N. Mathur) if he had really given a blank cheque to Khurana. However, I managed to send a verbatim report on my first encounter with Khurana to the desk supervisor telling him that such an arrangement would simply invite disaster to the Intelligence Bureau. Khurana interpreted cooperation as total surrender.

Swimming with the tide was an easy job. The ‘deputationist officers’ were my natural friends and it did not take time to befriend the key officials of the government at Gangtok. The bureaucrats are the best weathercocks. Once they discovered that I had developed excellent equation with the Governor, the Chief Minister and his cabinet colleagues and especially the Kazini they did not take time to sing paean of the virtues of the IB and the excellent person that I was. The lowly district officials submitted even before I intended to ask them to. It was a funny situation, quite different from the eely characteristics of the officialdom in Manipur and Nagaland.

But I faced a virtual firewall in persons who were still loyal to the Chogyal and the institutions that were under the influence of the palace. An unwritten law in Gangtok had lain down that the officials of the reigning regime should keep no truck with the ‘Chogyal and his minions.’ I was asked by the Governor to submit regular reports on the activities of the Chogyal, the Crown Prince and the members of the gentry closer to him. Governor B. B. Lal was a seasoned administrator. He understood well the game of intelligence generation and sharing. He was happy with the ratio of intelligence sharing and denial, an art of statecraft not appreciated by many.

But I was the first Indian officer to break the taboo of fraternising with the Chogyal and his trusted people. We started with the Chogyal himself by using the services of Capt. Sherab Palden, a Bhutia member of the former army of the Chogyal. We were invited to tea at the palace on September 15, 1975, just after a couple of months after our arrival in Gangtok.

Sunanda and I were received by the personal attendants of the Chogyal and ushered into the throne room. King Palden Thondup arrived after about five minutes dressed up in typical Bhutia dress and flaunting a weary smile on his face. We did not have to go through the ceremonies of introduction. A man with sharp memory, the king readily recalled our meeting with him in 1968 and commented that he wasn’t left with the resources to welcome my wife in traditional style of the palace.

We talked about the general political scenario in India and the changes and challenges that Sikkim faced under the present dispensation. He did have plenty of good words for Jawaharlal Nehru but was very curt in his reference to Indira. He regretted that Jawaharlal’s daughter had decided very late in the day to treat Sikkim as one of the numerous princely states, which it was not. Sikkim, he added, had enjoyed special treaty relations with India, both under the British and the Independent Republic. Where was the need for flexing muscle against a defenceless protectorate? Wasn’t it a part of Indira’s conspiracy to gobble up the Himalayan kingdom?

I listened patiently. The dethroned king had found a patient listener in me and he wasn’t afraid of speaking out, though he had the full understanding about the nature of the job I was supposed to handle in Sikkim. At the end of the hour-long meeting he conducted us to the royal shrine and offered worship and finally presented Sunanda with a piece of blue emerald. I could not gather the heart to decline the present and parted the pleasant company of the former king with promises of revisits. On my return I transmitted a report to the IB with a mention of the present given to my wife. I offered to remit the present to Delhi for whatever they wanted to do with it. The DIB, however, was pleased with the report and sent a personal note to me emphasising the need for frequent meetings with the former king and persons close to him. He allowed us to keep the blue emerald. He also directed me to keep the Governor briefed.

Gangtok was a small place. The local police faithfully reported to the Governor and the Chief Minister the fact of our visit to the palace. I had already briefed Governor B. B. Lal. But the Kazini fretted and fumed over the visit and asked if I were really loyal to Delhi. It took considerable efforts to convince her about the needs for keeping a window open to the Chogyal and his loyalists. Kazi Lehndup was not new to the intelligence game and he appreciated my efforts in opening up a meaningful dialogue with the Chogyal and his trusted people. I assured him that this process was necessary to bring to the mainstream the sulking and injured loyalists of the former regime, who were still holed up in the dark grandeur of the past.

P. R. Khurana was the only person who refused to accept gracefully my window-opening game. He demanded a full briefing every time I visited the palace. I declined to oblige him, in spite of his reminders that the DIB had given him a ‘carte blanche.’

The news of our visits to the palace had tremendous effect on Chogyal loyalists. Important individuals like Jigdal Densappa, M. M. Rasaily, Narbahadur Bhandari and many others welcomed our visits to their homes. Our social exchanges were soon metamorphosed to important tools of intelligence generation. I used the resources of the IB to cultivate some of these leaders and personalities.

Some of the staunchest followers of the former king were deeply attached to the cult of Sathya Sai Baba, a god man from Puttaparti. I never believed in god men. But I feigned having deep devotion to the so-called saint to engage important people like M. M. Rasaily to bring them back to the mainstream. In fact, I had taken initiative in forming a group of Sathya Sai devotees, which had later flourished into a sizeable organisation.

The IB unit in Gangtok was endowed with the facility of a fully-fledged and well-equipped medical dispensary and a regular doctor. This outfit was primarily used for the staff members of the border check posts and those of the Sonam Gyatso Mountaineering Institute, IB’s in house mountaineering school that trained all the new entrants in the skill of climbing and survival in the remotest border check posts. I diverted, with permission of the IB, some medical facilities to some of the Chogyal loyalists and some of them were even supplied with daily kitchen needs from the ration items meant for the check posts.

One of the important beneficiaries was Narbahadur Bhandari, who had suffered most while defending the Chogyal and opposing the Indian sponsored moves to ‘annex’ the small kingdom. He lived on the meagre income of his wife and I took the advantage of supporting him with his daily needs and medical facilities. He was not a paid agent, but he did not decline to associate with me. I discovered that Bhandari was not a secessionist and he did not want to fight back for the Chogyal. He too understood the realities of the situation and bided his time to build up mass base. I did not see any harm in his open and democratic political activities, though some of his speeches were directed against the ‘
desh bechoas
’ and ‘corrupt deputationist officers from India’. Having grown up in democratic India I had learnt to respect the voices of political dissent and I refused to fall in line with the police commissioner to book N. B. Bhandari under Defence of India Rule (DIR) and the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA).

Bhandari later managed to ride on the crest of anti-India feelings and the failings of the government of Kazi Lehndup Dorji and grab political power. I am here not to sit on judgement on the intrinsic honesty of Bhandari and follow the tails of the CBI to unearth the mountain of black money that he allegedly managed to pile up. Bhandari did nothing new. The political breed in India enjoys almost constitutional protection in their acts of plundering the national coffers and the pockets of the poor. He simply followed the illustrious footsteps of his senior partners in Delhi and elsewhere in India.

Bhandiri is not a lone thug. He is in good company. However, I cherish the memory of the honest schoolteacher Bhandari who had the courage of conviction to oppose the Indian take over of Sikkim.

With the loyalists of the former durbar fraternising with me I faced very little difficulty in making friends out of the sullen Bhutia and Lepcha village chiefs and the heads of several monasteries. The final reward came from the Karmappa, the head of the Rumtek monastery. He graced our home by paying a visit to us, and later holding special ‘
kalachakra
’ worship at the monastery before Sunanda was taken down to Siliguri for an emergency hysterectomy operation.

I derived satisfaction from the fact that within the short span of eight months I had succeeded in extending ground coverage to the entire territory of Sikkim and I had achieved unique penetration of the operating system in the 22nd state of India. The border check posts received equal support and I made it a point to take Sunanda and the kids to remote posts like Chungthang, Lachen, Lachung, and Sherathong on Nathu La and Uttrey on Nepal border. We were warmly received by the village elders and enjoyed the distinction of dancing and dining with them. In the process I helped my officers in winning over several trans-border agents who made forays deep into Tibet and gathered valuable intelligence on the Chinese formations and the morale of the people.

My experiences with the brave souls in the Sonam Gyatso Mountaineering Institute were more pleasant than I expected. I was never a mountain man, though I was deeply in love with the hills more than I was with the seas. Sonam Wangyal, the celebrated Everest hero, presided over a team of dedicated officers and
Sherpas
.

They trained the officers of the IB in mountaineering and survival skills. Twice in a year they assisted me in sending out patrolling parties along the frequented and unfrequented routes along the international borders that were normally taken by the Chinese graziers and clandestine operators. The system of sending out patrolling and reconnaissance parties once around May and again in October was part of a well laid out intelligence exercise devised way back by Mr. B. N. Mullick, the guru of post independence Indian intelligence and security edifices.

Our boys mapped out the routes and gathered tell tale signs of enemy intrusion to the higher reaches of the snow bound Himalayan peaks. They observed the Chinese formations across the international borders and on occasions snapped the landmarks in the Chinese territory.

The entire Sikkim border along China was divided into four sectors and eight patrol parties were sent out regularly. The exercise produced valuable intelligence input about use of the old routes by the enemy agents and operators and development of new routes and pickets.

However, after these posts were handed over to the R&AW around 1982, I was told by usual informed sources that the healthy practice of sending seasonal patrol parties had gone into disuse. The R&AW depended more on aerial photography and trans-border human assets, which was a rare commodity. The R&AW officers were made of softer stuff and they always pined and lobbied for foreign postings. Slogging on the ground was not their forte. Continued neglect of this valuable tool of border intelligence had often invited disaster to the security concerns of the country. A glaring example of such neglect and resultant complication was the Kargil coup in 1999, when the Pakistani regulars had managed to entrench themselves deep inside the Indian Territory across the Line of Control. The nation had to pay a heavy price for such blatant neglect of the time honoured intelligence tool, which was once so deftly used by the Intelligence Bureau.

This comment is not related to organisational rivalry. It is based on solid hard-rock evidence.

The SGMI was a low-key but highly efficient organisation. I took the advantage of Sonam Wangyal’s stewardship and organised several ambitious expeditions to the higher reaches of the Himalayas. The 22,000’ Siniolchu, in the southeastern fringe of the Kanchenjungha was one of the peaks successfully climbed by the IB boys. I had accompanied the boys up to the base camp at 14,000’. During my tenure I had to use the helicopter services to evacuate five of my boys from the higher reaches. One of the boys, Rinzing, was stuck at Dombang post on Tibet border. He could not be evacuated in time due to severe snowstorm and continuous inclement weather. He was evacuated after five days of strenuous effort. By that time his lung cavity was flooded by pneumonic fluid and he succumbed before we could shift him to the Army Base Hospital at Binnaguri. His ashes were later scattered over the top of the Chomolongma (Everest) by Phurba Tsering, another instructor of the SGMI.