Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (38 page)

I cannot resist describing another funny incident in this connection.

Delhi’s grapevine wasn’t unaware about my perceived closeness to R.K. Dhawan and Indira Gandhi. Right or wrong, my visibility in the PMH and PMO was regular. I was often directed to visit that place late in the night, when the high and mighty of India lined up before Dhawan’s door and waited for Nathu or some other domestic to arrange a minute’s meeting with the Prime Minister. I often noticed the domestics pocketing gratuitous rewards from the beaming barons of industry and commerce. The doormen to the durbar are the most important heights to climb. It wasn’t unusual for these petty creatures to expect a couple of chips from the fortune hunters.

The circumstances had misled the high and mighty of Delhi to believe that I was the crocodile clip to connect to the PMH/ PMO. I had perceivably graduated to the select club of people who were supposed to be closer to the powerhouse. On the fragile wings of that perception I was often invited to the parlours and stag parties at places where entry of people of my stature were banned. I had the rare fortune of meeting ‘
mamaji
’ K. N. Agarwal in one of such parties, which were sanctified by Scotch, business deals and exclusive dance and
gazal
renditions. A present day famous Punjabi lady crooner was a regular to such exclusive evening parties.

‘
Mamaji
’ cornered me over the very important issue of my abhorrence for alcoholic drinks.

“What kind of officer are you? Scotch generates reliability. A sober guy in a whisky party is not trusted.”

“Thanks for the information.”

“Do me a favour.”

“How can I help you?’

“Have you heard of Chandra Swamiji?”

“No.”

“He is a great
tantrik
. He can perform miracles. Arrange his meeting with Indiraji.”

“Why me? You can approach a bigger guy.”

“Do it and you will be rewarded?”

“Sorry. I’m not in the line.”

He was disappointed. But I was later asked by the bosses to keep the line open to ‘
mamaji
’ as he had access to certain arms peddlers like Adnan Kassogi, a top official of the MEA connected to Kassogi club, Win Chadda and other international racketeers. I did maintain a low profile professional linkage with him till such time I could absorb the shit littered by the
mama
and swami duo. I have no reliable information if the two tricksters had succeeded in nudging anywhere closer to Indira. Dhawan told me that the Prime Minister did not trust Chandra Swami and she hadn’t given any lift to the god man.
Mamaji
, however, had built up bridges with V. S. Tripathy and his brother in law, who had succeeded me in SIB Delhi. I had the next chance of renewing my contact with
mamaji
only in 1991. In between, I have reasons to believe, that they had succeeded in cultivating certain aides of Rajiv Gandhi and had played key roles in certain manipulative operations.

The Indian Rasputins have not been able to draw the attention of the intellectuals. Such intellectuals have either been clients of the tricksters or they did not have the time to unearth the astoundingly important roles paled by them. Chandra Swami earned some notoriety because he nearly got caught in his own web, but scandal is the elixir of the mightiest and the richest. Such Rasputins have usually hooked most intellectuals at some stage of their evolution to greatness. Indira and Rajiv should not be singled out for allowing some god men to exploit their
sanskar
. Indira did not allow these magicians to go beyond a limit. But the lesser leaders after her did not have perception of the ‘Lakshman Rekha’; Indira could impose on her behavioural pattern.

*

The pace of work and the nature of tasking had almost drained me out. My services were required for over 18 hours a day and not quiet infrequently I was dragged out of bed very late in the night. I wanted a break to be with Sunanda and the kids. The boss was gracious. We were permitted to have a short break of five days. That coincided with the year-end holidays in December. We had chosen Rajasthan for the break as it would be cheaper on the pocket and my service colleagues in Jaipur were expected to provide cheap accommodation in their guesthouses.

We were invited for a meal at the house of a Sikh friend at Ganganagar. I happened to meet there a Sikh youth who was scouting out cheaper cultivable land around the Rajasthan canal. The shy youngman said that he belonged to a family of freedom fighters from village Rode, near Baghapurana in the district of Faridkot, Punjab. His grandfather Joginder Singh had taken part in the Jaitu rebellion against the British. Our host introduced him as Jasbir Singh Rode, a Brar Jat by caste. Harcharan Singh, his uncle and former junior officer of the Indian Army, accompanied him. We had small talks about the Jaitu
upri
sing and visit of Jawaharlal there in the face of stiff British opposition.

Asked about his education and vocation the young man informed me that he had undergone religious studies in a prime Sikh seminary near Amritsar and was engaged in small trading. He was mostly busy in preaching his own seminary’s religious message amongst the rural Sikhs.

The small talks rekindled my knowledge about the pro-Congress roles played by the youth’s other uncle Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a Sikh priest from Chowk Mehta seminary called Dam Dami Taksal. A small town fundamentalist, Jarnail Singh was cultivated by Sanjay Gandhi and the former chief minister of Punjab Giani Zail Singh with a view to spilt the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), the politico-religious party that championed pure Sikh causes and had stirred up the nation by floating what was later known as Anandpur Sahib Resolution in 1973. I would like to share with the readers my initial brush with the burgeoning Sikh separatist movement between 1980 and 1983.

I liked the saffron turbaned and mild mannered young man but it did not come to my wildest dream that just after seven years I would again meet him in a dinghy cell of Delhi’s Tihar jail.

*

My temporary breather was neutralised by a couple of thorny tasks. The most complicated one involved the immediate family of the Prime Minister. It would not serve any purpose to recant the circumstances under which Sanjay was married to ‘a commoner’ Maneka. Indira wasn’t an haute socialite. But she was brought up in a world of paradoxes. Motilal and Jawaharlal’s western preferences were tempered by the Kshmiri Hindu Brahmin orthodoxy of Swaruprani and Kamala Nehru. She was a queer admixture of the cultures of Bazaar Sitaram, a lane in the walled city of Delhi inhabited by orthodox Kashmiris and Anand Bhawan, the modern abode of Motilal Nehru. The Nehrus were born aristocrats having links with the glorious Muslim past of Delhi. They were the first few outside the Presidency towns to be anointed by the nineteenth century renaissance. They were amongst the firsts to catch upon the English and French way of life and when destiny called they were amongst the first few who renounced the foreign symbols and rallied around whatever was ‘swadeshi’.

The family of Colonel T.S. Anand and Amteswar Anand could by no imagination claim social equation with the Nehru-Gandhis. They had a nice home at Jorbagh, interests in business and some landed property. The colonel was a mild mannered person and believed in level living. Many Nehru-Gandhi watchers squinted their eyes and lowered their voices to inaudible decibels when Maneka’s father’s dead body was found in a rural Delhi field with a cryptic note and a pistol by its side. He had presumably committed suicide. Several theories were floated about the personal life of Maneka’s mother, Anand’s suicidal proclivities and the distinct possibility of Sanjay silencing him for permanently burying some of his stinking cupboard skeletons.

Maneka and Sonia did not gel well. The young girl married to the son of a Prime Minister expected a lot from her life. She did not anticipate the witch-hunt by the post-emergency mavericks, who believed more in driving nails than fashioning new designs for the beleaguered nation. She was under stress. She was often hysteric. Sonia had married an airline pilot and waxed happily with her private life. Rajiv, as far as I noticed, did not approve of Sanjay’s way of ‘fixing things’ as if India was garaged in his shed and waited for a few tightening of screws and bolts. Sonia was brought up in the western way of life and had adapted the Indian way without any difficulty. She did not identify herself with the new Punjabi culture of Delhi that emphasised on cloning the so-called haute society lifestyle, best described in cheap novels. She had merged with the values of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Gandhi family critics, like my Tamil Brahmin friend of Golf Link, who was still in touch with me, did not fire aimlessly when they spoke about incompatibility and hostility between the two bahus. The situation had deteriorated after Sanjay’s death. Maneka, my naughty friend expressed, had access to vital clues to some of the ill gotten wealth of Sanjay. Huge amounts, he claimed, were stashed away abroad about which Indira had no clue. The most pathogenic stories that flowed out of the house related to the fight over Sanjay’s booty and inheritance to Sanjay’s political legacy. Correctness or otherwise of these reports can only be substantiated by the two key players, who are still around and orbit around different trajectories.

There were, however, no doubt that Indira did not like her political heritage to end with her. Sanjay was a great hope and disappointment. Her fond hope that she would be able to chisel him down to Nehru-Gandhi traditions turned out to be a chimera. He betrayed her expectations, but he was the only political candle that seemed to have held out the hope of keeping alive the dynasty. Indira had created a new Congress, which was different from the party inherited by her father and the one she had impatiently waited to inherit from Lal Bahadur Shashtri. Those who suffered from the delusion of reviving the Congress of the independence movement had failed to comprehend that Indira had discarded it long back. The Indira Congress had substituted the Indian National Congress. Sanjay was an integral part of that change over. He had a rightful claim to the inheritance.

Rajiv was truly apolitical. A Torino girl, that Sonia is, cannot be apolitical. Her family had dabbled in politics of Piedmont region. Torino was the capital of Italy between 1861 and 1865. But the young girl from Torino had accepted the fact that Sanjay was the chosen inheritor. She had willingly shouldered the family chores and served the family more like an Indian bahu. Maneka, like her mother, was busy with the world outside.

Succession of another Nehru-Gandhi was inevitable. Outside the ‘Family’ there was no national figure that could lead the new political entity called Indira Congress. The political followers of Indira derived their identity from her. It’s the ‘family’ that was identified by millions of Indians, rightly or wrongly, with the legacies of the pre-independence Congress. No body, not even the political rivals of Indira had taken pains to drive the point home that the new Congress was a ‘Family’ affair. It did not reflect the aura of the bygone days.

It was all but natural for Indira to think of passing the baton to her son, the real inheritor to her political structure and charisma. Rajiv could not escape the pressure and long before May 1981, he had consented to understudy his mother. He had, in fact, started to take political and administrative lessons from various experts at his No 2 Motilal Nehru Marg office, where wizards like Vijay Dhar, Arun Singh, Arun Nehru and Amitav Bacchan etc managed the show.

My old acquaintance Vincent George, the clerical aid to R.K. Dhawan was catapulted to the position of personal secretary to Rajiv. He had earned the confidence of Sonia with painstaking efforts and their common Christian linkage had clicked well. We have maintained friendly relationship till today. George knows that he cannot purchase me and I know that I am not on offer for sale. That has strengthened the bond of trust.

However, my association with Dhawan had transcended the professional parameters. We had developed a bond of friendship. This bond continues at a low key. I had to pay a heavy price for this act of fondness for Dhawan in 1983 soon after the Delhi municipal corporation elections were over. The heat against Dhawan had started building up from the day Rajiv had decided to choose a young set of advisors who were attuned to his cultural values and shared his world vision. Rajiv did not act differently from his mother. She too was in the habit of kicking in and kicking out her personal aides.

Maneka did not like to surrender Sanjay’s political mantle to Rajiv. Sanjay wasn’t a mere life partner to her. Like her mother she too was a big player and looked forward to be the wife of the next Prime Minister of India. Sanjay’s death had wrecked her emotions and ambitions. But she was a person in hurry. Like Sanjay she hated the idea of spending meaningless time in the political nursery. She felt that she was ready to walk into the shoes of her husband. She wanted to contest the Parliamentary seat from Amethi. Indira was not averse to give some political accommodation to her young daughter in law. Maneka’s social behaviour often irked Indira but she had developed a soft corner for the young widow.

Maneka had in the meantime surrounded herself with a few young admirers and advisors. Her parental family too played a crucial role in stoking the ambition of the young widow. Maneka was indeed in a hurry.

Sonia, I suppose, was opposed to the idea of Maneka assuming important political role on sound practical considerations. She had visualised the glimpses of power coming her way with the decision to induct Rajiv to active politics. She hated the idea of rooting of a parallel centre of power in the personal office of her sister in law. She supported Rajiv. The breaking point between Sonia and Maneka was almost reached even before Rajiv declared his intention to contest the Parliamentary poll on May 5, 1981.