Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (43 page)

But inventory limitations had not restricted my cravings for innovation. The TechInt operations against assigned targets involved intricate innovation. But the most important innovation involved a top leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He was a very conscious person and in active touch with a Delhi based USSR intelligence operative. Most of his meetings with the diplomat used to take place in his personal car, an innocuous looking Fiat. His obliging driver had offered us access to the car for two hours. That was good enough to plant a long-life radio transmitter in his car. We had uninterrupted access to his conversations with the Soviet diplomat for about three months. But Indira Gandhi did not favour the idea of declaring the Soviet intelligence operator a persona non grata. I have reasons to believe that she had some ‘friendly chat’ with a top Marxist leader. That had taken care of a possible ugly diplomatic row.

At one point of time in 1982 Indira wanted the Parliament office of a particular ruling party minister to be bugged for sifting out intelligence nuggets about a possible coup against her. I opposed the idea of violating the sacred precincts of democracy. But I was overruled by my command and directed to implement the project with utmost care. It did not involve any intricate operation. One of the IB officers on deputation to the security staff was tackled and access was gained into the target office. A compatible receiver was stationed in a nearby ‘friendly room’. This had offered important intelligence nuggets that Indira thought were vital to weeding out Maneka sympathisers from her proximity.

I did enjoy the mud in which I was thrown and asked to swim. It offered me innumerable scope to hone up my intelligence tradecraft. But the most important benefit that I achieved did not involve money and position. It involved my ideological bearing.

The partition pains had pushed me closer to the Hindutwa protagonists. I did not attend Shakhas, but I had developed friendly relationship with a couple of RSS leaders and at least two Jan Sangh leaders from Bengal. I had built up a hate-Muslim diaphragm somewhere inside my cranium. My journey through Manipur to Delhi and the overwhelming experience in Assam had not totally washed off that diaphragm. I still hated the Muslims. I still considered that my ‘holy duty’ was to destroy Pakistan, the fountainhead of Islamist bigotry.

My Delhi tenure helped me in developing a better appreciation of the Muslim community, their problems, aspirations and frustrations. My friendship with a non-descript Muslim scribe of Gali Qabristan near Turkman Gate offered me deep access into the frozen Muslim community in the ghettos around the Jama masjid, Nizamuddin, Okhla and several other urban villages in south and east Delhi. He offered me a better tour than William Dalrymple had offered to his readers later in 1993 in his fascinating work of literature-
City Of Djinns
.

The Muslim world in the walled city was partly frozen in the past and partly mingled with the flow of social evolution. The community strictly followed the infallible injunctions of the Books and
fatwas
and believed ardently in the prescriptions of the past. Adaptation of changes in the religious and social prescriptions was frowned upon if not stoutly opposed.

To me it appeared that most of the common folks had accepted several social practices, which were distinctly Indian, if not of Hindu origin. Indian identity of certain social practices is necessarily not of Hindu origin, though my RSS friends tend to identify ‘Indianness’ with Hinduism. It is sufficient to say that soil, air, water and the people of India were not originated out of the Vedas. The waves of civilization, which traversed past the Indian subcontinent and sedimented down to the bones and marrows of the people, have generated a unique ‘Indianness’. These are common heritages of the Indian people. I did not find any inhibition in the Muslim community in and around Delhi to adopt such ‘Indian’ social practices in their daily lives. My later experience in other parts of India convinced me that the Indian Muslims are an integral part of our civilisation. I did not fail to notice that a certain section of the Muslim clergy, intellectuals and politicians were as eager to assert the distinct Islamic identity of the Muslims as my RSS friends were assertive about existence of Hindu molecule in everything Indian. Both these extreme groups were averse to accept the facts that the flow of human lineage was capable of creating and adopting social and behavioural values, which were distinctly different from the purist enunciation of religious dogma.

I am grateful to Gali Qabristan friend and other Muslim friends for offering me deep access into the Muslim community and the psyche of a people precariously hanging between the unique unified field of ‘Indianness’ and the uncertain cliff of Islamist fundamentalism.

A FALL GUY AMIDST FALL COLOURS

Canada has never been a melting pot; more like a tossed salad.

Arnold Edinborough.

The top External affairs mandarins were not enthusiastic over my unexpected selection for the coveted posting. They had one personal security officer to the PM to oblige, who later adorned the post of Lieutenant Governor, Delhi. Most of them and a few key bureaucrat-watchers in Delhi were at a loss to comprehend the meaning of my secondment to the MEA. How could the PM change her choice? I refused to divulge the secret. That worried the speculators more. I enjoyed their discomfiture. The jealousy-reddened political and bureaucratic adversaries tried their best to dig out some skeletons from my cupboard. There were none. The fattest bank account that I had in Delhi stood at Rs. 21,000, bare enough to support our trip to Canada. I had to borrow an amount of rupees 20, 000 from a service friend. I have reasons to believe that some unseen hands at the PMH had silenced the last minute barrier-builders. It could be of R.K. Dhawan.

The briefing sessions in the Ministry of External Affairs were not designed to prepare a rank outsider like me for the charmed diplomatic environment in a Mission abroad. I was simply told that as a Counsellor I was borne on the strength of the Bureau of Security headed by G.S. Bajpai, Joint Secretary (Personnel), and an old IB hand. I was simply required to perform open duties that included liaison with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on security matters and I was not supposed to dabble in intelligence generation. The R&AW had an elaborate outfit in Canada and their undercover officers manned key posts at Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver.

I looked forward to a relaxed assignment after the high-strung and bone-grinding stint in SIB Delhi. I hadn’t had a single day off and was under grinding pressure for over 18 hours seven days a week. The resultant tension had affected my health and I had contracted diabetes mellitus. The prospect of a tension free tenure and availability of advanced medical facilities propped my hopes up.

The Air India flight to Toronto via London was our first trans-Atlantic journey. We reached Ottawa on October 22, 1983, and were temporarily lodged at Chateau Laurier, the historic hotel next to the Canadian Parliament block. The first snow flurries of the season enchanted Sunanda and the kids but reminded us that we were ill prepared for the severe Canadian winter.

The High Commissioner, Mr. Shiva Ramakrishnan, a lateral entry to the Foreign Service from the field of journalism, was stricken with cancer and I could see him only once at his residence for a briefing session. Standing at the last post of his life Shiva Ramakrishnan had a simple piece of advice for me.

“You’ve joined the Mission at a crucial period. Sikh militancy is on the rise. I’m not happy with the performance of the R&AW officers. I’ve been briefed about your expertise in the field. Prepare for another tough battle.”

“But sir,” I reminded the High Commissioner, “I’m on an open assignment. I can’t indulge in intelligence generation.”

“You can’t get a divorce from your profession. I’m assigning the information and publicity desk to you. Start working under that cover.”

“Please brief me about the job requirement.”

“You won’t need detailed briefing. Penetrate the Sikh community, make friends in the Gurdwaras and win over important community leaders. Maintain your cover carefully.”

The High Commissioner expired soon after my meeting with him. K.P. Fabian, the Deputy High Commissioner and my course mate helped me in settling down at the new station. His friendly attitude helped me in counterbalancing the hostile demeanour of the R&AW officer, originally from Indian Forest Service.

The Head of the Chancery, Ashok Attri, a young IFS officer had fixed up a home for us at Country Place on the Prescott Highway, well outside the city limits. I was given to understand that Ashok had obliged a fellow Punjabi shaven Sikh by renting his house. The inconvenience apart I abhorred the idea of living in a home owned by a strong protagonist of Sikh separatism. We lived in the house for a couple of months and later I forced the Mission to change over to a Chinese owned home near Hog’s Back, on the bank of Mooney’s Bay.

The work environment was far from satisfactory. Fabian was a nice routine personality having a flair for pro-active diplomacy. His access to the Indian community was limited to mostly Ottawa based professionals and social charmers. Several strata of the Indian diaspora did not normally care for the Indian diplomats except for occasional visit to the chancery for visa or passport renewal. And there were the socialites who derived self-glorification by rubbing shoulders with the members of the diplomatic corps, sipping late night whisky and attending national day functions.

The Indians were not a wholesome lot. They were organised on linguistic and parochial lines. The Tamil, Telugu, Malayali, Punjabi, Bengali, Hindi speaking north, central and western Indian people had crafted out distinct cultural cobwebs for themselves. They were mostly busy with their own community affairs. By 1983 end the Punjabi community had undergone a vertical and horizontal split. The Sikhs generally reorganised themselves around the Gurdwaras and displayed proclivities of supporting the separatist movement in Punjab. The Hindu Punjabis tilted away towards the Hindi speaking north Indian conglomerate. They decided to start a Hindu temple in Ottawa, as opposed to the construction of a Sikh Gurdwara. The chasm of Indian parochialism was as deep in Canada as it were in India.

The Indo-Canadian Association, a supposed apex body of the people of Indian people in Ottawa, was basically dominated by a stratum of leadership reminiscent of the moneybag fringe in India taking control of public institutions. They veered around the Indian diplomats with a view to shining up their own images, which were not altogether glittering.

The Indian diaspora in the rest of the Canadian provinces was not different. British Columbia has had a history of sizeable Sikh presence. They were prominently settled in BC cities like Vancouver, Kamloops, Williams Lake, Prince George, Burnaby, Surrey, Richmond and Abbotsford. Their presence in Prairie cities like Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer (Alberta), Regina, Pasqua, Lumsden (Saskatchewan), Winnipeg, Selkirk (Mnitoba) were more noticeable than the presence of other Indian communities. The prime Ontario cities like Ottawa, Toronto, Greater Toronto, Hamilton, London, Guelph and Kitchener etc did boast of a sizeable presence of Sikh population. In addition to the ‘Little India’ locations in Toronto and Vancouver the hardworking Sikh community was dispersed in several interior cities and towns. Their lives veered around the business centres and Gurdwaras.

The crème of the Indian community were highly visible. But the ‘fringe’ Indians represented by the service sector, taxi pliers, oil, agriculture, forest and lumber, steel and other manufacturing industries were not visible to the Indian Mission. They earned their bread, attended the Gurdwaras, relished the
langar
(community) food, listened to
shabad kirtans
and
Gurbanis
, read the Gurmukhi journals and listened to the audiotapes of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. A little later in early 1984 Bhindrawale’s videotapes were shipped out from Punjab, the UK and USA. This category of Sikhs did not bother about the presence of the Indian diplomats and cared very little what they did have to say about the real ground situation. Some of them had come to believe in the slogan of a separate Sikh homeland.

It was not easy for me to settle down on my job. The Deputy High Commissioner was superficially sensitive to the Sikh problem. He sidetracked the Punjabi IFS officer, Attri and heavily depended on the R&AW representative, Sundar Kumar. Kumar, in real life Sundar Kumar Sharma, was not attuned to sensitive responses to a supercharged situation. His capability of churning the human mind and his social connections was crude. I did not have the experience of working ethos of the R&AW. But I presumed that the intelligence organisations all over the world depended on certain common tradecraft mechanism and honed up special skills according to specific job requirement.

Besides dropping out the ‘sharma’ family title Sundar had no other cover to camouflage his clandestine activities. His daughters used the ‘sharma’ family title in their schools and colleges. The Canadian Mounted Police and later the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) did not require long bargepoles to fathom out the shallowness of his cover.

Sundar did not welcome my presence in Ottawa and my first assignment as Counsellor Information and Publicity did upset his applecart. The job given to me was challenging. I had at my disposal one home based and two Canada based Indian staff in running the well stocked but badly indexed library, reading room and in bringing out the ‘
India News
’, a weekly bulletin prepared and printed in the Mission. The absence of secretarial staff was a genuine impediment. A few local hands of Indian origin helped me out. Unqualified support from them made my tenure meaningful. Singaram, the man of all seasons, helped me in sprucing up the ‘
India News
’ section.

I was the boss of three India based security assistants, sepoys on deputation from paramilitary forces. My experience in India about the social, official and hierarchical status of the police constables had left an indelible impression that ‘the system’ treated them as bonded serfs. My expectation that in a civilised country like Canada and in the elevated office of the High Commission the constables would be more humanely treated was belied. The fact was more horrible than fiction. They were made to live in hole like accommodation and were treated as domestic servants by the Mission officials. I managed to earn the ire of my colleagues and, gratitude of the junior functionaries by closing the tap on ‘domestic duty’ except at the residence of the High Commissioner. But that helped me to enhance the security ambience in the High Commission.

The battlefront inside the Mission was well defined. The fields in the far horizons were smoky and blurred. The vague concept of ‘community relationship’ did maintain a fragile hanging bridge between the Mission and the large Indian community spread over the vast territory of Canada.

The Indian Consulates in Toronto and Vancouver were supposed to maintain community relations and sell India to the Asian Indians and the Canadians. But the degree of interaction and cultivation were limited to national day celebrations, religious and cultural functions. The Asian Indian community in Canada was as fractured as it was back in their land of origin. They did not look upon the Mission as a bridge to their homeland. The degree of interaction depended on the personality of the chief of the Mission. Things had improved considerably after S.K Malik and J.C.Sharma took over at Toronto and Vancouver respectively.

It took me three months to list all the associations of the people of Indian origin in the ten major provinces. The territorial and ethnic provinces of Yukatan Territory, Northwest Territory and Nunavit did not have any significant presence of Asian Indian people.

I had before me a daunting task. Besides usual linguistic, ethnic and parochial divide the Asian Indian community suffered a major three way split. The Bhindranwale bang had generated loud echoes in Canada. A vast majority of the Sikh population had started establishing a transcontinental network encompassing the separatist elements in England, continental Europe and the USA.

It is often alleged that the People of The Book turn to inflexibility and fundamentalism at the slightest provocation. The history of evolution of the civilisations bears enough testimony to this paranoiac tendency. Way back in Indian Punjab, the illiterate rural Jat Sikhs from the Doaba, Majha and Malwa regions were swayed away by the hate campaign of Bhindranwale. But, I was amazed to witness the metamorphosis amongst the highly educated and cultured Sikh gentry in Canada and USA. They had started believing in the separatist iridology and their activities were entrenched in the Gurdwaras. Illiterate
granthis
and
pathis
had assumed the roles of interpreters of the divine will of the
Sadgurus
(holy Gurus), who spoke through Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the new
sant-sipahi
(saint warrior). A few Dam Dami Taksal brand priests did not even hesitate to compare the priest from Rode village with the revolutionary tenth Guru Gobind Singh, the last of the
sant-sipahi
s of India.

The hubs of separatist activities were more manifest in the Ross Street, Malton Road and York Street Gurdwaras in Toronto and Surrey, Richmond, Kamloops and New Westminster Gurdwaras in British Columbia. Kuldip Singh Kohli, a coal trader in West Bengal, who spoke Bengali, very well, headed the agitating Sikh community at Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Jagjit Singh Chauhan, who piloted a so called Government of Khalistan in exile, and the US based Sikh leaders owing allegiance to World Sikh Organisation (WSO), formed the other three arms of the Khalistan movement on either side of the Atlantic.

A couple of important Sikh separatists who had committed heinous crimes in India had found safe haven in Canada. Talvinder Singh Parmar, Inderjit Singh Riyat of the Babbar Khalsa, Satinder Pal Singh Gill and Pushpinder Singh Sachdeva of the International Sikh Youth Federation had found Canadian ignorance and tolerance conducive to promote separatist activities. They took advantage of the aggravated Sikh sentiment in India and had managed to capture the management of some of the important Gurdwaras.

Fabian was uneducated about the Sikh psyche and the issues involved in the ongoing Punjab imbroglio. Some mishandling of the situation had resulted in Fabian’s manhandling by the agitating Sikhs at Winnipeg. I also happened to face angry demonstrations in London and Hamilton (Ontario) and Montreal (Quebec).