Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (47 page)

BACK TO THE BRINK OF FAULT LINES

The middle of the road is all of the stable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.

Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Eisenhower is a star performer on the theatre of history. He earned the right to view a road from any angle he felt conducive to his march to victory. However, for a lesser mortal like me even the middle of the road is not stable. The gutters are usual places where history tends to throw a creature like me when he is out of tune with the symphony of time.

I was not sure if I was thrown into the right or left gutter on my arrival back to India from the frying pan in Canada. July 1987 was not the best of time to be in Delhi. The blazing summer and a scanty monsoon aside India was again forced to walk over the hellish fire of political instability, stink of corruption and ethnic unrest and insurgency. It appeared that some psychological toxin had infected Rajiv Gandhi, which forced him to fritter away the tremendous goodwill he had earned as a ‘clean’ man. He fretfully emptied the basket of sympathy that was showered on him by the grieving people of India. I often suspected that the Nehru-Gandhi genes contained certain contradictory chemical combinations that forced even Indira Gandhi to be vanquished when on a winning spree. She simply did not know when and where to stop. Rajiv Gandhi was not spared the genome twist.

Many political analysts have questioned the dynastic succession of Rajiv. They forget that Indira Congress had the right to choose a leader who could keep his mother’s party together and keep happy the power barnacles attached to it by distributing the spoils of office. People who confuse Indira Congress with the Indian National Congress of post-independence days obviously have been caught in the time-wrap. The new Congress was not even a clone of the past one. It was a mutant.

Whatever it is, Rajiv had started with a positive note. He walked past the ashes of his mother and the rubbles of the holiest places of the Sikhs and concluded the historic accord in July 1985 with Sant Harchand Singh Longwal, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader. The accord, however, did not neutralise the terrorist fringe of the Sikhs, who had by that time walked into the trap of Pakistan and its dreaded tool, the Inter Services Intelligence. The Sikh diaspora also did not accept the accord and kept on conspiring with the Pakistani establishment to give the terrorist movement a contrived colour of ‘independence movement’. It appeared that certain global capitals were not concerned over the predicament in which a scheming neighbour, Pakistan, which was emboldened by its success in Afghanistan, pushed India to the precipice of crisis. Its newfound friendship with the Cold War adversaries of the USSR had added muscle and operational expertise to its rulers. While in Canada I had gathered a feeling that the White House and its allies were supportive of the Pakistani dictator. The West was not yet ready to appreciate the pains of terrorism, because they were yet to be hit by the fanatics. Canadian attitude had undergone some changes after the Sikh militants downed the Air India flight, in which hundreds of Canadian citizens had perished.

Sant Longwal’s assassination and landslide victory of the SAD faction in the ensuing state assembly election had failed to solve the Punjab tangle along the contours of Rajiv-Longwal Accord. The Punjab sore had transformed into gangrene and Pakistan sponsored proxy-war continued unabated.

Failure to implement the accord had rendered S. S. Barnala, the chief minister, a persona non grata with the Akalis as well as the terrorists. The later reoccupied the Golden Temple complex and tore down the rebuilt
Akal Takht
. Once again they brought in weapons inside the gurdwara and were in full control of the complex by March 1986. The spectre of violence gripped entire Punjab and the terrorists struck as far as in Maharashtra where they killed the former COAS, General Vaidya.

The assiduously concluded Assam Accord too had started faltering. Though it had brought the cycle of violence in Assam to a temporary halt and brought in the Assom Gana Parishad, the political front of the All Assom Students Union, the accord had spawned several new agitations with violence and secession as the core meteor. Agitation by the Bodos for a separate Bodoland and the Nepalis for a Gorkhaland State in West Bengal had kicked off new controversies only to prove that the political geography of India was yet to satisfy the ethnic minorities, who were once clubbed with the majority ethnic, racial and linguistic groups. Many observers suspect that Indira Congress promoted the Bodo and Gorkha agitations with a view to containing the Ahom parochialism in Assam and the Marxist power base in West Bengal.

Signing of the Mizo Accord with a tired Pu Laldenga was the only accord that satisfied the ethnic aspirations of the broader Lushai tribes. However, the Kashmir accord signed in November 1986 with the National Conference of Dr. Farooq Abdullah that envisaged power sharing and the subsequent excesses committed during the state assembly elections in 1987 had, in fact, triggered off fresh cycle of violence. This time around Pakistan was free from its commitment in Afghanistan and it did not lose time in turning the flow of the
Mujahideen
s and weapons from its western border to the eastern flank. The humbling of the Red Bear and near collapse of the Cold War iron curtain had emboldened Pakistan to aspire for a final solution of the unfinished agenda of partition. The fire triggered off by the mindless denial of democratic rights to the Kashmiris in 1987 haunted Rajiv and the successor governments. In fact, Kashmir had taken the centre place in Pakistani psyche and international Islamist terrorism, often called as global jihad campaign, had become an integral part of Pakistan’s state policy. The Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan had assumed the role of an exporter of terrorism to the Balkans, Muslim majority units of Russian Federation, Central Asian territories, and northern Africa besides its umbilical enemy India. The USA and its allies were yet to comprehend the exact colour of the political soul of Pakistan that was hijacked by the Army Establishment. Terrorist and Islamist outfits patronised by the USA during the Afghan war had made Pakistan a permanent bacterial colony. The West was yet to wake up to the reality that international terrorism is an indestructible colony of bacterium. It could infect their society as well. India too realised the truth much later.

Rajiv Gandhi had failed to comprehend that accords are imposed solutions more often contrived by tired warriors. They tend to resume the war after a little strategic rest. The Assam accord too did not douse the fire in the disturbed state. A section of the AASU broke away from the AGP after being disillusioned by non-implementation of the key clauses of the accord and dismal performance of Prafulla Mohanto government. Inspired by some left extremists and insurgent elements in Nagaland and Manipur they reactivated the United Liberation Front of Assom (ULFA) and soon launched a violent separatist movement. Pakistan and certain inimical elements in Bangladesh did not ignore the new tongues of fire. They stoked it like they had earlier nurtured and nourished the insurgency movements in Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur and Tripura.

The spree of accord did signify Rajiv’s good intentions. But he and his advisors mostly succeeded in treating the symptoms and not the diseases and the sick patients of India in Punjab, Kashmir, Darjeeling Hills of West Bengal and Assam. The insurgent forces in the North Eastern states of Nagaland, Manipur and Tripura continued to bleed the nation heavily.

Rajiv’s woes were aggravated by a spate of ‘scandals’. The tongues of scandals that engulfed Rajiv were preceded and accompanied by his deteriorating relationship with President Giani Zail Singh. Ostensively infuriated by Rajiv’s lack of confidence in him on crucial matters like the spate pf accords the wily politician almost staged a coup against the elected Prime Minister of India. Arun Nehru, Rajiv’s crooked cousin, V. C. Shukla and powerful lobbies that ranged from industrial houses to thirsty and hungry politicians, ably assisted him. In fact, certain accounts attributed a plotted coup by the Reliance Industry of Dhirubhai Ambani to replace Rajiv by Arun Nehru. They were indeed close during the days of bonhomie when Arun collected funds for Rajiv’s political campaign. Dhirubhai was known to be a kind financier behind many a successful politician in India.

The removal of V. P. Singh from finance ministry to the Defence soon after the Operation Brass Tacks fiasco was reportedly triggered by flaming disputes between Dhirubhai’s Reliance Industry and Nusli Wadia’s Bombay Dyeing. An otherwise competent finance minister and a man of utmost integrity, V. P. Singh had needled the Reliance Industry, which enjoyed support from several Indira Congress stalwarts and reigning bureaucrats. Nusli Wadia, a grandson of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, on the other hand depended only on a few ‘crusaders’, Ramnath Goenka, Arun Shourie and S. Gurumurthy, all connected to the
Indian Express
group and the Hindutwa party, the RSS and its ‘Parivar’ (family) members.

Corporate war and its impact on politics is a global phenomenon. In 1980 Dhirubhai had arrived on the industrial and economic scene of India with a bang. That was the cut off point when Congress and its ministers and a few bureaucrats were trapped in the glue of Ambani allurement and helped the budding industrialist to begin his journey to the Fortune 500 Club. By 1986 Dhirubhai Ambani was in a position to influence the Indian establishment machinery in an unprecedented way. He had gained foothold inside Indira administration through political bureaucrats like Pranab Mukherjee and a number of obliging professional bureaucrats headed by Nitish Sengupta and N.K. Singh. By around 1986 Dhirubhai had understood that India was his for bribing and buying. The barriers between his ambition and India systemic sandbars had totally disappeared, thanks to willing collaboration of certain politicians and bureaucrats.

The first scandal to explode was the Fairfax affairs. The US based detective company was allegedly hired by V.P. Singh to investigate a number of Indian industrialists and important personalities like Amitabh Bacchan and his brother Ajitabh. A key letter purported to have been initiated by V.P.Singh was suspected to have been forged by Ambani operatives. The incident enraged Rajiv and V.P. Singh was removed from finance to defence ministry. The masterstroke opened Rajiv’s inner gates to Ambani and Wadia was finally pushed back to keep company of the truth seekers in the
Indian Express
Group.

Little did Rajiv know that his defence minister, a man of impeccable integrity and high political ambition, was not likely to remain content licking the Fairfax wounds. The Howaldt Deutsche Werke (HDW) submarine deal initially contracted when Indira was the defence minister in 1981 blew up as a serious scandal. Rajiv and his coterie were not ready to allow the memory of Indira to be sullied by a fresh investigation into the HDW deal. Moreover he was not ready to drag Venkatraman, the Vice President and the forthcoming Indira Congress nominee for the Presidential slot, to any controversy. Knowledgeable circles very close to Indira Gandhi, nonetheless, whispered that Venkatraman was involved in the HDW pay off. The HDW controversy proved to be the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back. V. P. Singh resigned from Indira Congress. It might have had allowed a whiff of fresh breather to Rajiv, but his ‘Mr. Clean’ image was sullied irreparably.

April 1987 did not usher in a sweet spring for Rajiv. It blew in fresh fire of scandal; this time from the shores of Sweden, over the controversial Bofors Howitzer deals. It refused to weather away, in spite of an infamous JPC report and subsequent investigations. The mega scandal had not only rocked the nation. It also rocked the political foundations of Rajiv Gandhi and Indira Congress. The party was defeated in a series of parliamentary by-elections and the return of V.P.Singh to the lower house of the parliament from Allahabad had, in fact, initiated the process of collapse of Indira Congress as a potent political force.

The Bofors deal was concluded when Rajiv held the defence charge, like his mother did when the HDW deal was struck. The stories of complicated maze of transfer and retransfer of the kickback amount only wrapped Rajiv up in the proverbial grandma’s wool ball. He could neither get out of it nor did he try to pin down the real culprits. This inability had unfortunately pointed the needle of suspicion directly at him. The shadows still haunt some slices of the conscience of the nation. (Delhi High Court exonerated Rajiv in 2004).

However, I was not at all concerned, as an intelligence operator of the IB, with the mega and super mega scandals that rocked the nation. I was thrown back on dusty Delhi and my immediate concern involved scouting out a suitable home, a school for my second son and a somewhat peaceful desk for myself. I wanted to be with my family and to forget my harassed days in Canada.

But destiny and boss desired otherwise. On the seventh day of my reporting to Delhi, I was directed to join the Punjab Operations Cell. Two competent officers of the IB were already ably oaring around in the blood poodles of Punjab and I wondered what made my boss to toss me in the cross pedalling of the existing oarsmen. I anticipated some clash of interest and disharmony in personal style of functioning. The arrangement was something like sharing a woman by two husbands, which was possible only in a mythological story. The senior officers already entrenched in the affairs of the Operations Cell had developed vested interests. They obviously did not like me fall on their laps from nowhere. How could two Generals be in charge of the same command? It was an absurd arrangement that had finally led to certain bitter consequences. But, I was there and, was required to fin around in the blood poodle of Punjab for my professional survival.