Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (55 page)

The whispers of Bhattachariya produced the desired effect. I was summoned by an aide to the PM and directed to stop my son from lampooning Rajiv in the
Indian Express
. I declined to oblige and told him that my adult son was responsible enough to express his political views and I reminded that any harassment to him would invite legal action. The brave aide to Rajiv Gandhi had ticked me off as a persona non grata. I did not care. By that time I had decided to pursue my professional commitment to the PCIU, Punjab operations and upcoming commitments with the initial security and intelligence operations in Kashmir.

These incidents and the pressure on my family refashioned the political creature in me to tilt towards the forces of change, basically the RSS and the BJP. I have never suffered from the illusion preached by Gita that divine incarnations manifested themselves in Bharat whenever it faced crisis of faith. In the recent past we had disowned two such
yugapurshas
, legendary men, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and the warrior freedom fighter, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. I sincerely believed that neither Rajiv nor V. P. Singh had the intrinsic qualities of assuming the role of
yugapurasha
.

I never thought I possessed a messianic zeal like the
yugapurushas
. But I was essentially a political creature and I decided to act in consonance with the forces, which laboured to bring changes to the political structure. I could not prevent myself from detaching from the son of Indira and resolving to support the Sangh. It was my personal decision as a conscious citizen of India; not as an intelligence operative.

I did not know V. P. Singh. I did not believe in his messianic capabilities and political and economic vision, though I was impressed by his honesty and courage. My natural reaction was to strengthen the only untested national political force, the BJP and I hoped that it would be able to give India a clean administration and open up the process of reinterpreting the ‘apartheid’ compartmentalisation in the Hindu society and modify the similar ‘apartheid’ interpretation of the concept of secularism.

My contacts with the RSS and BJP friends were strengthened by the above-narrated developments and we continued to work in the direction of augmenting the vote banks of the BJP and its deemed ally, Jan Morcha, floated by V.P.Singh. K. N. Gobindachariya, Piyush Goyal, Uma Bharati, Deodas Apte, S.Gurumurthy and Rajendra Sharma acted as emissaries of the BJP leadership. Bhurelal and advocate Rayan Karanjiwala often contacted me on behalf of V.P.Singh. But I declined their offer to meet the Jan Morcha leader and cultivate him before he took over the reins of the country. I was told that such pre-election meetings could be highly rewarding. Somehow or other I did not trust V.P.Singh’s looks, which appeared to be shallow and shifting. In my perception he was not a stable person. I did not consider him as an alternative to Rajiv, but only a temporary pause.

My calculations were calibrated to draw a definable conclusion about the outcome of the 1989 elections. My informal non-IB team was mobilised and I started receiving feedback that Rajiv Congress was not likely to cross the 200 mark. I was not very enthusiastic about the political creatures around V. P. Singh, especially wily political animals like Devilal and Chandrashekhar. They were seasoned players in the politics of defection and affection and both suffered from burning ambition to grab the tattered crown of India. The Janata Party experiment was too ghastly for a country, which gasped for fresh political breath after a strangulating spell of emergency. I was not sure if the apparently well-intentioned raja of Manda, a son who had declined to recognise his own blood, would be able to recognise the blood-pulsations of the people of India.

I had consciously settled for the BJP and my friends in the RSS; not for V. P. Singh, a visionary without any vision. I suffered from the hope that the BJP could give a cleaner administration and provide greater security to the country. I might have been prejudiced because of my adolescent connectivity with the Sangh. Nevertheless, I reposed trust in the BJP and believed that they could bring stability to the beleaguered nation. I did not consider it as an act of betrayal against Rajiv Gandhi; I construed my action as a higher duty to the country. I might have been incorrect. Who knows? Only the arrow of time can pass a verdict, not any subjective outsider perception.

*

My infatuation with national politics definitely violated the service rules and the rules framed by the government for the department/bureau of intelligence. My decision was my own. I was not influenced by any allurement. Rather I had offered my stable job on the line and had embarked on a course that definitely violated service rules and ethics of the agency in which I worked. Essentially a dormant political creature I did what my soul encouraged me to do. One of the squirrels had prevailed upon the other and I was there at the crossroads of history.

I knew what I was doing and was ready to face the consequences. My feeling for the country was greater than my loyalty to a boss who behaved like a doormat of the PMO.

However, dalliance with national politics did not hinder my commitment to chasing Pakistan and its intelligence tentacles in India and its neighbourhood. But the structural and functional assets of the PCIU that I had just taken over had dismayed me.

The Intelligence Bureau studied Islamist growth as a part of its study of the Muslim community in India in the context of communalism and spread of Pan Islamism. It did not have a separate analysis desk on Pakistan. It still does not have one. Strategic, tactical and geopolitical studies on Pakistan were left to the Research & Analysis Wing and the MEA and exalted bodies like the JIC and the IDSA. Very little researched historical material was available on Kashmir, Punjab and North East in the analysis and operations desks on Pakistan and its military and intelligence institutions. Available materials simply related to running commentary on happening events.

The Afghanistan developments had spawned several Islamist
jehadi
organisations, which were being readied for the Indian theatres. We had very little idea about who they were and how they planned to exploit the festering fault lines in Kashmir and expand the network of proxy war. The concerned IB desks that handled Kashmir, Punjab, and North East functioned in total isolation, each one guarding its territory zealously. The concept of restrictive security was implemented with yogic discipline and religious fanaticism. Intra-desk exchange of data was abhorred as if these were pornographic overtures. In simple words, the Intelligence Bureau lived in schizophrenic compartments and refused to share data with sister desks. However, a few reasonable officers very rarely agreed to share titbits, after obtaining an affirmative nod from their boss men.

As a result Pakistan was covered in bits and pieces, whoever cared to cover the strategic enemy in the context of areas of interest of the territorial satraps. Pakistan was not studied as the fountainhead that aided and abetted insurgency and terrorism and promoted Islamist
jehadi
thrust inside India and aggravated the communal environ. It was neither a diplomatic nor a military problem. It was intricately related to the internal security concerns of India. Yet I found it difficult to lay hands on basic materials that could give me some mastery on the forward intelligence and sabotage and subversive operations run by Pakistan in India from its diplomatic premises in Delhi and Bombay and similar Missions located in the neighbouring countries.

The PCIU was primarily concerned with Mission based operations by the PDMI, the PAFI, the PIB and the ISI (
It is still not allowed to function as the main resource pool of studies on Pakistan
). The desk satraps claimed that they handled Pakistan, I presume, like blind men judged the shape and dimension of elephants. The state units of the IB, the SIBs and the CIOs either did not have organised counterintelligence units or they had some focussed units, which covered the US, the USSR and the Chinese activities. In the states like Kashmir and Punjab the IB units were basically concerned with the end product of Pakistani thrusts, fighting terrorism and chasing militant groups. No mechanism existed to plug the fountainhead of proxy war and deep penetration forward intelligence thrusts.

Anti-terrorist operations in Punjab and Kashmir had thrown up some crystalline ideas about the ISI backup stations in Nepal and Bangladesh. But the IB had no institutionalised mechanism to set up operational bases in the foreign countries. The existing state of information exchange between the IB, R&AW and the MEA was highly unsatisfactory. Diplomatic sensitivities stood in the way of IB’s covert operations in the neighbouring countries. A proposal to allow the IB to station its operatives in the capitals of the SAARC countries was shot down; though in recent times a few IB officers are posted to some of the SAARC countries mainly on open security related assignment and not on cover intelligence assignment.

The IB was also not allowed to maintain its UCA-Unofficial Cover Agents-in these countries. Practical ramifications of the internal security concerns demanded that the Intelligence Bureau should be allowed to operate in the SAARC countries. But the national security planners, if there were any, did not apply their minds to this burning issue. The Joint Intelligence Committee, a supposed umbrella organisation, was not provided with any umbrella. It had degenerated into a sterile thesis drafting and defocused club for the elite chatterati. Its end products, often excellent, were not used either by the intelligence producers or the end users.

The areas of darkness were too many. The most important were:

·
        
Lack of systematic study of the Pakistani intelligence organisations including the military intelligence units and the elite units like the SSG;

·
        
Lack of proper accounting and auditing of the Pakistani nationals visiting and overstaying/melting down in India; lack of identification of the Indian Islamist organisations having questionable linkages with the Pakistani/Bangladeshi Islamist and fundamentalist organisations. The existing mechanism of accounting for the Pakistani nationals by the Foreigner’s Regional Registration officer in Delhi and his counterparts in state capitals like Calcutta, Chennai and Mumbai and in the districts was awfully inadequate. The system, at many places, reeked with corruption;

·
        
Lack of intelligence apparatus to monitor developments on Indo-Pak land and sea borders;

·
        
Lack of intelligence mechanism to monitor the Nepal and Bangladesh borders and,

·
        
Lack of intelligence project conceptualisation and appraisal for coverage of centres of intelligence/sabotage/subversion modules created by the ISI in different parts of the country;

·
        
And lack of intelligence on ‘modules’ established inside India by Pakistan based
mujahideen
organisations and international Islamist terrorist organisations like the Al Qaeda.

I discussed the parameters of my thought process and my perception with my immediate boss, Suresh Mehta, an intelligence technocrat with a balanced and dignified head on his shoulders. He was enthusiastic but cautioned me to proceed with circumspection, as my ideas were likely to pollute the honey chambers of a couple of analysis and operations desks in Delhi and most of the regional intelligence satraps. This note of caution was necessary, as Mehta knew me too well as an eager Beaver, who refused to leave his wood un-chewed. I did honour his cautionary note with slight modifications.

It is difficult to share with my readers the details of innumerable counterintelligence operations that were undertaken to neutralise the Mission based Pakistani intelligence operatives. At one point of time, in 1989, the number of accredited diplomats working as Intelligence Officers (IO) was estimated at nine. There were about 18 non-diplomat IOs. They kept my team and me awfully busy. The PCIU had succeeded in locating and neutralising about five Mission based operatives and packing them back to their home bases in hale and hearty condition. But Pakistan always reacted with usual crudity and violence. Suspected Indian intelligence operatives were invariably mauled mercilessly and packaged with plenty of cotton and bandages.

Sometime in 1990 the PCIU was advised by the MHA and MEA to adopt a go slow policy in busting the espionage rings in usual style of catching them in live action. I was given to understand that Pakistani attitude of matching the Indian neutralisation achievements with the eye for eye principle had brought about intelligence drought in the R&AW. The MEA also felt the heat of angry demarches, loud protests and undiplomatic strong-arm treatment to the regular diplomats.

On my third year in the PCIU I was forced to adopt a ‘passive neutralisation’ policy by the government. It meant that the PCIU reserved the right to apply all the tradecrafts to unearth Pakistani penetration in vital sectors of Indian activities, neutralise the Indian connectivity and leave a leeway for the MEA to request Pakistan to withdraw the erring officials quietly. I was not sure if a country waging spontaneous direct and indirect war against India deserved that kind of diplomatic nicety.

Diplomacy is an integral part of the state policy, but on occasions diplomacy is required to be treated as the derma on a nation’s face. It is often used to hide the truth and hedge strategic action policy. But Delhi cannot be attributed to have used diplomacy as a tool to combat a compulsive warmongering neighbour, except in 1970-71.