Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (59 page)

The results of 1989 election were an ample testimony to the success of the strategic input from people like Gobindachariya and the rest of the dedicated members of the Sangh Parivar. I did not discount my contribution. But I was not in a position to openly gloat over my humble contribution to the success of the political force with which I was closely connected from my early adolescent days. Some key members of the Sangh Parivar, who did not suffer from acute amnesia, recognised that I had put my service and family security on the line out of my commitment to, what I believed at that point of time, a genuine national cause.

No individual is unidimensional. Rajiv Gandhi, however inadequate he was for running a country like India, did not lack in strategic imagination. He was a more wronged person than he had wronged the country. He definitely goofed in Kashmir by following the beaten Nehru-Gandhi family tradition of putting all the eggs in one basket. The variations they often tried had failed to convince the people of the beleaguered state about Delhi’s honest intentions. By the time Rajiv inherited the Nehru-Gandhi family throne and had put his eggs again in the Abdullah family basket the geostrategic situation in the subcontinent and neighbourhood had gone past the scope of petty manoeuvring by Delhi.

A generation of bureaucrats, including intelligence operators, had also grown up alongside the single basket symbiosis of the Nehru-Gandhi-Abdullah family. Most of them were still around to block all forward thinking and innovative experiments in Kashmir. By that time the Pakistani Establishment had turned its attention from Afghanistan to Punjab and Kashmir. The proxy war had taken a virulent form.

*

Rajiv was not allowed to go for innovation in Kashmir. However, he exhibited streaks of fresh imagination in Punjab. Busy though I was with the PCIU and Pakistan affairs my services were utilised in Punjab also.

An exercise was carried out with my full participation to examine the likely impact of persuading some of the terrorism-tainted leaders of the state contesting the parliamentary polls. I carried out the sounding mission with the factious AISSF, some persons close to S.S. Mann, leaders of the Dam Dami Taksal, Shiromani Akali Dal (J), Jagdev Singh Talwandi and Jasbir Singh Rode. The purpose behind this exercise was to cut down the mainstream SAD forces to size and to expose the militant sponsored politicians to the mainstream democratic process. Rajiv had tried this strategy in Assam too and had marginally succeeded in containing the AASU activities. Punjab was entirely a different ball game. Pakistan was still breathing down Indian neck and the Second Panthic Committee headed by Dr. Sohan Singh had adopted a strident stance. Violence increased rapidly. In fact Pakistan and the ISI dictated the turns of events in the Indian Punjab.

The emergent picture was rather confusing. Problematic ego bags like Mann, Baba Joginder Singh (father of Bhindranwale) and Jasbir Singh were drunk with the impression that Delhi was ready to kneel before them with sackcloth and ash. It was difficult to communicate with Mann as he was incarcerated in a Bihar jail. Moreover, several intermediaries who surrounded him were more concerned with Delhi’s moneybags than return of peace to the state. Simranjeet Singh Mann, a member of the Indian Police Service, to which I belonged, was no doubt a hurt person. But he suffered from a compulsive paranoia that forced him to believe that resistance per se, in any form, was the sure catapult to be launched to martyrdom. He simply did not know when to change over to constructive dialogue from apparently irreconcilable stance of resistance. This tragic hero was equally ignorant in the art of waging war and keeping the peace window open. He behaved as if he was the Phizo of Punjab.

Rajiv Gandhi was keen to see the militant factions taking part in the election process. A number of Punjab leaders had interceded on behalf of Mann. I was concerned with the initiatives of Dam Dami Taksal, the group headed by Jasbir Singh Rode and a section of the militants owing allegiance to the First Panthic Committee and discreet support from Atinderpal Singh’s Khalistan Liberation Organisation and his associates in the Second Panthic Committee. Mann had made it clear to a couple of Dam Dami Taksal sponsored visitors to his detention cell that he was ready to play along the election game.

The conventional Akali parties aside the other major players in the Punjab elections were the Indira Congress, Janata Dal, BJP and Mann Akali Dal. But the major factions of the Second Panthic Committee and major militant groups were reluctant to participate in the election process. Feedbacks received from Pakistan indicated that the ISI was keen to sabotage the election process. Democratic elections often have the capability of levelling up the rough political edges and readjusting the tectonic slips. Its preparations for a decisive intervention in Kashmir along the fault lines created by Delhi were complete. The ISI was keen to discredit the democratically elected government of Benazir Bhutto and scuttle the peace process initiated by the Indian Prime Minister. Zia had gone but the ghost of military establishment still hovered over the head of Zulfiqar’s daughter, who was not ready to walk all the way with the Establishment forces.

Under the circumstances Rajiv Gandhi’s decision to encourage a section of the Punjab militants to take part in the democratic process was a rare instance of his long-term strategic understanding of the problems of the people of Punjab. Buta Singh and other Punjab experts with entrenched interest in the fouled up political ambience of the border state opposed him. But Rajiv enjoyed an advantage in Punjab that he missed out in Kashmir. The new governor was not biased by prejudices as his predecessor from Calcutta was. The Director General of Police, K.P.S.Gill, contrary to the general perception believed in the intrinsic strength of the democratic process. Moreover, the single basket syndrome that Rajiv had inherited from his mother did not tie down his hands in Punjab. The key bureaucrats, including the intelligence technocrats, who feigned to specialise and monopolise all conceivable knowledge on Kashmir were not there to inject prejudice into Rajiv’s mind. He had the entire field open to him to play the game according to his rules.

At one stage I was called upon to clinch a deal between Delhi and a section of the Sikh militants. Jasbir Singh Rode assisted me in the prolonged consultations. Others to help were the militant appointed high priests, some leaders of the Dam Dami Taksal, Rajdev Singh Barnala (later elected to the Lok Sabha) and Harjinder Singh (Ramdas), the energetic and selfless young man, who acted as a link between several militant leaders and me. An agreed amount, resourced by Rajiv Gandhi, was delivered in cash to meet the election cost of the candidates sponsored by the assorted militant and pro-militant groups. The heavy amount was carried in two instalments to a designated hideout in Punjab and handed over to the linkmen who negotiated with the Prime Minister.

I must add a few words on the depth and extent of love Rajiv Gandhi had for Buta Singh. I was resourced by Rajiv Gandhi to transfer funds to the BJP candidate Kailash Meghwal to ensure defeat of the Sikh stalwart, who had shifted to a safer seat in Rajasthan from his dear home turf-Punjab. Meghwal was more than surprised to be financed from an unknown and unexpected quarter. This tiny David had finally floored the Sikh Goliath. Buta Singh did not know what had really spurred up his unknown adversary with sudden flush of fund. This one realpolitik action by Rajiv Gandhi had struck a fine chord in my heart.

The election results went on the expected lines. Indira Congress bagged two seats against six by Mann conglomerate, Janata Dal one, BSP one, and independents three. I would not like to go into the depth of the political shenanigans that followed the parliamentary polls. But I was happy to see a few friendly Sikh faces in the Parliament. One of them was Atinderpal Singh. I would like to talk about this ‘
to be or not to be
’ man and a reluctant revolutionary a little later.

The first hesitant step to return to the democratic mainstream was possible because of Rajiv Gandhi’s action of strategic political retreat. His party lost the Parliamentary polls but surely he had left a mark of victory on the Punjab.

THE BRITTLE MESSIAH

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

James Joyce.

Rajiv Gandhi had flown past his five-year tenure like a stunt pilot. His political life received a serious, but not unexpected jolt in the 9th Lok Sabha elections. Even though Indira Congress managed to score 195 seats Rajiv was not in position to stake his claim as the left front, hitherto loyal to the Nehru-Gandhi family, refused to support a Congress government headed by Rajiv Gandhi. With 137 seats in its kitty the Janta Dal was poised to form the government with outside support from the BJP (86) and the left front. The skulduggery that went in outwitting both Chandrashekhar and Devi Lal and installing V. P. Singh as the Prime Minister was by itself a hair-raising cloak and dagger story. The RSS and BJP lobby had pitched in for amorphous V.P.Singh instead of more earthy persons like Chandrashekhar and Devi Lal. The beginning itself had exhibited that there were too many Brutus around V. P. Singh and he was not a match for the scheming power barons, who masqueraded as servants of the people.

V. P. Singh had never inspired me. He was a myopic avenger, not a visionary. He was driven by supposed honesty, which was not matched by his political skill. His networking was based on very fragile connectivity. A person of poor outward connectivity can be a better mendicant, not a Prime Minister of a complicated country. I never gave him a chance of survival for more than two years.

Nevertheless, I was happy with the performance of the BJP. With a marginal stirring of Hindutwa sentiment and appropriate exploitation of Rajiv Gandhi’s anti-incumbency factor it made a big dent. They used the seem-alike of JP to their advantage. The success spurred the RSS and BJP think tank to plan out a more perilous course of action.

Rajiv Gandhi’s defeat signalled the inevitability of top-level changes in the Intelligence Bureau. M. K. Narayanan, a recognised intelligence professional, had become identified himself with the Rajiv coterie. In the absence of any act of the parliament and the law of the land to regulate the organisation’s activities the top intelligence man is supposed to be personally loyal to the Prime Minister and home minister. He owed his existence to them and not to any statutory institution. It’s but natural that the top intelligence echelons tend to bend when they are required to bow.

The succession choice should have fallen on V.G.Vaidya, a competent professional. With 31 years service behind him Vaidya was not considered apparently on ground of his comparative junior status and apprehension in a section of the Janata Dal that the Maharashtrian officer had hidden connections with the RSS. The
thakur
and
kayasth
lobby inside and outside the agency mostly touted the trumped up whispering charges. They wanted a trusted Uttar Pradesh hand and the choice finally fell on Rajendra Prasad Joshi. A former IB hand, Joshi was sent out of the IB as his course mate M. K. Narayanan was predestined to head the IB about 20 years ago. Joshi had earned admiration for his accessibility, ability to share responsibility with his juniors and maintaining low profile. Another qualification of Joshi was that he was related to Vinod Pandey, a confidant of V. P. Singh, who was slated to take over as the Cabinet Secretary under the new dispensation.

Another Joshi, Murli Manohar Joshi, an ambitious RSS/BJP leader from the heart of the cow belt, advocated Joshi’s case. The relationship between Rajendra Prasad and Murli Manohar transcended their common clan bondage. Murli Manohar was a friend of the veteran intelligence bureau officer. The BJP leader was on the verge of assuming the reins of the party after L. K. Advani’s term was over. The wily Uttar Pradesh Brahmin considered himself more competent than the Sindhi refugee and aspired for the top slot once the Sangh Parivar succeeded in increasing its kitty from 86 to 200. Murli Manohar wanted his own man to lead the IB, an organisation that could virtually open up the treasure trove of intelligence to him. Mastery over the virtual eyes and ears of the nation, he hoped, would make his position invincible. Rajendra Prasad, in his own turn, exploited the relationship to promote the interest of his Prime Minister. The RSS/BJP were not aware that in his eagerness to exploit the IB Murli Manohar was sharing consciously and subconsciously strategic information about the Hindutwa organisation’s forthcoming earthshaking policies.

I enjoyed extremely good relationship with the Joshi family. Tara Joshi, his wife, is regarded as an elder sister in our family. Their presence at 9 Tughlaq Road brought in a whiff of informality.

*

Having done what I considered, rightly or wrongly, my duty to assist the Sangh Parivar to come to the centre stage of Indian politics, I settled down on my old love, the PCIU and Punjab operations.

At one point of time I was approached by one of the BJP leaders to accept a position in the PMO more as a reward for my contribution in promoting the electoral success of the party. I declined the offer after two meetings with Bhurelal. His idea of the job that waited me involved digging out skeletons of corruption in the cupboards of the former Indira Congress leaders, including Rajiv Gandhi. I declined the offer. I never could bring myself to accept the position of a hatchet man. Moreover the Prime Minister and Bhurelal had at their disposal more professional gravediggers like the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and numerous other enforcement organisations. I was never an expert gravedigger.

I might have had differences with Rajiv’s style of functioning, I might have been disillusioned by the black cloud of scandals surrounding him, but I could not cope with the idea of dogging him to the edges of a graveyard. I could not do that to the son of Indira Gandhi. I could have not brought myself down to the political morgue to dissect skeletons and corpses. I declined the offer, and I think, in the process I had earned the displeasure of a coterie around the PM.

*

Before I walk past that stretch of the canvas I should make a brief comment on my passing dalliance with the affairs of Kashmir.

Kashmir, as most Indians are aware, has been treated as a single basket case from the days Nehru had fallen in love with the Switzerland of the East during his honeymoon with Kamala Nehru. The history of post independence Kashmir is briefly the history of waxing and waning of relationship between the Nehru-Gandhi and Sheikh Abdullah families. The Pakistani Establishment had of course kept the heat on and fought two wars to grab the territory through use of force.

The facilitators in the love affair between the two families included certain peripheral Kashmiri Muslims and core Pundits and a few intelligence bureaucrats, who deemed to have acquired ‘expertise’ on the delicate nuances of the exclusive love affair. The two families did not make any serious effort to pursue an open door policy and involve the people of Kashmir in reaching a logical conclusion to the gangrenous sore. Indian democracy did never give a sincere try to the goodwill of the people of Kashmir. While Pakistan believed in the efficacy of war as an instrument to solve the ‘unfinished agenda of partition’, Delhi believed in a mystique mixture of diplomacy, limited democratic experimentation and defensive military manoeuvres. Such indeterminate manoeuvres can manage to hang between war and peace for a while, but not for all time to come. International relations and compulsions of geopolitics do not permit such indefinite hanging of an entire people at the hangmen’s gallows. However, both Delhi and Srinagar failed to realise this simple truth of international geopolitics. War and peace can be deferred but not kept hanging, especially when the enemy gains strength by leaps and bounds. A hanging issue often develops incurable gangrene.

By 1988-89 Indo-Pakistan tangos on Kashmir reached another dead end when Benazir Bhutto reiterated the need for a plebiscite and Rajiv Gandhi announced the impracticability of such a demand. The two young leaders, both children of midnight, were inhibited by history and failed to turn the guns away. The Vale of Kashmir was on fire again since September 1989, when the militants killed J.L.Taploo, a BJP leader. It was followed by the assassination of N. K. Ganjoo, the judge who had sentenced the JKLF activist Maqbool Bhatt to death.

The JKLF militants greeted the inauguration of the Janata Dal government by the dramatic kidnapping of Dr. Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of V. P. Singh’s home minister. Delhi caved in by forcing the state government to sign an agreement with the militants. Dr. Rubaiya was released but the action of V. P. Singh government had India bonded to unprecedented scale or terrorist activities for years to come. The JKLF action was a pressure tactic, a “bluff that worked” (The Dawn-Pakistan).

The story thereafter took bizarre turn when Jagmohan, once a Gandhi family acolyte, was brought back to Srinagar as governor.

Besides other sensational actions the Pakistan backed militants in planned manner targeted the officials of the Intelligence Bureau and killed a couple of them compelling the IB to evacuate most of its staff from the state. Some staff was retained at Srinagar. But intelligence production had simply dried up.

An intelligence operator like me was considered too upstart a spoilsport, rather a gadfly on the blue noses of the blue-blooded people, who dealt with Kashmir. At that critical stage I was called upon to assist my colleagues to raise a few human assets in the valley. Our endeavours helped the IB to regain some ‘toehold’ in the valley. I deftly used the services of a Delhi based Muslim lady to recruit a couple of Kashmiri Muslim assets. These assets were engaged in fruit and carpet trading and lived around Muslim ghettos in Lajpat Nagar and Okhla. From that modest beginning, I believe, my colleagues had later built up a reinvigorated intelligence network. Operational exigencies prevent me from elaborating the topic.

However, as part of the undeclared ‘pro-active’ policy of the Intelligence Bureau I was given a free hand to penetrate a few ‘mujaheedin camps’ run by the ISI in Pakistan and PoK. The assets recruited with the assistance of the agent mentioned above had succeeded in penetrating the mujaheedin camps at Murgikhana (Muzaffarabad), Chelapul, Main Road (Muzaffarabad), Chhaprian (PoK) and Lal Haveli, Fateh Jung (Rawalpindi). The services rendered by these human assets were satisfactory. Those were the happy days when the politicians talked little of ‘pro-active’ thrust and approved more of daring trans-border action inside Pakistan, especially during the tenure of the lion hearted Director of Intelligence Bureau, V.G.Vaidya.

I have briefly mentioned this aspect to highlight India’s deplorably meagre reaction to Pakistan’s proxy war in Kashmir and elsewhere. Governments in Delhi was forced to allow Pakistan backed militants to impose ‘mass control’ measures in Kashmir by imposing its ‘military’ superiority through undiluted terrorist actions. India’s reactions revolved around:

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Increased paramilitary presence in the affected areas,

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Virtual police response to the complicated socio-economic and political problems,

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Increased dependence on the Armed Forces thus blurring out vital differences between civic and military responses, and

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Diplomatic initiatives that took a somewhat positive turn only after September 11, 2001 and when US involvement in Afghanistan war and anti-terror actions inside Pakistan received low priority of Washington.

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Protracted diplomatic squabble and India’s defensive posture has given some kind of legitimacy to the western perception that Kashmir is a ‘dispute’ between India and Pakistan. Defence oriented security responses sans credible political action and development programme have added to the erosion of Indian ‘mass control’ mechanism.

Way back in 1988-89 Delhi’s failure to implement the ‘mass control’ measure through positive actions and better economic and political package had alienated the general people. The so-called Hindu majority areas of Jammu were undergoing vast demographic changes. The Hindus were being systematically attacked with a view to communalise the issue and to revalidate the old Dixon concept of selective plebiscite. This nasty game of Pakistan was noted by the experts a little late in the day.

Delhi had not undertaken significant ‘pro-active’ actions though ministers in the BJP led National Democratic Alliance government had spoken a lot about it. They had cried hoarse but failed to hit the enemy where it hurt him most. The post 9/11 developments and increased US interest in the region has brought about some improvement. It is hoped that the ‘peace interregnum’ initiated by the NDA government and supported by the USA would bring about temporary thaw in fighting, until such time more militant fundamentalist forces push out Washington’s friend, General Musharraf.

However, as a matter of strategic and tactical policy it is in the realm of possibility and permissible by the standards set up by the ‘Free World’ countries like the USA and Israel to launch covert and overt strikes against the training camps of the ‘mujaheedins’ through a combination of tradecraft and commando application. Such lightening missions can be undertaken by ‘designated and guided agents’, trained suicide squads, deep penetration commando units, including para-commando units and well-researched and calibrated aerial strikes.