Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (61 page)

I happened to meet Atinderpal way back in 1987 when I had escorted the militant group from Bhatinda to Delhi for talks with the Prime Minister. I liked the slightly built person who favoured using terse and pungent sentences. I had the resilience to accommodate staccato outbursts of the angry youths, who believed, rightly or wrongly, that destiny beckoned them with the vision of an independent homeland.

I happened to meet him again somewhere near Kartarpur before the Second Panthic Committee was formed and he floated his own militant outfit, Khalistan Liberation Organisation.

Atinderpal and his young wife lived in a North Avenue apartment, which spoke loudly of their deplorable pecuniary condition. I was directed by my command structure to use money to win over the needy person. To my surprise I discovered that Atinder was needy indeed, but not greedy. On one occasion he spurned the offer of a fat packet carried by me on the plea that he should acquire at least two cars to facilitate his movements as a peace intermediary between the government of India and S.S.Mann and a section of Panthic Committee. My efforts to soften his graceful wife also failed miserably. The only favour she accepted from me was to grace our home by attending a private dinner.

Atinderpal’s role in peace making did not make much progress. Several inflated ego bags like the factious Sikh Student Federations, Panthic Committees, gun wielding terrorists and the super ego bag S.S. Mann waxed and waned in their interlocution with the government representatives.

Moreover, the political leaders in Delhi had other priorities to attend. The maverick and old political juveniles had again taken out the knives and started inflicting thousand wounds on the soul of the nation. India was again being pushed into the nutcracker of ambition of the greedy political thugs. Peace in Punjab and Kashmir was not the priority agenda of Delhi and Islamabad.

While in Delhi Rajiv Gandhi, Chandrashekhar, Devi Lal and L. K. Advani ran out of patience, in Islamabad the Pakistani President and the COAS felt that Benazir Bhutto had exceeded the mandate of the people and brief of the Establishment. Mr. Nawaz Sharif, a protégé of General Zia, was smuggled into office by the Establishment on November 10, 1990. He was a creation of Hamid Gul, a former Director General of the ISI.

The drama in Delhi had unfolded in similar fashion minus the Army Brass, Boots and Boozes and the helpless shrugging by the constitutionally emasculated President. Chandrashekhar visited Rajiv Gandhi on November 6 and the Rashtrapati Bhawan on November 9 and was smuggled into power with Indira Congress’s support. Another shameful page was added to the history of Indian democracy.

But a cardinal difference marked the two changeovers: Nawaj Sharif was brought in as a shield to the Establishment and Chandrashekhar was granted his dream by Rajiv Gandhi as he wanted to use the old Young Turk as the proverbial bean stalk to climb back to the seat of power. His mother too had used the Young Turk occasionally. Did not she? It was a repeat game played earlier by Sanjay with Charan Singh as the key operator.

*

The idea of using Chandrashekhar and Devi Lal to topple V. P. Singh was mooted by Rajiv Gandhi’s coterie. Dhawan, who was called back from the doghouse in February 1989, had complimented the efforts of Rajiv Gandhi as he enjoyed close relationship with the
padatik
(foot soldier) from Balia from the days of Tarakeshwari Sinha (former minister) and Indira Gandhi. I had a close ringside view of the machinations that were carried out both in the Sangh Parivar conclaves and the backroom offices of Rajiv Gandhi.

The
padatik
of Indian politics, Chandrashekhar, was tampered in the faked fire of socialism and vainly shaped on the anvil of Jayprakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia, the gurus of Indian socialist movement. The molecules of mundane politics in him did not undergo significant change even after his passage through the socialist mill. He nursed a few unique ambitions: grabbing the Prime Ministerial seat at least for one Arabian Night, unaccounted wealth and hollow high sounding moral postures. He was not as simple a charlatan as Charan Singh and Raj Narain were.

For Devi Lal, the injured Jat patriarch, Rajiv Gandhi again used the services of his aides, Dhawan-Bhajan Lal duo.

Rajiv Gandhi and his backroom team had initiated the operation way back in June 1990. A peep into Rajiv Gandhi’s mind was discernible from an interview prophetically carried in Calcutta’s
Sunday
magazine in august 1990, in which Rajiv proved that he excelled at least in one aspect of politicking: double speak.

The slight of hand that brought V. P. Singh to power was doomed to disappear, as the great Indian vanishing trick. Chandrashekhar had never accepted the magic performed by the corpulent corporate manager, Arun Nehru, in installing V. P. Singh on the prime ministerial throne.

V. P. Singh allowed himself to be engulfed in a self-created fire by implementing the Mandal Commission recommendations that was shoved off by Indira Gandhi under piles of dust. The thakur from caste heartland of Uttar Pradesh acted out of his nervousness over the challenges he faced from Chandrashekhar and Devi Lal and the Hindutwa activities of his another chamber partner, the BJP. He used the caste card by empowering the ‘backward castes’ (less privileged) in matters of reservation in education and services etc. His calculations went haywire as the student community in Delhi and elsewhere were instigated to indulge in sustained violence against the ‘Mandal formula’.

The Mandal formula to offer 27% reservations to the backward castes was taken out from the cold storage with two definite objectives. V.P. Singh wanted to secure his vote bank among the backward castes and by throwing the Mandal gauntlet on the face of the Jat patriarch and he wanted to ‘kill’ Devi Lal marching supporter’s on to Delhi.

The political, bureaucratic and intelligence machineries of V. P. Singh had failed to fathom the depth of hatred Devi Lal had developed for the Prime Minister and the secret linkages he had established with Rajiv Gandhi. Two important Haryana Jat leaders, Shamsher Singh Surjewala and Birendra Singh had met me in Delhi barely four days before Devi Lal goons descended on Delhi. The chilling information that they shared with me indicated that Devi Lal’s reply to V. P. Singh’s Mandal card would be nothing short of blood letting on the streets of Delhi. Indira Congress, headed by Rajiv Gandhi, exploited Devi Lal as deftly as his brother had manipulated the other Jat, Charan Singh.

I had shared the vital inputs with the IB, though I was not supposed to dabble in ‘internal political intelligence’. Obviously R. P. Joshi was taken by surprise on the fateful day when I called him up at 5 a. m. to inform that thousands of Devi Lal supporters, completely drunk and armed with assorted weapons, had started entering Delhi in motorised convoys. The police forces of Haryana and Delhi did very little to stop the drunken goons outside the city limits. Indira Congress workers served them with food and ‘drinks’ at temporary roadside stalls set up along the route. On their triumphant march to Delhi the drunken goons molested several female morning walkers/joggers and chased away the protesting citizens.

My comment about R. P. Joshi’s inability to cater precise intelligence on the diabolical intentions of Rajiv Gandhi, Devi Lal and Chandrshekhar should not be construed as an aspersion on his professional capability. By the time V. P. Singh was bogged down in his Mandal quicksand, he was almost deserted by the spearhead and the cutting edge level administrative machineries. The police and intelligence had withdrawn their support from the ‘crusader against the corrupt regime of Rajiv Gandhi’. The upper caste Hindus dominated the administrative machineries and most of them were religiously committed to the caste concept enunciated in Rig Veda (
Purusha Sukta
) and by Lord Krishna in the Gita: ‘
Chaturvarnang maya Shrishtang Gunaih Krmah Vibhagash
’ (I have created the four castes according to their aptitude and work). The Gita is the Bible and the Quran of the Hindus. The Sha’ria of the Hindus, the Manusmriti’s preaching that Brahma (Supreme Being) had created Brahmins, Warrior classes from the upper parts of his body and the Vaishyas (traders) and the Sudras (servant class) from inferior lower parts of His body had been ingrained in Hindu psyche. From the mythological and historical times the upper caste Hindus has treated the lower castes as gutter creatures.

They were resentful of the reservations provided to the suppressed and oppressed classes of the society. V.P. Singh’s noble but blunderingly ill-timed action to extend the reservation benefits to the intermediate castes had infuriated the upper caste Hindus. Their contrived superior social citadel was irrevocably shaken by the move. They were ready to opt for any change. They had two clear options: to give another chance to Rajiv Gandhi or opt for the BJP that had just arrived at the national scene. These officers simply stopped cooperating with the government of V. P. Singh. Wives of some senior bureaucrats openly participated in BJP and
Ramjanambhoomi
campaign. They were still distrustful of Rajiv Gandhi.

R. P. Joshi was plagued by a serious intra-organisation problem. A fine person and a consummate social creature Joshi did not take the vital decision to remove the key old loyalists from vital analysis and operations desks. They were still beholden to their former leader and they treated Joshi as a temporary interlude. They expected Narayanan to be reinducted as soon as V.P.Singh was toppled. Most of the old loyal officers supplied vital intelligence to him, who in turn worked as the unofficial DIB to Rajiv Gandhi, in addition to his duties as the chairperson of the Joint Intelligence Committee.

I had tried to wizen him up about the intra-organisational intrigues. But he was too nice a person to ruffle the feathers of even a hawk swooping down on him. His trusting nature undid some of his sterling qualities. And after the Mandal fiasco the loyalists of the former Director were convinced that he was destined to return to the North Block room following the trails of his ‘friend’ Rajiv Gandhi.

The mammoth
kissan
(cultivator) rally of Devi Lal ended up in wanton violence and police firing. The fleeing drunken goons swarmed some of the residential quarters near the India gate, including mine. They threw stones at our windows and destroyed the green lawns and flowerbeds. This was a planned retaliation by Devi Lal, Om Prakash Chauthala and the backroom Generals of Rajiv Gandhi. The real war of dumping V. P. Singh had started.

*

V.P. Singh was badly trapped in his Mandal web, the far-reaching social engineering step he had taken out of political panic. He had miserably failed to take into consideration that his ‘concern’ for the intermediate Hindu castes would drive in irreparable wedge in a society that was already badly divided on caste lines. The Hindu society suffered and still suffers from the worst type of apartheid type segregation. V.P.Singh appeased the minority and intermediate caste Hindu vote banks rather mindlessly. He was simply not the messiah India had been waiting for since the dawn of independence.

The anti-Mandal agitation was far from a spontaneous response against reservation for the backward castes. It was inspired, guided and funded by the Indira Congress and was handled by the Indira Congress trouble-shooters. The large amount of money that was spent on the agitation came from the dark chambers of the Indira Congress party.

My pipelines in the Indira Congress provided me with exact details about the funding of the ‘student agitation’ by Rajiv Gandhi’s aides. In Delhi alone an approximate amount of Rs. 2 million was spent. Payments were made to some student leaders, university teachers and district level Congress office bearers. The lives lost in the agitation were not sacrificed for the genuine cause of the upper caste Hindu community. These lives were lost because Indira Congress wanted to make it sure that V. P. Singh did not remain in power a single day more than it was necessary. It was as cruel an experiment as were the experiments committed by Rajiv’s younger brother Sanjay. The student agitation was another form of Turkman Gate massacre performed by Sanjay Gandhi during the emergency regime. The priests who chanted the mantras on this occasion were almost the same. The Indira Congress leaders had deftly exploited the rump Sanjay brigade.

It is to my intimate knowledge that one of the students who committed self-immolation in Delhi was actually murdered by the Indira Congress goons. The student from a poor family background was administered heavy amount of intoxicant and was asked to put on at least three layers of trousers and was assured that the fire on his apparel would be promptly put out. The poor fellow, high on intoxicant, had fallen for the lure of some easy money doled out by the agents of the ‘High Command’. As it transpired later, the fire on his apparel was not put out; rather he was doused with kerosene and allowed to suffer over 80% burn injury. The Indira Congress conspirators, in fact, had murdered the first caste agitation ‘martyr’.

However, I could not gather any sold evidence of the Sangh Parivar members taking part in the contrived student agitation. At one point of time the caste hatred had blurred the party affiliation.

Nevertheless, I had shared my ‘intelligence input’ with the IB on this nefarious operation of Indira Congress, though I continued to enjoy the friendship of R.K. Dhawan. I did not approve of the way Rajiv Gandhi’s mischievous manipulators played with the sentiments of the people, simply out of spite for a man who had implicated Rajiv and his friends in a couple of scandals.

But the assumed ‘self righteous’ government of V. P. Singh had by that time lost its bearings. The IB had failed to react and inspire its consumer to look beyond the body bags and the bruises that were inflicted on the rump political edifice of V. P. Singh. The law and order machinery simply reacted to the fiery developments and the political structure of the badly divided Janata Dal creaked like a sinking boat. An utter failure on many fronts Rajiv Gandhi had succeeded in exploiting the Mandal fiasco and rocking the boat of V. P. Singh beyond redemption.