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BOOK
REVIEW
Spymaster's
Pandora's box
Open Secrets. India's
Intelligence Unveiled by M
K Dhar
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
Released when intelligence agencies of
major global powers are facing flak
for incompetence and fabrication, Open
Secrets is the first attempt to
break the taboo of shielding the
Indian intelligence fraternity under a
permanent veil. "As powerful a
weapon as a fusion bomb", (p 8)
India's intelligence infrastructure
has been  weaponized
by the governing class to hit the
governed. Like the police, civil
administration and judiciary, it has
been used as a handmaiden to suit
petty political ends and crush
constitutional liberties. Dhar, an
operative in India's Intelligence
Bureau (IB) for three decades, has a
muckraking tale to tell.
Since Indira Gandhi's time in the
1960s, the IB director has answered
solely to the prime minister and home
minister. The refusal of political
masters to allow induction of expert
staff from lateral fields has
perpetuated a servile "police
culture" in the bureau. "An
average IB officer is not oriented
with the techniques of war pursued by
mujahideen and fidayeen
fanatics." (p13) Non-productive
human assets clutter the bureau. Lack
of in-service checks fosters a
"breeding ground for Goerings and
Himmlers in the backyard of
constitutional democracy". (p 18)
No meaningful cooperation between
state and central intelligence
entities exists, especially when
different political parties rule at
the center and in the states.
Coordination among the three prime
central agencies, IB, RAW (Research
and Analysis Wing) and CBI (Central
Bureau of Investigation), is
non-existent. The Kargil and Surankote
intelligence failures are two glaring
illustrations of a divided house of
Indian spooks (see Kashmir's
snake in the grass June 7,
2003).
Dhar gives a clarion call for freeing
intelligence organizations from the
machinations of the executive.
Legislation to make the agencies
accountable to parliamentary
committees is a crying necessity.
Election prospecting, verifying
credentials of ruling party
candidates, researching the weaknesses
of opposition candidates, toppling and
interfering with elected governments
and other dirty operations victimizing
the innocent are shameful tasks
assigned to agencies that should be
protecting national security.
As a budding officer of the Indian
Police Service in 1965, Dhar learned
the nitty-gritty of grassroots
intelligence collection in Darjeeling,
Siliguri and Naksalbari (northern
Bengal). His unusual techniques of
raising human assets were encouraged
with subventions from the police
Secret Service Fund. Meetings with
Charu Majumdar and Jangal Santhal,
forefathers of India's extreme Maoist
movement, convinced Dhar that violent
agrarian revolution was not far off.
However, politicians from Calcutta
(now Kolkata) and Delhi showed no
intentions of addressing the economic
woes of the rural populace.
"Indian rulers blindly follow the
firefighting ideology in dealing with
great social and economic fault
lines." (p 71)
In 1968, as a bolt from the blue, Dhar
was advised to join the IB in Delhi.
The intelligence technocrats he met
there were "cast iron
cookies" who swore by
regimentation and loyalty. The abject
submissiveness of officers robbed them
of initiative and measured aggression.
The IB reeked of factionalism,
corruption and nepotism. Trainers
treated the ruling Congress Party as
Caesar's wife in the political
analysis classes. They totally
neglected "economic
intelligence" and its relevance
to unrest in society. Coastal security
was unheard of as a concept. The
curricula had a myopic strategic view
and general officers were anomalously
segregated from technical officers.
Posted to Manipur after training, Dhar
was released "into troubled water
like a scared fry". (p 95)
Battered by Naga-Mizo rebellions and
Meitei agitation for statehood,
Manipur was in coma. Dhar raised very
sensitive human assets and gained
access to inner cores of the Imphal
valley. Wanting political and
bureaucratic support to survive, he
cultivated assets inside the Manipur
administration. His reports that
Meitei ultras were being taken to
Sylhet in East Pakistan for military
training were treated as overreactions
by the IB headquarters. "They
thought that a greenhorn with only
about four years experience was trying
to act smart." (p 107)
On prime minister Indira Gandhi's
visit to the region in 1969, Dhar's
"humint" (human
intelligence) inputs on armed
disturbances saved the day and exposed
the pathetic state of VIP security
arrangements. His top-secret
negotiations with insurgents succeeded
in the conclusive eradication of Mizo
militancy from Manipur in 1970.
Stalking Naga gangs from hilltop to
hilltop on their way to and from East
Pakistan was not the only kind of
action Dhar took. In 1972, Gandhi's
point persons asked him to topple the
Manipur state government. It was the
first of many instances of
"bleeding in silence at the rape
of my conscience". (p 148)
Transferred to neighboring Nagaland
when underground armies were
escalating jungle warfare with Chinese
support, Dhar thwarted and neutralized
several militant posses. Since Nagas
value the family as an institution,
his strategy of involving family in
work paid dividends. His personal
friendships with key rebel leaders
such as K Yallay, Z Ramyo and B M
Keyho aided the Indian government's
peace talks in 1974-75. His second
tryst with unlawful acts came when
Delhi called on him to subvert the
loyalty of a section of Nagaland's
elected legislature.
In 1975, Dhar was moved to the
just-annexed state of Sikkim. He
became the first Indian official to
fraternize with the deposed king (Chogyal)
and bring his sulking loyalists into
the mainstream. To observe Chinese
posts along the disputed border, he
won over numerous transborder agents
who made forays deep into Tibet.
During Gandhi's emergency (a sort of
martial rule declared in 1975), he was
asked to frame the Chogyal and
persuade local politicians to back the
bullying Sanjay Gandhi, Indira's
younger son. In 1977, the Janata Party
government ordered Dhar to perform a
converse action of political
prostitution. Such immoral compulsions
drove him into mental depression.
In 1979, Dhar was brought back to
Delhi to head the IB's "Election
Cell". Prime minister Charan
Singh ordered him to assess "what
was required in each constituency to
influence the electorate". (p
233) When Gandhi rode back to power,
she asked him to assist the Puri
Committee, a tool of political
vendetta, to blacken the faces of her
opponents.
In 1980, Dhar was placed at the USSR
counter-intelligence desk of the IB.
He identified four central ministers,
more than two dozen ministers of
parliament, and layers of the armed
forces to be on the payrolls of the
KGB. His penchant for digging out
skeletons forced a hurried shift to
the subsidiary bureau in Delhi,
practically the "special branch
of the Prime Minister's Office".
(p 252) From the perch, he espied the
astonishing influence of Indian
Rasputins like Dhirendra Brahmachari,
"Mamaji" and Chandraswami.
Indian industry bigwig, Dhirubhai
Ambani, and other wheeler-dealers
approached him for illegal favors.
After Sanjay Gandhi's death, Dhar was
commissioned to shadow his widow
Maneka and her associates. He was even
asked to record the conversation of
home minister Zail Singh with a Sikh
militant on Indira Gandhi's
instructions. The Prime Minister's
Office (PMO) pressed him to sabotage
Devi Lal's Haryana state government.
The entire field machinery of the
Delhi IB was mobilized to help the
Congress Party win the Delhi municipal
elections in 1983. In conspiracy and
thuggery, "there was hardly any
difference between the durbars of Jahangir and the viceroys and those
of Morarji Desai and Indira
Gandhi". (p 284)
Dhar was next posted to the Indian
mission in Canada with the brief of
penetrating the transcontinental
Khalistan separatist network. The RAW
representatives in Ottawa resented his
presence and raked up a turf battle.
Dhar accessed extremist Sikh Gurdwaras
and sections of the vocal Sikh
community. Diplomatic assets ferreted
out useful information on Pakistan's
Inter Services Intelligence (ISI)
links with Sikh secessionists. Dhar 's
uncorroborated information about a
terrorist attack involving an Indian
aircraft was not taken seriously by
Canadian authorities, leading to the
Air India Kanishka bombing in 1985.
Returning home in 1987, Dhar joined
the Punjab cell of the IB. He
vehemently opposed the government
policy of "filling up the follies
of fault lines with dead bodies".
(p 320) Unlike his colleagues, Dhar's
operations avoided mindless killings
of civilians. He drove wedges between
feuding Sikh terrorist leaders and
outfits and facilitated two secret
peace initiatives of prime minister
Rajiv Gandhi. Home minister Buta
Singh's own underground group spoilt
one demarche. Singh, the Punjab
governor, state police and a jealous
section of IB officers stonewalled the
second plan. One IB faction opposed to
Dhar leaked out the identity of a
valuable asset and sacrificed him to
the bullets of a Khalistani hit squad.
Be it Punjab or Nepal, "agent
safety was not a part of IB's
professional ethics". (p 491)
Promoted to the Pakistan
Counter-Intelligence Unit (PCIU) in
1988, Dhar launched transborder agents
to penetrate Pakistani posts on the
Punjab and Rajasthan borders. Rajiv
Gandhi's lackey, Mani Shankar Aiyar
(presently a central minister),
instigated a crude incident of
arresting a Pakistani "cover
diplomat" against the counsel of
Dhar. The prime minister's
troubleshooters and some of their IB
acolytes naively propped up the
Bodoland and Gorkhaland agitations in
Assam and Bengal.
At PCIU, Dhar discovered that Mulayam
Singh Yadav (later defense minister)
was in clandestine contact with the
ISI. Sincere IB efforts to nab
mujahideen and Pakistani agents were
frustrated by key Indian politicians
in Delhi, Bihar and Bengal.
Undeterred, Dhar helped the IB regain
a toehold in the Kashmir Valley and
penetrated some jihadi training camps
in Pakistan.
In 1989, Dhar aided the Assam
operations of the IB. The
collaboration of politicians and
bureaucrats had whetted
sub-nationalist aspirations in Assam.
After creating Frankensteins, the
state government was incapable of
planned military action against the
ULFA (United Liberation Front of
Assam). Infected layers within the
Assamese regime divulged advance
information about Indian army plans
and allowed insurgents to cross over
into friendly Bangladesh. Fat amounts
from the Secret Service Fund of the IB
for "missions" in Assam were
never utilized for the putative
purpose.
In 1991, Dhar was posted a chief of
the IB's secret technical wing.
Groupism and favoritism ruled in this
"breeding ground of
inefficiency". (p 423) Policing
mentality occluded opening the doors
of intelligence to scientific
specialists. The abject condition of
Indian intelligence's cipher breaking
cost the life of Rajiv Gandhi.
Ministry mandarins and greasy alley
manipulators defeated Dhar's reform
proposals. Apart from diplomatic
constraints on aggressive intelligence
collection, he was enjoined by diehard
Gandhi family hangers-on to record
exotic audio and videotapes about a
romantic liaison of P V Narasimha Rao,
just before his confirmation as prime
minister in 1992.
Back at PCIU, Dhar busted many ISI
networks across India and tapped
"fountain organizations"
that hovered over the peripheries of
Islamist outfits. Frustrated by red
tape, he took unapproved measures to
raise "talents" inside Nepal
and Bangladesh for mapping ISI fields.
Certain "special projects"
penetrated targets in Karachi,
Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar.
In November 1992, prime minister Rao
ordered Dhar to arrange a discreet
meeting with the supremo of the RSS (Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh), the fountainhead
of Hindutva. The wily Congressman
actually had "old linkages with
the Sangh as a student". (p 466)
Reminded that the stability of Rao's
job depended on subordination, the PMO
tried to force Dhar to
"cooperate" with the Ambanis
by implicating their corporate rivals.
Dhar's final struggle was against the
erroneous persecution of fellow IB
officers who honestly investigated the
infamous ISRO (Indian Space Research
Organization) espionage case of 1994.
Mention of the prime minister's son as
a suspect rushed Rao to prevail upon
the Kerala state government and the
CBI director to "go slow"
and bury the trail. The accused were
exonerated without due process. Indian
rocket/missile security was
compromised. Dhar's efforts after
retirement to get the case reopened
invited death threats and
assassination attempts.
Open Secrets is a depressing
hidden camera fixed on the systemic
failures of Indian polity and
intelligence. It illuminates the
weaknesses of India's national
security setup and exhorts urgent
patchwork.
Open Secrets. India's Intelligence
Unveiled by M K Dhar. Manas
Publications, New Delhi, 2005. ISBN:
81-7049-240-8. Price: US$11.50, 552
pages.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd.
All rights reserved. Please contact us
for information on sales,
syndication and republishing.)
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