So much has been written on the spy ring uncovered in the Prime Minister’s own office, the Rashtrapati Bhavan and the Defence Ministry that it would, on the face of it appear superfluous to take up this subject. But the issue has facets which have generally been ignored in the excitement, anger and concern which the leakage of the country’s topmost secrets on an almost daily basis allegedly over a period of two years, if not more, has caused.
A personal experience might help illustrate one possible aspect of this sorry episode. Sometime during the emergency in 1976 I received a telephone call from a middle-level diplomat, whom I had never met, inviting me for dinner. I pleaded previous engagement; he suggested another date; I again pleaded previous engagement; he said I could choose any day in the week and expressed great keenness to meet me. With reluctance I relented. We are among the least protocol conscious people in the world. As a young reporter 1 have seen even chiefs of staff at the residence of foreign diplomats of pretty low rank.
I knew instinctively that no one else would be invited; no one else was. The drinks and the dinner were uneventful leaving me wondering why he was so keen to have me over. At the post-dinner liqueur-coffee stage, to use the familiar cliché, the cat was out of the bag. He suddenly said: Do you know Mrs. Gandhi had dinner with Colby, the then CIA director, at the US ambassador’s residence. How do you know, I asked, since the event had not been publicised. In response he told me that Colby had travelled via Saudi Arabia and he would let me know the name of the airline by which he travelled the next day. The implication was not spelt out. It did not need to be. Mrs. Gandhi was in league with the CIA!
I was at once furious and amused; furious because the country’s Prime Minister known for her fierce independence and nationalistic pride was being accused of being in league with the CIA and amused because the charge she was known to have unjustly insinuated against other equally proud Indians was being levelled against her. I did not wish to enter into a discussion. I expressed my doubts regarding the authenticity of his information and left it at that. He never rang up again.
Believing The Worst
There was no need to speculate on the purpose of this strange “communication” by a diplomat who did not know me and who had no good reason to place confidence in me in view of my rather well-known views. Perhaps he was misguided by the almost universal hostility to the emergency in the press.
This was part of a disinformation campaign which was already well advanced against Mr. Sanjay Gandhi and therefore by implication against Mrs. Gandhi, Mr. Sanjay Gandhi was then being accused of work in collaboration with the CIA by a section of the Indian left which was feeling cheated of its “legitimate* influence in the management of the emergency regime and the country’s affairs. It had supported Mrs. Gandhi in her struggle with the organisational bosses in the Congress since 1967, managed to win important places in her set-up and endorsed the emergency in the calculation that it could use it (the emergence) to achieve what it had failed to achieve on its own for 50 long years in power. Mr. Sanjay Gandhi had frustrated its plans. And why would he have done that unless the CIA was instigating him? And why would Mrs. Gandhi permit him unless she herself was in touch with the CIA? This is how such arguments always proceed.
Mr. Sanjay Gandhi was not my ideal for high office. He was too brusque, too self-assured, too arrogant, too ruthless, too arbitrary and too ill-educated for my taste. But being the kind of man he was, he could not possibly be manipulated by anyone, certainly not by the kind of people – such as the son of a sugar magnate – who used to be mentioned in this connection in those abnormal days, significantly enough not just by interested leftists but many other Indians who also were prepared to believe the worst about Mr. Sanjay Gandhi (and Mrs. Indira Gandhi) because they were opposed to the emergency.
A Gullible People
It is difficult to say whether the theory of Mr, Sanjay Gandhi’s CIA connections was invented by some foreigners fearing that he might force a shift in India’s ‘‘progressive” foreign policy, or by some Indians. But that is not as pertinent as the point that such is our gullibility as a people that a lot of us believed this crap to be the truth. And remember the speed with which totally false rumours relating to the government’s alleged plans to give millions of school children some mysterious injection in order to make them incapable of producing offsprings spread throughout north India during the emergency.
Mr. Sanjay Gandhi must have been aware of the calumny. It must have hurt him greatly just as the old charge of his having been involved in stealing cars and indulging in wild orgies as a little boy had, by some accounts, to the point of distorting his general outlook. But instead of drawing the lesson that one must not engage in this kind of character assassination, he, it would seem, drew an opposite conclusion. He too did not mind defaming others.
When the Congress was in opposition in 1978 and Mrs. Gandhi and he were being persecuted by the Janata government, an unidentifiable agency circulated a list of “CIA agents” in India. By now the enemy had changed and so the list had changed. Mr. Sanjay Gandhi was not in it. Instead it included a number of Indian journalists. His wife, Maneka Gandhi, promptly published it in the magazine Surya she was editing; Pranab Mukerjee, then a Cong. (I) member of the Rajya Sabha, read it out in the House and the National Herald with its known links with the Nehru family published the statement prominently on the front page in all probability without any reference to the then editor, Mr. Khushwant Singh.
In a sense, the maligned individuals had every right to be angry and bitter. But some of them too had indulged and were indulging in the dangerous pastime of giving currency to rumours – against Mrs. Gandhi and Mr. Sanjay Gandhi. And what an irony of fate that the same Pranab Mukerjee should now be a victim of a similar slander campaign.
Destructive Distrust
In other nations the attitude towards their well-known figures is different even if it involves certain risks as it is known to have in Britain. To quote one example: Sartre was making a nuisance of himself when General de Gautle was President of France. An advisor asked the General to allow Sartre to be arrested. President de Gaulle was dumb-founded that anyone should make such a ridiculous suggestion. He is quoted as having said: “France does not arrest Voltaire.” At least some Indians should so be regarded.
Espionage is, of course, a serious matter and no one can possibly suggest that top officials and other well-known figures should not be questioned either if there is worthwhile evidence against them, or if they can help investigations in some way. But there can be little doubt that we shall destroy the democratic system and much else with it if those in positions of influence do not act with caution and due respect for those against whom there is no good evidence.
Distrust is extremely destructive of democracy. It cannot prosper in an atmosphere of distrust and character assassination. Precisely such an atmosphere exists in our country, today. All officials in New Delhi are living in terror of being defamed and the supposed list of possible “foreign agents” might not end with those poor fellows. No one need be surprised if those close to Mr. Rajiv Gandhi also become victims of the rumour mills as did those close to Mrs. Gandhi during the emergency.
During my visit to Teheran in 1973 I was most struck by one fact – the total lack of mutual trust among members of the Iranian elite – and on that basis alone l concluded that the regime could not survive a serious challenge, which it did not. On my return 1 said what I thought, little realising that in less than two years we would be in the same plight. The emergency created a situation in which it came to be regarded risky to speak frankly even in the privacy of one’s drawing room. Relatively unimportant individuals came to be hounded by the fear that their telephones were tapped. Mercifully, like much else in India, the exercise in authoritarianism was an ill-organised and mild affair; and it ended in just about 18 months. Even so it has left scars which have not healed eight years later. The bureaucracy has certainly not emerged out of the trauma it then suffered. The government should be careful lest it paralyse it further.
(To be concluded)
The Times of India, 29 January 1985