03-01-2005, 05:26 AM
Book Review in Pioneer. 27 Feb., 2005
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Step into my parlour, said the spider, and the fools trooped in
Strangely, while Open Secrets has been steadily climbing the sales chart, it has not evinced even a whimper from either the Intelligence Bureau or the Government. On the whole, it is an interesting book if you skip MK Dhar's preachy pontification on ethics and morals and quick read through his world view but for which it would have been an eminently readable memoir of sorts --- Kanchan Gupta
OPEN SECRETS: India's intelligence, unveiled; By Maloy Krishna Dhar; Manas Publications, Rs 795
A good spy, conventional wisdom has it, is one who can not only gather secrets in the most unconventional yet unobtrusive manner, but also keep the secrets from prying eyes. Espionage organisations are not surprisingly obsessed with secrecy - as much to protect the identities of their operatives as to safeguard the information they gather.
Of course, this obsession can be taken to ridiculously absurd limits. One of the popular features of The New Statesman used to be a comic strip lampooning the CIA. The strip's sign-in was a red-cornered file stamped "Destroy before you read".
The first time a major intelligence agency faced the dreadful prospect of seeing its secrets and tactics used for collecting them out in print was in 1987 when Peter Wright, an MI5 operative, penned his memoirs and put them up for publication. Spycatcher made news even before it hit the bookshops with the Conservative Government banning its publication. Wright eventually had it published out of Australia and made his pile.
It is another matter that the hoopla over Spycatcher proved to be a big fuss over nothing because Wright's account was an anodised version of what had already appeared in newspapers and magazines about MI5 operations. Yet, when Stella Rimington, the first woman to boss over the MI5, announced she was publishing her memoirs, all hell broke lose again.
The argument that publication of books by those with insider knowledge can severely damage national interest and compromise those still working for espionage agencies, not to mention damage the functioning of the agencies, is not without logic. But in this day and age of kiss and tell, that logic is often brushed aside under the convenient cover of "the people have the right to know". Such moral compunction, awfully lacking when spies are in service, inevitably surfaces when retirement and irrelevance stare them in the face.
In any other country, Open Secrets: India's Intelligence Unveiled by Maloy Krishna Dhar, who retired as Joint Director of Intelligence Bureau, would have created a furore and unleashed an intense public debate. But while the book has been steadily climbing the sales chart in India, it has not evinced even a whimper from either the Intelligence Bureau or the Government: to use a cliché, their silence has been deafening.
Nor have the politicians and political parties who have been exposed by Dhar cared to respond. Perhaps because it is embarrassing to deny that they were severely compromised by their association with the Government's dirty tricks department. Some of them thought they were using Dhar and the IB to their advantage, when in reality they were being led down the garden path for more than a slap and tickle.
But Open Secrets is not only about politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats - not to forget journalists - being compromised by IB operative pursuing nefarious objectives. It is also about how India's premier internal intelligence agency which is supposed to provide input vital for effective protection of national interests, has been converted into an instrument of political manipulation by successive governments.
If Mrs Indira Gandhi had no qualms about using the IB to demolish political foes, those who followed her in office also vigorously practised the amoral misuse of institutions like the IB for partisan political purposes. The only exception, perhaps, was during the years when Shyamal Dutta was IB Director. He tried to reshape IB into a modern intelligence apparatus, and both Prime Minister AB Vajpayee and Home Minister LK Advani respected his integrity.
But let's not digress and get back to Open Secrets. In his operational days, Dhar was an enterprising spy, innovative and daring in his exploits. During his days in the north-east, he chose to trust his own intuition rather than be swayed by the region's shifting politics of quicksand alliances and brittle loyalties.
In Sikkim, he was sufficiently detached from the shenanigans of the Chogyal, Hope Cook, Kaji and the players in New Delhi to be able to later comment with convincing candour on the validity of the referendum that became the basis of this erstwhile kingdom's annexation by India. So much happened during those action-packed days in Gangtok, yet so little is known of it. Dhar could consider writing an entire book on what another observer had then described (to later regret) the "smash and grab of Sikkim".
The juicy bits are about Dhar's operations in Delhi. He tells all about how he worked on the sly for Mrs Gandhi during the Janata days and was her amateur psephologist, guiding her, if he is to be believed, to a convincing victory in the 1980 election. Dhar also recounts his rummaging through files as head of the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau to sanitise records by weeding out dirt on Mrs Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi collected by Morarji Desai's Government.
He darkly hints at Sanjay Gandhi's determination to use every trick in the book, including gathering incriminating evidence about his mother, to strengthen his stranglehold over her and the Congress. Later, after Sanjay Gandhi died in an air crash, he was given the "detestable task" of monitoring the activities of Maneka Gandhi and her friends. It was Dhar and another IB officer who broke into the offices of Surya, Maneka Gandhi's magazine, and stole the original manuscript of "She", the unpublished chapter of MO Mathai's controversial autobiography.
Dhar also did counter-intelligence work: He ferried guns to the Golden Temple to arm Jasbir Singh Rode and his boys who had offered to fight terrorists. Later, such dangerous and ill-conceived tactics were to blow up in the face of the Government and Dhar had to eat humble pie. He details how Rashtrapati Bhavan telephones were bugged during the famous spat between Zail Singh and Rajiv Gandhi. VP Singh exited his office in South Block without realising that every word he uttered had been duly taped and transferred.
He also claims to have done a Watergate on the RSS and the BJP, secretly recording discussions at close-door meetings. One such meeting, in February 1992, "proved beyond doubt that they had drawn up the blueprint for the Hindutva assault in the coming months and choreographed the dance of destruction (sic) at Ayodhya in December 1992."
Indeed, since Dhar has mentioned some important BJP and RSS personalities by name, and his account shows the extremely close proximity that they had come to share with him, it is tempting to recall how one general secretary would often go around encouraging others stationed at BJP headquarters to "speak to Maloy Dhar". It was almost as if he were a sub-agent of the IB, unmindful of possible consequences of his irresponsible behaviour. Hopefully, BJP leaders and RSS sangh chalaks have not given Open Secrets a miss: it will tell them more than they know how their "disciplined" organisations were infiltrated and subverted from within.
Open Secrets is an interesting book if you skip Dhar's preachy pontification on ethics and morals and quick read through his world view but for which it would have been an eminently readable memoir of sorts.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Step into my parlour, said the spider, and the fools trooped in
Strangely, while Open Secrets has been steadily climbing the sales chart, it has not evinced even a whimper from either the Intelligence Bureau or the Government. On the whole, it is an interesting book if you skip MK Dhar's preachy pontification on ethics and morals and quick read through his world view but for which it would have been an eminently readable memoir of sorts --- Kanchan Gupta
OPEN SECRETS: India's intelligence, unveiled; By Maloy Krishna Dhar; Manas Publications, Rs 795
A good spy, conventional wisdom has it, is one who can not only gather secrets in the most unconventional yet unobtrusive manner, but also keep the secrets from prying eyes. Espionage organisations are not surprisingly obsessed with secrecy - as much to protect the identities of their operatives as to safeguard the information they gather.
Of course, this obsession can be taken to ridiculously absurd limits. One of the popular features of The New Statesman used to be a comic strip lampooning the CIA. The strip's sign-in was a red-cornered file stamped "Destroy before you read".
The first time a major intelligence agency faced the dreadful prospect of seeing its secrets and tactics used for collecting them out in print was in 1987 when Peter Wright, an MI5 operative, penned his memoirs and put them up for publication. Spycatcher made news even before it hit the bookshops with the Conservative Government banning its publication. Wright eventually had it published out of Australia and made his pile.
It is another matter that the hoopla over Spycatcher proved to be a big fuss over nothing because Wright's account was an anodised version of what had already appeared in newspapers and magazines about MI5 operations. Yet, when Stella Rimington, the first woman to boss over the MI5, announced she was publishing her memoirs, all hell broke lose again.
The argument that publication of books by those with insider knowledge can severely damage national interest and compromise those still working for espionage agencies, not to mention damage the functioning of the agencies, is not without logic. But in this day and age of kiss and tell, that logic is often brushed aside under the convenient cover of "the people have the right to know". Such moral compunction, awfully lacking when spies are in service, inevitably surfaces when retirement and irrelevance stare them in the face.
In any other country, Open Secrets: India's Intelligence Unveiled by Maloy Krishna Dhar, who retired as Joint Director of Intelligence Bureau, would have created a furore and unleashed an intense public debate. But while the book has been steadily climbing the sales chart in India, it has not evinced even a whimper from either the Intelligence Bureau or the Government: to use a cliché, their silence has been deafening.
Nor have the politicians and political parties who have been exposed by Dhar cared to respond. Perhaps because it is embarrassing to deny that they were severely compromised by their association with the Government's dirty tricks department. Some of them thought they were using Dhar and the IB to their advantage, when in reality they were being led down the garden path for more than a slap and tickle.
But Open Secrets is not only about politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats - not to forget journalists - being compromised by IB operative pursuing nefarious objectives. It is also about how India's premier internal intelligence agency which is supposed to provide input vital for effective protection of national interests, has been converted into an instrument of political manipulation by successive governments.
If Mrs Indira Gandhi had no qualms about using the IB to demolish political foes, those who followed her in office also vigorously practised the amoral misuse of institutions like the IB for partisan political purposes. The only exception, perhaps, was during the years when Shyamal Dutta was IB Director. He tried to reshape IB into a modern intelligence apparatus, and both Prime Minister AB Vajpayee and Home Minister LK Advani respected his integrity.
But let's not digress and get back to Open Secrets. In his operational days, Dhar was an enterprising spy, innovative and daring in his exploits. During his days in the north-east, he chose to trust his own intuition rather than be swayed by the region's shifting politics of quicksand alliances and brittle loyalties.
In Sikkim, he was sufficiently detached from the shenanigans of the Chogyal, Hope Cook, Kaji and the players in New Delhi to be able to later comment with convincing candour on the validity of the referendum that became the basis of this erstwhile kingdom's annexation by India. So much happened during those action-packed days in Gangtok, yet so little is known of it. Dhar could consider writing an entire book on what another observer had then described (to later regret) the "smash and grab of Sikkim".
The juicy bits are about Dhar's operations in Delhi. He tells all about how he worked on the sly for Mrs Gandhi during the Janata days and was her amateur psephologist, guiding her, if he is to be believed, to a convincing victory in the 1980 election. Dhar also recounts his rummaging through files as head of the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau to sanitise records by weeding out dirt on Mrs Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi collected by Morarji Desai's Government.
He darkly hints at Sanjay Gandhi's determination to use every trick in the book, including gathering incriminating evidence about his mother, to strengthen his stranglehold over her and the Congress. Later, after Sanjay Gandhi died in an air crash, he was given the "detestable task" of monitoring the activities of Maneka Gandhi and her friends. It was Dhar and another IB officer who broke into the offices of Surya, Maneka Gandhi's magazine, and stole the original manuscript of "She", the unpublished chapter of MO Mathai's controversial autobiography.
Dhar also did counter-intelligence work: He ferried guns to the Golden Temple to arm Jasbir Singh Rode and his boys who had offered to fight terrorists. Later, such dangerous and ill-conceived tactics were to blow up in the face of the Government and Dhar had to eat humble pie. He details how Rashtrapati Bhavan telephones were bugged during the famous spat between Zail Singh and Rajiv Gandhi. VP Singh exited his office in South Block without realising that every word he uttered had been duly taped and transferred.
He also claims to have done a Watergate on the RSS and the BJP, secretly recording discussions at close-door meetings. One such meeting, in February 1992, "proved beyond doubt that they had drawn up the blueprint for the Hindutva assault in the coming months and choreographed the dance of destruction (sic) at Ayodhya in December 1992."
Indeed, since Dhar has mentioned some important BJP and RSS personalities by name, and his account shows the extremely close proximity that they had come to share with him, it is tempting to recall how one general secretary would often go around encouraging others stationed at BJP headquarters to "speak to Maloy Dhar". It was almost as if he were a sub-agent of the IB, unmindful of possible consequences of his irresponsible behaviour. Hopefully, BJP leaders and RSS sangh chalaks have not given Open Secrets a miss: it will tell them more than they know how their "disciplined" organisations were infiltrated and subverted from within.
Open Secrets is an interesting book if you skip Dhar's preachy pontification on ethics and morals and quick read through his world view but for which it would have been an eminently readable memoir of sorts.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->