Opinion

Loud Whispers

Questions on the pages of retired sleuths and generals

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Loud Whispers
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In his retirement, I was once talking to the late R.N. Kao, founder-director of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India's espionage agency. “I want to tell you everything,” he said, in response to one of my questions. “But I have been used to keeping secrets all my life. And now, even as I try to tell you something, I feel as if I am on the point of denuding myself.” Obviously, there wasn’t much to ask after that, even less to say by way of answer.

From such a code-bound approach to one’s position as receptor of official secrets to the recent publication of A.S. Dulat’s Kashmir—The Vajpayee Years, a kiss-and-tell account of another RAW chief’s days as Vajpayee’s pointsman on Kashmir, is indeed a sea change. The book tells of the government’s secret funding of some separatist groups and pays handsome tribute to the ‘liberal-minded’ Indian system for not having pro-Pakistani Hurriyat chief Syed Ali Shah Geelani bumped off in some ‘accident’, as int­elligence agencies around the world routinely do.

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Nevertheless, Dulat is in good company. A former Union home secretary recently revealed on TV something he vaguely heard while in service—that a move to dispose of a terrorist mastermind sheltering in Pakistan had to be called off because it was internally sabotaged by someone in Mumbai police. Earlier, Gen V.K. Singh, as he was transitioning from being army chief to being a politician, revealed that the army secretly funded certain Kashmiri politicians in the “national interest”. An earlier generation of officers would have deemed such open articulation unthinkable, even in retirement. But the times, as everyone knows, are a-changing.

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One must admit, though, that the trend goes back to B.N. Mullick, who wrote several tomes about his time as the top government sleuth through the Nehru years. And Gen B.M. Kaul sought to vindicate his honour through The Untold Story, something he failed to do in action on the uplands of NEFA. M.O. Mathai proved to be the nemesis of the Nehruvian narrative in his tell-all account of his days as the first prime minister’s assistant. Thirty-eight years on, he again features in former Intelligence Bureau chief and Uttar Pradesh governor T.V. Rajeshwar’s recent account of his years in service, titled India: The Crucial Years. But one runs into uncertain terrain when the memoirs are questioned by persons who may know better. R.K. Dhawan, Indira Gandhi’s Man Friday, has questioned the veracity of what Rajeshwar has written and put down as fiction his claim about personally handing over the manuscript of a sensational ‘missing chapter’ of one of Mathai’s books to Mrs Gandhi.

Where does that leave a student of current history? Particularly so, as the government continues to sit tight on official records even decades after the mandatory 25-year cooling period. I had sought to see some papers on a rather innocuous matter concerning Kashmir, dating back over 60 years, in the National Archives. But when I requisitioned them, it turned out the relevant pap­ers had not been made available to the National Archives (or so I was told) even when it was listed in its catalogue.

This level of secretiveness in government is seems completely incompatible with the effusiveness of its officers. Of course, an army general or a senior bureaucrat in government would be privy to a lot of decisions, information or anecdotes. Many of these may not exactly be covered by the Official Secrets Act, and yet could have a bearing on sustaining official positions, at home or abroad.

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When the officers’ urge to tell it all takes charge, nobody seems to mind whatever happens to the proverbial stiff upper lip! It surely is good for the book sales of these instant authors. But the government needs to rethink the wide gap separating its squeamishness on keeping official records under wraps far longer than may be necessary and the second-hand disclosures that may titillate public imagination but are of little value to scholars. At this rate, the government may someday have to consider enacting a ‘Prevention of Indiscrete Official Utterances Act’ to go with the Official Secrets Act. Alternatively, it should let the daylight in on documents held captive inside dark chambers. Let the facts on the files prevail as against the officers’ fancy running free. That would help scholars reach the right conclusions, and possibly act as a restraining influence on the urge to tell it all as soon as one leaves the government.

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