Book Review: Spymaster AS Dulat’s Memoir ‘A Life In The Shadows’ Is The Story Of Him, Kashmir And Doctor Sahab

Former Research and Analysis Wing (RA&W) chief Amarjit Singh Dulat begins his memoir A Life In The Shadows with his family’s ancient history. Thankfully, he soon reaches to immediate history — that he was named Amarjit Singh starting with letter ‘A’, that his father Justice Dulat was “God’s good man and God was good to him”, that he was born on a cold December morning in 1940 in Sialkot where his father was a judge, that his father grew up in Lahore and finished schooling from DAV School, that he went to Government College, Lahore, and then he went to the University of Cambridge.

Dulat talks less about horrors of the Partition as, in his family, they would not breach the subject much due to killing of close relatives. But Dulat makes it a point to tell you that when they left Rawalpindi, they left the shining Ford behind. Also, in September 1947, the family boarded a Dakota which carried them to Lahore and from there to Delhi.

“On a happy note in Delhi,” Dulat’s father was appointed to the post of District and Sessions Judge, the first in Independent India. He has different memories of post-Partition Delhi. He would spend days in the Roshanara Club. At 10, Dulat went to Bishop Cotton. It is at Bishop Cotton, he says, he learned: That it is important to fight for what you believe in and to own up to your mistakes. He talks about his love for cricket. He played club cricket in Delhi, Chandigarh, Kathmandu, Bhopal, and, above all, in Sher-i-Kashmir Kashmir Stadium in Srinagar, which he calls the most beautiful cricket ground, more beautiful than Turn Bridge Wells in Kent. 

From Bishop Cotton, Dulat went to the University of Punjab where he enjoyed “life more than his studies”. In 1963, he sat for Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) exam but did not make it. In 1964, he qualified but not for Indian Foreign Service (IFS), his first choice, but for the Indian Police Service (IPS). That was the year Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru died. Dulat does not describe the scene across Calcutta that time as he was there with his uncle. But he says that when when “Panditji died, India wept”. He, however, mentions his uncle. “My uncle, Shubh Sawhney of the Davis Cup fame was working with Birlas in Calcutta,” writes Dulat. 

Love happened to Dulat also. He met Paran for the first time in 1959. Then Dulat tells us about Paran’s illustrious family — that Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Lion of Punjab, had his naankaa (maternal home). Paran's grandfather, Ranbir Singh Rajendra Bahadur, Maharaja of Jind, comes much later down the line. He returns to Paran by “simply saying” that Ranbir Singh’s daughter, Princess Rajbir Kaur (also known as Ruby), was Paran’s mother. Ruby married Balbir Singh Grewal, “one of the last brown sahibs” that Dulat had fortune to see. 

Finally, Dulat tells us about Paran. “There was something attractive about Paran, which struck me instantly.” Sometimes they went for walks together. Then Paran left for Sanawar. And for long, Dulat couldn’t see her, thinking he lost her forever. But fate makes them meet again some years after. That time Dulat was an IPS officer. Love bloomed again. Sadly, there is nothing about love and longing in the memoir. You fall in love, you lose your beloved, years later you find her again and you end up writing, “during the years we had been apart, Paran had grown up into an attractive woman.” How sad!

They married after Dulat completed his training at Mount Abu. “Paran, at heart, is as much a lover of life as I am,” Dulat tells us and “that has, over the years” been their “greatest bonds”.

Dulat then delves into his other love: Kashmir and Doctor Sahab (Dr Farooq Abdullah). However, before that he talks about people with whom he worked under. He shared a room with MK Narayanan, where he learned that deskwork is actually an important job. He calls Narayanan “past master” at distilling information he got and making best use of that material. Dulat tells us that Narayanan was also someone who quite liked hero worship, and BN Mullick, Nehru’s intelligence chief, referred to Narayanan as “greatest intelligence officer in Asia”. Then Dulat talks about intelligence and concludes that HUMINT (human intelligence) is more important than TECHINT (technological intelligence). 

In 1989-90, Dulat took charge of Intelligence Bureau (IB) in Kashmir. And proudly he says: “Kashmir taught me the real game of intelligence.” In his own words: “In this game, as I was to discover, there are very few rules and the work is rarely rewarding. And if you don’t learn to play the game fast, there are rarely second chances in a place like Kashmir.”

Throughout Dulat’s book, the emphasis is on having talks and Doctor Sahab: “We will all die by the gun, so why not talk.” The general argument in the memoir is that there is no black and white in Kashmir and it is mostly grey and you need to be able to think outside the box, the phrase Dulat learned from former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh.

Like his earlier book Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years, Dulat is gushing with his admiration and love for Farooq Abdullah here. He writes, “It took me years to know Farooq Abdullah and even today I wouldn’t dream of taking that relationship for granted.” For separatists, Dulat says they have been consistent in one line that Mirwaiz Umar Farooq told him: “You accuse us Kashmiris of lying, but we have learned it from you.”

In 1999, Dulat left the IB and joined the R&AW but Kashmir continues to be his focus as he says he carried his knowledge and experience of Kashmir to the R&AW. He writes, “After all, we were dealing with countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan and China and for all these countries, Kashmir is very important.” 

Kashmir, Dulat says, gave him a nuanced perspective on otherwise straightforward perspectives. In fact, many in Kashmir would agree on this. Kashmiris often presume that their local issues have geostrategic implications, that is why you hear more about Afghanistan and China in Srinagar than the wretched condition of Srinagar roads, lanes, and bylanes. This approach to the issues once irked former Finance Minister Dr Haseeb Drabu, who said in a press conference in Srinagar in 2017 that Kashmiris think that the world revolves around them. Whether it does or not is another thing but it is predominant thinking in Kashmir and perhaps also a beautiful escape from the reality.

Like other Kashmir commentators, Dulat too has commented on Kashmiri character. In Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years, Dulat had quoted Brajesh Mishra, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Principal Secretary and National Security Advisor during 1998-2004, as saying that “the only thing straight in Kashmir is a poplar tree”.  He again brings that quote in this memoir as well. And adds, “difference between a state like Punjab and a state like Kashmir is that a Sikh would tell you the truth straightaway, but a Kashmiri would twist and turn the story before he got to the kernel.” He adds that Kashmiris, after being ruled by many foreigners, have an “exaggerated feeling of oppression”. He calls it victimhood.

This makes me remember CE Tyndale Biscoe, a British missionary and educationist. In his book, Kashmir in Sunlight & Shade, Biscoe writes: “If we Britishers had to undergo what the Kashmiris have suffered, we might also have lost our manhood.” That sums up the suffering of Kashmiris over the years and their twists and turns, their tact to lie down and rise again. It is easy to talk about ‘Kashmiri character’ and not realise the situations this character has been in over the years. This passing of judgments on ‘Kashmiri character’ has been the pastime of many and Dulat is the latest entrant.

At present, Dulat feels that after abrogation of Article 370, no one in the intelligence community knows what is happening on the ground and he gives an impression that it is a different ball game in Kashmir and “the IB is out of it”.

Dulat is, however, hurt by treatment given to Doctor Sahab. Dulat asked Dr Abdullah after his release from detention whether anyone was talking to him about anything. He is quoted as replying: “Who would be talking to me about what? They have called me a thief and a crook. What’s there left to talk?” Dulat has devoted a full chapter on Doctor Sahab despite repeatedly mentioning him in the book. He considers Dr Abdullah the tallest leader —certainly the tallest Muslim leader— that India has right now. So he asks Delhi to listen to Doctor Sahab, who has been warning of an impending political crisis since the abrogation of Article 370. 

For Dulat, Doctor Sahab has always been on the “our right side” that is on Delhi's right side and he has never closed the door for talks with Delhi. While Dulat implicitly at one place and explicitly at other places describe the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as creation of Ajit Doval when the latter was the IB chief, he is considerate towards Doctor Sahab throughout. When he talks about Doval Doctrine on Kashmir that is in place since 2019, he says Doval told him: “There’s has been enough talking. Now, we are no longer going to talk.” 

As the mood in Kashmir is of silence after abrogation of Article 370, Dulat says it looks like people no longer dream of Azadi, no longer even a dream to go to Pakistan. “It is the nightmare of being reduced to a minority in their own land. It’s not something that is openly said, but it is fear that hangs over the Valley like shadow,” writes Dulat. This line seems so realistic.

The book is a good read. It has details about Dulat’s meetings with separatist leaders like chasing Shabir Shah for a year in 1990 and finally locating him. It has some account of talks with Mirwaiz Farooq and has little details of a meeting with Yasin Malik, where Malik leans back in his chair and swings his boots up on to the table. Dulat also talks about his friendship with Agha Ashraf Ali, Sajad Lone, and others. It shows that Dulat not only knows who is who in Kashmir but is friends with them except for the Muftis. He also talks about his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga during his time as R&AW chief. But the book doesn't have spooky things happening all around. It is more of a political book and it has a lot about Doctor Sahab and Kashmir and Dulat.

When in January 2022, Dulat told Farooq Abdullah about “discontented murmurs on streets attest that Sheikh Abdullah made grievous error in 1947 when he chose to support India”, Farooq blamed “those bloody jamaatis” for it.
For a long time, the mainstream has created “the other” in Kashmir to be relevant to Delhi, that if you will not choose us, “they” will take over. After the abrogation of Article 370, “they” are nowhere. Offices of separatists have turned into salons in Rajbagh. Time has come for Doctor Sahab and others to talk to Delhi on their own terms rather than invoking “they”.  

In the meanwhile, Dulat is right on one more thing: “If you threaten him, a Kashmiri will lie down, he might even play dead. But given the chance, he will rise again.” Will he?  This time Kashmiri is not pretending to be dead, he seems to be dead. And in the meanwhile, for Dulat, Farooq has become far more emotional, far more charged up and deeply religious. Perhaps that is the only radicalisation happening in the Valley.