India: The Crucial Years

Dedicated to the memory of Indira Gandhi

CONTENTS

Title Page

Introduction

SECTION ONE: Border Assignments

1. Transfer to the Intelligence Bureau

2. Sikkim

3. Trek to the Border Check Posts

4. Chinese Ultimatum

5. Assassination of the Prime Minister of Bhutan

6. Adviser to the King

7. Memories of the Himalayan Kingdom

SECTION TWO: Security Duty

8. The Naxalite Movement

9. On VIP Duty

10. Accompanying Indira Gandhi

11. The President’s Entourage

12. The Bangladesh War

13. Adviser to Mujibur Rahman

SECTION THREE: The Crucial Years

14. The Emergency

15. George Fernandes and C.G.K. Reddy

16. Recollections from the Emergency

17. The IB’s Role

SECTION FOUR: Rout and Return

18. The Elections of 1977

19. Departure from the IB

20. Director, Civil Aviation Security

21. Special Commissioner of Andhra Pradesh at Delhi

22. Janata Loses the Plot

23. The Elections of 1979

SECTION FIVE: Director, Intelligence Bureau

24. Return to IB

25. Organizational Revamp

26. Unionism in the IB

27. The Moshe Dayan Episode

28. Life as DIB

29. Ananda Marga

30. The Non-Aligned Meet

31. Espionage and Counter-Intelligence

32. The Samba Spy Case

33. Contacts with Foreign Intelligence Agencies

34. Committed Bureaucracy

35. The Legacy of DIBs

SECTION SIX: Lieutenant Governor of Arunachal Pradesh

36. Back to the North-East

37. The Thandrong Incident

38. The Assassination of Indira Gandhi

39. The Merchants of Death

SECTION SEVEN: Governor of Sikkim

40. Sikkim’s Merger into India

41. The Emergence of Nar Bahadur Bhandari

42. Sikkim in 1985

43. President Venkataraman’s Memoir

44. Operations Brasstacks and Chequerboard

SECTION EIGHT: Governor of West Bengal

45. West Bengal Politics

46. Interacting with Jyoti Basu

47. Raj Bhavan

48. The Industrial Scene

49. The Question of Corruption

50. The Problem of Bangladeshi Immigrants

51. Resignation of Governors

52. Au Revoir, Bengal

Afterword: Governor of Uttar Pradesh

Photographs

About the Author

Talk To Us

Copyright

Introduction

This is the story of my life and career, starting with my first posting as assistant superintendent of police in 1950 at Siddipet, a barren village with no electricity or water supply, in the Telangana region. One had to take a bus to Hyderabad, which was about 100 km away, to buy anything, food included. A movement against the landlords of what was then Hyderabad state was raging all over, to be called off only in 1952 on the instructions of Joseph Stalin himself, the communist leader of the Soviet Union.

I served in Siddipet in these difficult times, and then in Gulbarga for a brief period, before I was promoted and posted as the superintendent of police (SP) of Raichur district in 1955. I had just finished a little more than a year in Raichur when Hyderabad state was trifurcated as per the recommendations of the States Reorganization Commission. I was allotted to the newly created state of Andhra Pradesh.

I drove overnight from Raichur to Hyderabad city to take over as deputy commissioner of police (DCP – law and order). Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, came to inaugurate the new state on 1 September 1956. He addressed a huge gathering at Fateh Maidan in Hyderabad, where I was in charge of the arrangements.

P.K. Monnappa was the inspector general of police (IGP) of Andhra Pradesh at the time. He felt that senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officers of Hyderabad city needed to be trained by posting them in the state’s districts. I was sent to Guntur, a huge district where I served for two years before being drafted back to Hyderabad city as DCP in 1959.

In 1962, I was spotted by the director of the Intelligence Bureau (DIB), Bhola Nath Mullik, while he was on a visit of the state. I joined the IB in April that year. I spent the next twenty- one years in various postings, ranging from Indo-Tibetan border check posts to VIP security at the IB headquarters. My inclusion in Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s entourage to Kabul in 1969 was one such assignment. Prior to that, I spent two years from 1965 to 1967 in Bhutan as security adviser to the king. This was followed by a prolonged study tour in Naxalbari, the epicentre of the Naxalite movement against landlords, in West Bengal in 1967.

After my return to the IB headquarters in 1968, I was at various desks, dealing with numerous political developments in the country. In 1971, I was deputed as security adviser to Bangladesh president Mujibur Rahman on his request. I trained a few batches of officers and observed the security drill governing his activities. In 1972, my detailed manual on security was presented to him. The first suggestion was that he should move out of his own home in the Dhanmondi area of the national capital, Dhaka, and move into the state guesthouse, which had sufficient arrangements for various rings of security. Rahman, however, rejected the scheme, stating that there could be no danger to his life from the people of Bangladesh. Ironically, he and his family were assassinated in their home a few weeks later.

Back in India, social and political reformer Jayaprakash Narayan’s agitation against the central government was gaining ground and was aimed at removing the dominance of Indira Gandhi and her family from the political scheme of things. Seizing the opportunity, labour leader George Fernandes, president of the All India Railwaymen’s Federation at the time, called for a nationwide strike, which seriously affected the movement of foodgrains in the country. And then there was the judgment of the Allahabad High Court which set aside Indira Gandhi’s election to the Lok Sabha in 1971 on technical grounds.

All these factors contributed to her decision to impose a national Emergency after suspending the Constitution in the early hours of 25 June 1975. Her decision, however, was not made in consultation with the IB or the home ministry. The lists of people from the opposition parties who were arrested overnight and in the days following the imposition of Emergency were drawn up at the prime minister’s residence and none in the IB was consulted.

In the course of the Emergency, though, the IB did send weekly, monthly and quarterly reports to the prime minister on the state of affairs in the country. Morarji Desai, leader of the Indian National Congress (Organization) who would go on to become prime minister following the elections of 1977, was kept prisoner in a farmhouse on the outskirts of Delhi. He was regularly checked up by a medical officer, who sent reports to the IB on his health.

One year after the imposition of Emergency, the IB conducted a state-wise survey of the state of affairs and recommended the release of all political prisoners. It was suggested to Mrs Gandhi that it would be advisable to hold elections some time in October 1976. The elections were held in 1977, and Mrs Gandhi’s defeat from her pocket borough of Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh was announced on the night of 23 March.

Her defeat had an impact on the IB. While DIB S.N. Mathur was allowed to continue under the new regime, I, the senior- most joint director, who had dealt with the elections, was singled out and compelled to go on an indefinite leave from 5 July that year. A committee headed by then Home Secretary N.P. Singh and comprising senior joint director of the IB, M.M.L. Hooja, was formed to look into the alleged misuse of the IB and its funds in support of the Congress  during the Emergency.  When  no  evidence  was  found  to  support  the allegations, I was recalled from leave and the post of director, civil aviation security, was created for me. Subsequently, Chief Minister Chenna Reddy of Andhra Pradesh wanted my services to be reverted to his state since he wanted to appoint me as special commissioner of Andhra Pradesh at Delhi – a post in which I served for two years. This gave me an opportunity to closely follow the events in Delhi and elsewhere in the country.

As the only Congress CM in India at the time, Reddy was in constant touch with Indira Gandhi, who lived in one of the bungalows  allotted  to  her  on  Willingdon  Crescent,  now renamed  Mother  Teresa  Crescent,  in  central  Delhi  close  to Rashtrapati Bhavan. Mrs Gandhi’s close confidant R.K. Dhawan continued to work as her personal assistant in those years, and I spoke to him about political developments from time to time.

Towards the end of 1979, it was clear that Mrs Gandhi’s return to the office of prime minister was imminent. After she emerged  victorious  in  the  elections  that  year,  there  was  a shake-up in the country’s administrative and intelligence set- ups. Mathur was reverted to Haryana as senior joint director while I was appointed as the DIB.

I took charge in February that year and remained in the post for three years. In 1983, I was posted as the lieutenant governor of Arunachal Pradesh – the first time an IPS officer was appointed to such a constitutional post. After two years, I was posted as the governor of Sikkim, again the first time an IPS officer was appointed as the governor of a state. After four years, I was made the governor of West Bengal. I remained in the post for one year. After V.P. Singh became prime minister in December 1989, all the governors appointed by the Rajiv Gandhi government were asked to quit. I sent my resignation accordingly and returned to Delhi. In 2004, I was appointed as the governor of Uttar Pradesh by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and remained in the post till May 2009. Thereafter, I returned to Delhi.

This memoir is largely based on my work as the DIB. In the process, I hope it provides some insights into India’s crucial years – the important decade of the 1970s under Mrs Gandhi.

SECTION ONE

Border Assignments

1

Transfer to the Intelligence Bureau

I met Bhola Nath Mullik, director of the Intelligence Bureau (DIB), for the first time in 1957, when he visited the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam and Nagarjunakonda in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh, where I was SP. He had brought with him a batch of young officers who had joined the IB under the new Earmarking Scheme. As part of this scheme, some of the toppers in the IPS were earmarked for selection by the IB after they had put in about two or three years of service in their respective states. During his short stay, Mullik asked various pointed questions; later I came to know this was part of the ‘talent spotting’ exercise the director and senior officers conducted periodically to locate officers considered suitable for the IB.

Then, a few months later, I learnt that Mullik had asked the IB for my deputation – only to be peremptorily turned down by the IGP of Andhra Pradesh, A.K. Kunhiraman Nambiar. Nambiar’s contention was that the IB should ask for a panel of names, and that it was for the states concerned and IGs to select and send those they could spare. The contention was basically correct and still remains a matter of dispute between the IB and the state police authorities. But after Nambiar’s refusal, the matter was forgotten until 1962, when I was told that I could be spared after the general elections were over. Eventually, I joined the IB in May 1962.

IPS officers taken on deputation from the various states used to be put through a rigorous training programme, beginning with a four-month course at the old training centre in Anand Parbat, New Delhi. This consisted of lectures by both senior officers and regular faculty members on various political parties (with an emphasis on communism), intelligence techniques, counter-intelligence, socio-economic trends, and so on. The training centre was nothing more than a few dilapidated army barracks situated in very uncongenial surroundings. The plans for a proper training centre had been on the drawing board for nearly two decades, and it eventually fell to my lot to launch the modern, up-to-date training institution and complete it during my tenure as DIB.

After the four-month lecture programme, IPS trainees were invariably sent, during the Mullik years, to spend about two weeks in each of the three states where communists were very active: Kerala, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh. At the end of this tour, they were attached to various branches before they were assigned specific desks. During my Anand Parbat training, there were three others and we all went through this programme.

My tour in Kerala touched upon almost all the districts; I travelled from Kanyakumari to Kannur, along with exploring the highlands, including Munnar and Peermed. This was in the last quarter of 1962 and Pattom Thanu Pillai had just resigned as chief minister and had been sent out on a gubernatorial assignment. He was succeeded by Shankar, an Ezhava leader handpicked by K. Kamaraj, the Congress president.

Consequent to the reorganization of states and the formation of Kerala – which included the old Malabar district of Madras state – on 1 November 1956, the entire socio-political situation of the state underwent a change; this marked the advent of communism. For, the imbalance in the state politics brought about by the merger of the old Malabar district was directly responsible for communists coming to power in April 1957. Apart from bringing a definitive communist ethos to Kerala politics, the merger of the old Malabar district with Kerala also brought forth Muslim and Ezhava politics.

Next, my two-week-long tour in West Bengal took me to practically all the districts, including Midnapore, Bardhaman, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Hooghly and Malda. They contained the country’s staunchest communists. West Bengal then had the third largest Communist Party of India (CPI) membership after Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. The members of the West Bengal unit had always been the vanguard of communism, and had always taken a more revolutionary stand than their brethren in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. Even in 1962, I had seen the West Bengal unit of the CPI move far left, having rejected the Vijayawada thesis which spoke in terms of a broad-based national front.

My tour of my home state, Andhra Pradesh, was during the last leg of my training programme. I began my tour in Vijayanagaram, the northern-most district of Andhra Pradesh, and toured all the central districts, as well as the districts of Telangana, particularly Nalgonda, Kammam and Warangal. The Communist Party’s influence was pronounced in the districts of Krishna and Guntur in the Circars, and in the districts of Nalgonda and Khammam in Telangana. In 1962, the CPI was the main opposition party in the Andhra Pradesh assembly with fifty-one seats.

P. Sundarayya, Ravi Narayan Reddy and Devulapalli Venkateswara Rao were the communist stalwarts from the Telangana  region  while  the  coastal  districts  had  contributed C. Rajeswara Rao and Makineni Basavapunnaiah. From the Rayalaseema area were Neelam Rajasekhara Reddy and his brother-in-law T. Nagi Reddy, both very devoted communists and  the  brother  and  brother-in-law,  respectively,  of Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, a two-time chief minister of Andhra Pradesh and the sixth President of India.

At the end of the tour and after the desk training was over, I was posted as assistant director in charge of Indo-Tibetan border check posts in February 1963. This desk dealt with the manning and provisioning of the check posts all along the Indo-Tibetan border, from Ladakh to the north-east. Colonel Lal Charanji was the deputy director, and I had the hero of the infamous Hot Springs incident, Karam Singh, as my deputy in the rank of deputy central intelligence officer.

Karam Singh had led a police party to the area beyond the Hot Springs in Ladakh and the party was ambushed by the Chinese near Kongka La on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) on 21 October 1959, resulting in several casualties. This occasion, which marked the first blood drawn by the Chinese from the Indian border patrol, is commemorated every year by policemen all over the country. Parades are held and the names of the policemen who laid down their lives during the year are inscribed in a national register.

Colonel Charanji was one of the few army officers who were permanently absorbed into the IB, some even having distinguished themselves with long years of service in the IB. But Colonel Charanji was a happy-go-lucky man; he described himself as an operational man, not to be burdened with any administrative papers. He had left strict instructions that I should dispose of the papers at my level and should not bother him.

At the time of my assignment to this  post,  the  Chinese threat on the border, particularly in the Tawang region of the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA), was a hot topic and there were frequent meetings in the defence and home ministries. I distinctly remember a sense of euphoria pervading the corridors of these two ministries – a premature certainty that the Indian army was all set to teach the Chinese a lesson. The following weeks proved how unwarranted this euphoria was. Jawaharlal Nehru’s subsequent admission that they were living in a make- believe world in the run-up to the war was very apt. The post- 1962 mood was depressing and humiliating, and there was a sense of gloom.

However, with the arrival of weapons from Western countries, there was a determined bid to strengthen the border defence as well as intelligence operations. A series of check posts were, thereafter, established – though within the area demarcated by the LAC. As part of this strengthened resolve, a large number of assistant central intelligence officers were recruited both for intelligence and technical operations.

My desk job at the IB headquarters was short-lived, though. I was told in April 1963 that I was being posted as assistant director in Gangtok, Sikkim. This was quite unexpected, and I was told that it was a prize posting; I had been handpicked by the DIB himself. In May 1963, I left Delhi with my family and proceeded  to Gangtok.

2

Sikkim

A brief historical account of Sikkim is in order at this point. The Namgyal royal dynasty of Sikkim was established in the year 1642. Over the next century and a half, the kingdom witnessed frequent raids and territorial losses to invaders from Nepal. In the nineteenth century, it allied itself with British India against Nepal, eventually becoming a British protectorate. After India became independent, it signed a treaty in 1950 with the maharaja of Sikkim, according to which Sikkim became a protectorate of India. India’s responsibility was confined to external relations, defence, communication and diplomacy. While the state had autonomy with respect to internal government, it was subject to the ultimate responsibility of the Government of India for the maintenance of good administration and law and order.

I assumed the post of the IB’s assistant director in Gangtok in May 1963. The post was, however, given the nomenclature of a police officer on special duty (OSD) to assuage the feelings of Maharaj Kumar Palden Thondup Namgyal, who was looking after all the administrative work on behalf of his father, Maharaja Tashi Namgyal. The maharaja himself was content to remain a figurehead. The durbar did not want an IB representative to function in Sikkim, but it was explained to the rulers that the OSD was meant exclusively for border intelligence and external relations, which fell within the treaty terms.

Generally, the work was concerned with border and trans- border intelligence on Chinese deployment, their activities, and so on. But the IB representative was expected to keep his eyes and ears open for internal developments and report them to the headquarters.

The Indian government’s political officer in Sikkim when I assumed charge was I.J. Bahadur Singh, a veteran Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer who had served in China and elsewhere. He was of a genial temperament, constantly puffing at his cigars, smiling and saying very little. By the end of 1963, the post was taken over by Avtar Singh, who was comparatively junior. Soon problems cropped up in his relations with Thondup Namgyal. However, these  were  of a minor nature and this was a phase when the Government of India was prepared to give a long rope to the rulers of the kingdom.

Maharaja Tashi Namgyal was a frail old man, who was totally withdrawn from the affairs of state and lived in his own world. Once when I called on him, after exchanging the usual pleasantries, I told him that I had heard of his famous paintings. He took me to the first floor of the southern wing of his palace to show them to me. They were all landscapes, and I found that the clouds were invariably painted in an artificially artistic manner, like in the traditional Tibetan thangkhas – scrolls found in monasteries depicting trantric symbols and natural phenomena. I told the maharaja that the ornamental depiction seemed to take away from the beauty of the landscapes, and he replied that he had painted the clouds exactly as he saw them.

After Tashi Namgyal’s death in December 1963, Palden Thondup Namgyal ascended the throne and the consecration ceremony was held in the Tshukhlakhang monastery on the palace premises. The lamas of the ancient monasteries of Sikkim handed over the old Lepcha style of crown, and Namgyal took it from them and put it on his head – an act imitative of Napoleon Bonaparte’s when he had crowned himself the emperor of France!

The Government of India was represented