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Booking the RAW truth
WSN Bureau
 Nearly 20 years
ago, the then RAW chief A.K. Verma had asked his officers publicly
to come out of their mental cocoon by reading books on different
subjects and reviewing them frankly, but clearly the Indian
government knows where the skeletons should be stacked.
Endless stories
are known about the way India's external sleuthing agency, the
Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) goes about its job, giving a bad
name to many freedom struggles, acting on behalf of one political
master or the other, and muffling, silencing and murdering the
voices from the periphery of an India which only wants to live as
per the metropolis model where all resources are metro-centric and
divides are the norm: the urban-rural divide, the rich-poor divide,
the higher caste-lower caste divide, the brahman-nonbrahman divide
and the divide between those who arrogate all rights over truth to
themselves and others who too have a right to state their truth but
are not allowed to. India's Sikhs
come in the last category, where the truth about them that is
disseminated to the wider world by the official India
is the one sculpted for the rulers through agencies like the RAW.
After the
Chittisinghpura massacre -- the murder of 35 Sikhs coinciding with
President Bill Clinton's India visit in
March 2000 -- the US condemned the killings but refused to accept
the Indian government's contention that it was the work of Pakistan
based Islamist groups. Clearly, by now it is a well known and
thinly-veiled secret that it was a RAW operation. "The Mighty and
the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs", the
2006 book of former Secretary of State of the United States,
Madeleine Albright, is enlightening in this respect.
Now that some of
the RAW skeletons in India have
started tumbling out of the cupboards zealously guarded by the
agency, the masters of the agency have gone after the whistle
blowers with a vengeance. The CBI is currently raiding the houses of
Major General V. K. Singh, author of the "India’s External
Intelligence: Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing" as well the
premises of the publishers and several others. Strangely, this comes
months after the book was released. Instead of refuting the facts
narrated by the ex-RAW officer, the Indian government has unleashed
the CBI in clearly harsh and undemocratic manner.
RAW is a public
institution, paid for by the taxpayers’ money. It is possible that
its work could be secret from the India's national security
perspective, but how come even the criticism of its functioning
cannot be transparent and those who say so get CBI knocks at their
doors?
Which are the
two main points that the book makes? He has talked of misuse of the
organization against political opponents. The Chattisingpura most
likely will come under category. The second point is about misuse of
scarce public resources in the name of intelligence. The author had
demanded that the RAW be brought under parliamentary scrutiny, but
instead he has been faced with a CBI scrutiny himself.
 Several
well-meaning people in India have taken exception to the hounding of the author. Ajay K. Mehra, Director,
Centre for Public Affairs, Noida, in a scathing article in a leading
English daily, has said the 175-page book tells a story of lack of
accountability and transparency (even internally), corruption
(including misuse of powers, authority, privileges and secret
funds), organizational anomalies, ad-hocism, lack of professional
ethics and so on, in the organization which has been over-rated and
considered a holy cow that must not be questioned.
"Is Major
General Singh lying, or making stories, or writing out of personal
grudges? If yes, he is liable for action under relevant legal
provisions either for breach of privilege or personal contempt by
those finding mention in the book. The charges of leaking official
secrets appear remote, if at all they stick. The action against him
obviously appears an over-reaction of a hypersensitive and
susceptible politico-bureaucratic establishment interested in
maintaining the status quo for narrow personal and partisan
interests," he has said.
Strangely, many
facts about RAW, created in 1968, including those about its
political misuse during the Emergency, consequent downsizing in
1977, successes and failures have been in the public domain either
through media reports or other publications, some of which have been
referred to by Maj Gen V K Singh. He has built the narrative of
organizational anomalies on his personal experience during his
three-and-a-half-year stay in the R&AW.
Indian
government is fond of resorting to the antiquated 1923 vintage
Official Secrets Act (OSA) to silence any whistle blowers. But what
is the relevance of the OSA in current times? The Act is draconian
enough to state that “on a prosecution for an offence punishable
under this section it shall not be necessary to show that the
accused person was guilty of any particular act tending to show a
purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State, and,
notwithstanding that no such act is proved against him, he may be
convicted if, from the circumstances of the case or his conduct or
his known character as proved, it appears that his purpose was a
purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State.” Mehra,
in his column, said it was no wonder that "the second Administrative
Reforms Commission recommended that this act be repealed, for it is
incongruous with the regime of transparency in a democratic
society."
RAW, even now,
is excluded from the purview of the RTI, but does the RAW not need
parliamentary scrutiny on the sordid Rabinder Singh episode? Maj Gen
V K Singh has written about suspicious dealings in procurement,
which he even brought to the notice of the concerned superiors in
RAW and the PMO.
Another recent
book on RAW, on which the
 WSN has commented even earlier, was
called "The Kaoboys of RA&W". It was authored by B. Raman who worked
for 26 years in the organization. Within the RAW, Raman's reputation
was formidable as he often headed major ventures. This book includes
the period when the external intelligence organization was formed,
its initial difficulties as well as successes and its history till
the mid-Nineties.
World over, men
associated with politics and intelligence have written compelling
accounts giving insider details. Examples include Archie Roosevelt’s
For Lust of Knowing (1988), Robert Gates’ From the Shadows (1996),
Steve Coll's Ghost Wars (2004). Archie was a veteran US G-2
intelligence officer posted in the Maghreb
in 1942. Robert Gates had worked closely with five US Presidents.
Indian examples will include J.N. Dixit’s Assignment Colombo or Gen.
Ved Malik’s Kargil.
Raman's book
should interest the Americans also since he wrote (on page 13) that
the
United States "envisaged the encouragement of a separatist movement
among the Sikhs of India’s Punjab for an independent State to be
called Khalistan." This is a serious charge. There is also mention
of the alleged US
involvement in Sikh militancy on pages 85-86, but again no source is
quoted. On page 154 he writes that the US state department advised
US agencies not to send anybody to interrogate Lal Singh (Manjit
Singh) who was arrested by the Gujarat
police in the Nineties lest it exposed the ISI’s role. This was in
keeping with the Indian government's standard policy of bringing in
the ISI or the US
mention in order to downplay or confuse the aspirational movements
anywhere in the country. Every child knows that the US
agencies do not take directions from the state department on such
matters.
3
October, 2007
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