Part One.
History is often treated as a marksheet of various rulers, we see their strengths and weaknesses and measure their valour. But we often forget that there’s always more to it than it meets the eye. There’s always a sinister puppeteer in the distance distance a mischievous glint in his eye.
Half baked history and conveniently hidden facts lead us onto a path of destruction. And we’re kept in dark on various issues so that we don’t end up asking the difficult questions, which would then tarnish the picture perfect image of a historical figure.
The book, “The World was going our way” by Andrew Christopher, delves into the Mitrokhin Archives. Vasili Mithrokhin was a KGB spy who curated all the intel he received and passed on to his fellow spies, in a folder. Andrew has published those secrets in his books, so it has details on KGB operations and spies.
The books has two chapters on India as well, and it talks about Russian interference via spies and sometimes, Indians themselves, into our political system. Most curious one, was of Indira Gandhi.
Indira Gandhi has always been surrounded by burning questions because of her dictatorial ways, be it imposition of emergency, and jailing of opposition leaders, to allegedly tampering with election victories. Nonetheless, we will talk only on merits of this issue in order to avoid speculation and controversy.
The journalist Inder Malhotra
page 587
noted the growth of a ‘courtier culture’ in Indira Gandhi’s
entourage: ‘The power centre in the world’s largest
democracy was slowly turning into a durbar.
Indira surrounded herself with yes men who would agree with her all the time which might seem like a minor offense when viewed along with the other revelations made by the ex-KGB spy. But, it still doesn’t change the fact that the world’s largest democracy had been reduced to am echochamber of voices praising Indira.
In August 1971 Mrs Gandhi signed a Treaty of Peace, with the Soviet Union.
page 588
According to the Permanent Secretary at the Indian
Foreign Office, T. N. Kaul,
‘It was one of the few closely
guarded secret negotiations that India has ever conducted.
On [the Indian] side, hardly half a dozen people were
aware of it, including the Prime Minister and the Foreign
Minister. The media got no scent of it.’ A delighted
Gromyko declared at the signing ceremony,
‘The
significance of the Treaty cannot be over-estimated.’ Mrs
Gandhi’s popularity among the Soviet people, he later
claimed, was demonstrated by the ‘large number of Soviet
babies who were given the unusual name Indira’.
It’s interesting to note in the beginning that despite of Nehrus, Non-Alignment Movement, Indira was close to USSR and showed hostility towards USA. And she had a reason to do so as well, in one of the paragraphs it has been mentioned that Indiras early days in Moscow were full of luxuries and riches, and that she was spoilt rotten more in Moscow than she ever was, in India.
The contents of the Treaty aren’t best known to many, but given Indiras popularity in USSR, one can guess that it was red hue all the way.
After she became Prime Minister, her affection towards our Russian friends only grew further. To the point where, it’s been noted that Russian Tech was flowing like water in India.
Suitcases full of banknotes were said to be routinely taken
page 592
to the Prime Minister’s house. Former Syndicate member
S. K. Patil is reported to have said that Mrs Gandhi did
not even return the suitcases
By far the most damning revelations of all was the fact that Indira, as Prime Minister of a sovereign country was regularly accepting money, in her own personal capacity from the Russians. The money wasn’t donated to the Indian Govt or to any of the organizations run by it, but to the Office Of Indira. Why was the head of a sovereign country accepting such large amounts of money from the Soviet Union?. Are we allowed to ask these questions?. Was she acting under the influence of the Russians and invariably compromising on nations interest?.
The Nation might never know.
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