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29 May, 2018

Spy talk makes sense

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Talking out of the box, AS Dulat, a former chief of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s foreign intelligence agency, suggested last week that the government should invite Pakistan Army chief Qamar Jawad Bajwa for talks.

Dulat’s suggestion may not fit into the protocol regime but it makes sense as the army has a decisive role in shaping Pakistan’s relations with India even when there is a civilian government.

Dulat headed RAW during 1999-2000 when Bharatiya Janata Party leader AB Vajapayee was the Prime Minister. When he retired, Vajpayee appointed him as his Advisor on Kashmir. He participated in Track II talks with Pakistan while in service as also later.

Vajpayee had made a bold bid to find a solution to outstanding problems with Pakistan, including Kashmir, through talks with President Pervez Mushaarraf and leaders of the Hurriyat movement. After his exit, Manmohan Singh tried to carry forward the process he had initiated. At a meeting on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Summit at Havana, he and Musharraf decided to set up a joint anti-terrorism institutional mechanism. It never took off because ground conditions were not favourable.

Three years ago, in a book titled “Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years”, co-authored with Aditya Sinha, a journalist, Dulat talked of missed peace opportunities. 

In an India-Pakistan Track II meeting in Berlin in 2011, he and former ISI chief Lt-Gen Asad Durrani jointly presented a paper on the need for intelligence cooperation between the two countries. In it they said, “When countries are faced with common external or internal threats, exchange of mutually beneficial information might not only be thinkable but also desirable, even prudent.” 

They also mentioned a few occasions when the two sides had exchanged information to avoid any moves by the other side based on misreading of events.

Dulat made his suggestion for talks with Pakistan’s Army chief in the presence of a distinguished New Delhi gathering which included Manmohan Singh, former Vice-President Hamid Ansari and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah. No one associated with the Narendra Modi government was present.

The occasion was the release of a book, “Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace”, based on a series of recorded conversations between Dulat and Durrani in the presence of Aditya Sinha. The three had met at different locations outside India and Pakistan. 

According to the publishers, another volume with more extracts from the conversations will follow.

Durrani could not attend the book release as India did not give him a visa. After media circulated reports based on its contents, the Pakistan Army summoned him to its headquarters “to explain his position on views attributed to him in the book”.

In a panel discussion that followed the book release several speakers criticised the Modi government’s Pakistan policy.

Farooq Abdullah said India and Pakistan were still carrying the baggage of partition. Former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon saw double-standards in India holding talks with China after its border transgressions and not having talks with Pakistan after the Pathankot and Uri terror attacks.

Former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha, who recently quit the BJP after criticising Modi on a range of issues, said, “Muscular policies are brainless policies because muscles don’t have brains.”

Apart from making some gestures, like inviting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his swearing-in and making a visit to Lahore to greet him on his birthday, Modi has not taken any meaningful step to improve bilateral relations. His muscular responses have led to escalation of violence.

According to an official press release, Pakistani cease-fire violations along the Line of Control in Kashmir rose from 152 in 2015 to 228 in 2016 and 860 in 2017. In these incidents 83 persons were killed, 41 of them civilians. This year, in January alone, there were 192 cease-fire violations, resulting in the death of 16 persons, including eight civilians. 

Each side routinely attributes all truce violations to the other and describes its own actions as fitting responses. The cycle of violations and reprisals continue partly because it suits the interests of certain sections on both sides.

Apparently spies are able to talk sense because, unlike politicians, they don’t have to fight elections. 

There is a precedent of 1955 which can help overcome the protocol issue involved in inviting Gen Bajwa for political talks. In that year India had invited Communist Party chief Nikita Khrushchev to visit the country along with Prime Minister Nicholai Bulganin in recognition of his place in the Soviet hierarchy. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 29, 2018

27 May, 2018


When Surjeet’s nominees became Governor and Union Minister


Harkishen Singh Surjeet

Now that trolling of Kerala BJP President Kummanam Rajasekharan who has been named Governor of Mizoram has subsided, here is a recall of how the CPI(M) General Secretary’s nominees became Governor and Union Minister without the party being in power at the Centre.


After the defeat of the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections of 1996 and the failure of BJP leader A B Vajpayee to muster the numbers needed to form a government, CPI(M) General Secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet emerged as a key player at the national level. As is well known,  the Third Front parties were ready to have Jyoti Basu as the Prime Minister but the CPI(M) Politburo turned down the suggestion. Thereafter Surjeet brought about a consensus, first in favour of H D Deve Gowda, who was PM for about a year, and then in favour of I K Gujral, who also occupied the chair for about a year.


Among the Governors appointed by the Deve Gowda government was Justice S S Kang (Picture on the left) . A former Judge of Punjab High Court and Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir High Court, he was serving as a member of the National Human Rights Commission when Surjeet recommended his name for the [ost of Governor of Kerala.


Justice Kang discharged his duties as Governor fairly and did not attract any charge of impropriety.



When I.K. Gujral formed his Cabinet, he included in it Balwant Singh Ramoowalia (Picture on left), a member of the Rajya Sabha from UP, as Minister for Social Welfare.

Ramoowalia did not belong to any party at that time. He owed his place in the Cabinet to Surjeet.

Ramoowalia began his colourful career as General Secretary of the Students Federation of India in the 1960s. He later went over to the All India Sikh Students Federation and became its President. Still later he became General Secretary of the Akali Dal.

He was elected to the Lok Sabha from Punjab on the Akali Dal ticket twice. Thereafter he quit Akali Dal and got elected to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh as an Independent. That was when Surjeet got him into the Union Cabinet.

After the ministerial days Ramoowalia started his own party, named Lok Bhalai Party. It later merged in Akali Dal (Badal).

In 2015 Ramoowalia joined the Samajwadi Party  and became a cabinet minister in the Akhilesh Yadav government in UP.
Although  Ramoowalia was an Independent member of the Rajya Sabha when he became a minister in Gujral’s Cabinet, Wikipedia lists him as a CPI(M) member.. see below.

 The cabinet ministers in I. K. Gujral ministry were as follows.[1]
Portfolio
Minister
office Took
office Left
Party

21 April 1997
19 March 1998

21 April 1997
19 March 1998

1 May 1997
19 March 1998

21 April 1997
19 March 1998

21 April 1997
19 March 1998

21 April 1997
19 March 1998

21 April 1997
19 March 1998

21 April 1997
19 March 1998

21 April 1997
19 March 1998

21 April 1997
19 March 1998
Minister of Social Welfare

21 April 1997
19 March 1998

21 April 1997
19 March 1998

21 April 1997
19 March 1998
Minister of Forests and Environment

21 April 1997
19 March 1998

21 April 1997
19 March 1998

21 April 1997
19 March 1998