The Blood Telegram, by Gary Bass

The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide, by Gary Bass

Warning: graphic language. Reader discretion advised.

One-line review: Shines a light and lays bare an ugly passage in American diplomacy.

Short review: The forced exodus of ten million Bangladeshis in 1971 - ninety percent of whom were Hindu, the genocide of an estimated three million Bangladeshis, and the rape of close to half a million women - were all small prices that Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon paid in exchange for the opening of bilateral ties with China, and in the process getting their names enshrined as visionary statesmen. Henry Kissinger would go on to win a Nobel Peace Prize - a more damning indictment of the elaborate farce that is the Nobel Prize would be hard to find. Archer Blood, consul general in Dacca (as Dhaka was then called) and the "ranking diplomat of the United States in East Pakistan", would protest in the strongest possible diplomatic terms the atrocities perpetrated by the Pakistan army on the citizenry of East Pakistan. He would be ordered to "request home leave and transfer back to the State Department - in other words, unceremoniously sacked" - just one step short of being fired - spend the next decade in a desk job - hiding from an omnipotent Kissinger, his career finished for all practical purposes.

Tinderbox, by MJ Akbar

Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan, by M.J. Akbar

"One good section, two okay parts, and several instances of selective interpretations."


(Flipkart, Flipkart ebook, Amazon US / CA / UK, Kindle US / UK, CA, Powell's)

One-line review: Two books, three parts, and some parts confusion and obfuscation.

The Duel by Tariq Ali - Review

The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power, by Tariq Ali

History, Analysis, Commentary, Opinion. Of massages, midnight romps, horrible examples, and of boiling water at the right temperature

(Kindle, Flipkart, Flipkart e-book, Infibeam, Junglee, This Ya That, IndiaPlaza)

This is a sweeping and often trenchant look at Pakistan, its leaders, its geo-politics, the role of the US, and the challenges facing the nation. It is not a comprehensive account, nor is it altogether impartial, but it is a jolly entertaining and at the same time  educational read.


I was interested in this book for several reasons. For one, it promised to provide a different perspective on Pakistan. Different from the western perspective, and different from the Indian perspective, and the two can be very different. As the author writes, “The West prefers to view Pakistan through a single optic.” The same could well be said for much of Indian analysis, or what passes for analysis of Pakistan, exceptions notwithstanding - the optic continues to be either religious, partition, or the four wars India and Pakistan have fought in the last 65 years.

The Shadow of the Great Game

The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India's Partition 

by Narendra Singh Sarila (Amazon, Flipkart)

What Goes Around Comes Around
Highly recommended, very well researched, and equally well written and presented. This book uses recently discovered papers and documents, stitched together by the author, a former ADC to Lord Mountbatten, to put forth the point that there was much more going on behind the scenes during India's Independence struggle, and the partition of the country that happened than has generally been known or believed.

Specifically, the author makes the following points:

1. The Congress Party made some serious mistakes in its fight for freedom, the biggest perhaps being its decision to resign from government at the outset of the Second World War, thereby creating a power vacuum into which the British were able to inject Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The second being to launch the Quit India movement in 1942, which helped build world opinion in favor of the British - because the British were able to quell it in a fairly short order of time, and because the movement helped create the impression that India was against the war movement.

2. The British very much wanted to have Pakistan get control of certain territories during Partition, because, in their opinion, it was necessary to have these territories in the possession of a country that would be more amenable and friendly to the British, and thus help them create a geo-political buffer against the Soviets and to help protect their strategic oil interests in the Persian Gulf (every piece of historical villainy in the last hundred years seems to go back to oil, or so it seems). This led to decisions that seem almost tragic in the light of recent events. Hence the title of my review; 'what goes around comes around', or as Indians would put it, 'the wheel of dharma cannot be escaped from'.

"'It would have been natural for Kashmir to eventually accede to Pakistan on agreed terms.' This was the pith of British policy on J&K: the state had to go to Pakistan but with India's agreement, as was done with the NWFP. ... This did not happen. However, the two areas of the state that Britain had absolutely marked out for Pakistan - one in the context of Britain's world strategy and the other to ensure Pakistan's security - were successfully kept out of Indian control and so they remain even after more than fifty-five years. These were the Northern Areas of the state along the Chinese and Soviet frontiers and the strip of territory in the west with a common border with Pakistani Punjab. The Northern Areas consisted of the Gilgit Agency, with its dependencies of Hunza and Nagar and the principalities of Swat and Chitral... " [pages 330, 331]

3. Jinnah was a stout nationalist, against religious extremism, but also ambitious, and egocentric. Partition for him turned out to be a way of fulfilling these ambitions. He was helped along the way by Congress Party intransigence and British connivance.

"... (Jinnah) continued ... 'We are all sons of this land. We have to live together. We have to work together and whatever our differences may be, let us at any rate not create more bad blood'." [pages 85]

"Gandhiji, in fact, was making this offer [of Mr Jinnah forming the new Interim Government and to have the new cabinet be named entirely by him] some twenty years too late. If, in 1928, he had offered Jinnah the Congress Party's presidency, instead of to the younger Nehru, Jinnah - an old Congress Party stalwart, at heart no fundamentalist, and hungry for attention - might have grasped it and not thrown himself into the British lap. He was a more intelligent and a more disciplined negotiator than the others." [page 277]

4. The British were at pains to ensure that the world see the Congress Party agreeing to partition on its own volition, even while it worked furiously to negotiate, trick, cajole, and out-maneuver the Congress party to form post-partition boundaries to its maximum advantage. Their dealings post-Partition were quite dishonourable, especially when it came to the issue of the Kashmir accession.

Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, comes across as a hard working, honest person who did his best to convince the 350+ Indian princely states to accede to India, working with Sardar Patel, to ensure that independent India emerged as united as possible. This was also because of Britain's own interest in avoiding a Balkanization of India, lest it be accused of incompetence or worse. Mountbatten's role in the Kashmir imbroglio, was however not as straightforward.

Some other nuggets on information that come out are that Winston Churchill, the lion of England, and who is credited with turning the tide of the Second World War against the Germans, was a scurrilous rogue and racist imperialist when it came to his dealings with India.

"After hearing him speak at a cabinet meeting, Lord Wavell, the future viceroy, noted in his diary: 'Churchill hates India and everything to do with it.' Churchill himself is no record as saying: 'I hate Indians - they are a beastly people with a beastly religion.'" [pages 53, 54]

"While Gandhiji's life hung in the balance, he [Churchill] wired to Linlithgow: 'Have heard that Gandhi usually has glucose in his water when doing his various fasting antics. Would it be possible to verify this?' And was heard to remark: 'I do not think Gandhi has the slightest intention of dying and I imagine he has been eating better meals than I have for the last week.'" [page 139]

Those who have seen the girths of Gandhiji and Churchill can only wonder as to the extent of derangement of the noble Englishman.

"The Intelligence Bureau's view was that communal disorders were an antidote to the agitation taking an anti-British course." [page 193]

"As soon as Maharaja Hari Singh acceded to India, Brown [Major Alexander Brown, British officer of the Gilgit Scout] got the Gilgit scouts to surround the Residency, and, after a short gun battle in which he lost a scout, he imprisoned Governor Ghansara Singh. Peshawar was then informed by Brown about the accession of Gilgit to Pakistan. [page 333]

5. The Americans were a lot friendlier to the Indian independence cause than is generally acknowledged in India. They had leverage and influence over Britain far in excess of what was generally believed at the time. Furthermore, and this is somewhat surprisingly so, they supported India at the UN when it came to the issue of Kashmir, and held that the princely state of Kashmir had acceded legally to India.
One reason why this aspect of American support for India has not received its due mention in Indian history texts is probably because Indian historical research post-Independence has mostly been in the control of communists and people with strong leftist leanings, which may have prejudiced them against acknowledging US contributions.

"Roosevelt replied to Churchill the same day (11 April 1942):
'... The feeling almost universally held is that the deadlock has been caused by the unwillingness of the British Government to concede to the Indians the rights of self-government.' "[page 112]

"Attlee frankly admits in his autobiography that Britain could not continue to hold on to India because of 'American pressure against the Empire'." [page 189]

"Throughout 1948, the US insisted that J&K's accession to India could not be brushed aside .... and, meanwhile, Pakistani forces that had entered the state had to be withdrawn. It was this US stand that prevented J&K's accession to India being negated, at Britain's behest, by the UN Security Council." [page 404]

6. Muslims in India by and large were against the concept of partition. There are several reasons listed for this, all of which seem to make a lot of sense.

Of interest to the western reader will be the pieces on the North Western Frontier Provinces, now part of Pakistan, and which are home to the Swat Valley, that has been in the news so much recently for the hunt for terrorists hidden there. The NWFP was headed by a Congress Party government. The NWFP had Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan as its leader. This person was also known as the Frontier Gandhi (or Sarhadi Gandhi), for his pacifist ways, and for his belief in Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence. This province, in 1947, did not want to accede to Pakistan, but through the machinations of the British and because of the Frontier Gandhi's aversion to violence, which he feared would be unleashed by pro-Pakistani extremists of the Muslim League, voted, to become part of Pakistan by the thinnest of margins. That a region that followed a leader like Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in 1947 should now have become one of the world's most dangerous regions and a veritable hotbed of jihadi terrorism is tragic, and ironic to an extent, because this is what the deliberate policies of the British have wrought.

Whether partition was inevitable, whether it was desirable, is something left best to speculation, informed or otherwise. The author does seem to lean more against partition, but he does list some of the arguments why partition may have been a necessity, an inevitability. Whether a country 4.2 million sq kms, a combined population of 1.5 billion, with 900 million Hindus and 500 million Muslims, would have been viable as a single entity is debatable, or not, but that is for a separate discussion.

There are references listed at the end of each chapter, and some chapters have as many as 60 references, sometimes more. They probably total 500, not necessarily distinct references. Needless to say, the author has done much research to prepare this book.

The book is very well written, neatly organized into short chapters, each of which deals with a specific aspect of the Indian independence movement, and backed by copious research. Very highly recommended.

Harper Collins India Book Page



© 2010, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.

The Kaoboys of RAW

THE KAOBOYS OF RANDAW: Down Memory Lane
Lancer's (Publisher) Book page

(Amazon US / CA / UK, Kindle US / UK / CA, Flipkart)
Bahukutumbi Raman is a former head of the counter-terrorism division of India's external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). He retired from service on August 31, 1994, and his first article appeared in a newspaper on Sep 1, 1994! He has been a prolific writer since, with his columns appearing regularly in newspapers and on online sites like Rediff.com.

He has written several books, but this one captured the most attention in the public.

This book is a reminisce of B Raman's time in the R&AW. The book traces the origins of RAW from its inception, and is divided into chapters, each of which covers a broad topic, such as the Indo-Pak war of 1971 and the creation of Bangladesh, the terrorism in Punjab, terrorism in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, as well as political leaders like Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, VP Singh, Chandrashekhar, and political events like the Bofors scandal, assassinations of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Interspersed are accounts of both the development and decline of India's intelligence gathering capabilities, corruption and nepotism within the intelligence community, counter-espionage, the role of the ISI, and brief bios of some of the luminaries of RAW, like RN Kao, Sunook, Girish Saxena.

B Raman measures his words carefully. He does not drop names, except on a couple of occasions - to either settle score or to make a point or two, nor makes any strong political statements. His opinions about some luminaries nonetheless come across on occasion. Like his dim view of the former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. He believes that Vajpayee was not very interested in building up India's counter-intelligence capabilities, often delegating communications with the RAW to his National Security Adviser. B Raman is also critical of Vajpayee and the BJP for the after-effects of the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, which he states led to the alienation of the Muslims in India from the mainstream, thereby providing an opportunity to to the ISI to infiltrate into India. B Raman is full of admiration for the handson approach of Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi. And his grief and pain at their assassinations is there to read:

Since 1947, no other Prime Minister had taken more interest and done more to improve their conditions of service than Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. What a shocking tragedy that these agencies, which owed them so much, so miserably failed to protect them. Every officer, who had served in our agencies at that time - in whatever capacity - should hang his or her head in shame. We failed them. [page 243]

It is somewhat sad and disappointing that the RAW, formed in 1968 by the Prime Minister of Indira Gandhi, reached its zenith in a very short time, during the 1971 War, but rapidly fell into decline soon thereafter, to the point where its efficacy even in Bangladesh was close to zero. It has been infiltrated by foreign intelligence agencies over the years, repeatedly, its cadre often nepotist, corrupt, and incompetent, its failures many, and its successes far and few inbetween, and where they do occur, hidden from the public eye.

Failure to diversify contacts in Bangladesh, pockets of hostility in its security forces and intelligence community towards India and the R&AW, suspicion in the non-Awami League political circles over what was perceived as Indian favoritism towards certain sections of the political spectrum and a lack of objectivity in the Bangladesh analysis branch contributed to the decline in the R&AW's performance in Bangladesh during the Emergency. This has continued since then. [page 53]

Jihadi Terrorism, Pakistan, and the War on Terror
Most Indians have known that the epicenter of jihadi terrorism has been Pakistan, something which is now public knowledge the world over, and roots of this jihadi terrorism can be traced to the times of its military dictator Gen. Zia Ul-Haq, who is credited with accelerating Pakistan's drive to acquire nuclear weapons capability and of hurtling the Pakistani Army into Islamic radicalization. Pakistan's support, military, economic, logistical, and diplomatic, of terrorism in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, is well known to Indians, but was for long denied and un-acknowledged or its impact minimized by the Western World. This has been sore point with Indians, and B Raman minces no words when he takes the West to task for this perceived duplicity.

Jihadi terrorism, which has been causing so much havoc across the world, including India, is this the product of two minds in the world of intelligence - William Casey and Le Comte Alexandre de Marenches. During his secret visits to the terrorist training camps and madrassas in Pakistan in the 1980s, Casey used to address the trainees as "My sons". He died of cancer during the second term of Reagan, and therefore, did not live long enough to see the thousands killed by "his sons" and their associates, including 3,000 of his own countrymen on 9/11. Some of the retired CIA officers of those days, who are now parading themselves around the world and making money as the leading Al Qaeda watchers, were the original creators of Al Qaeda. [pages 81, 82]

This is something some in the West may well disagree with. Lawrence Wright, for example, in his excellent book, The Looming Tower, argues, with a lot of documentation, that the creation of Al Qaeda was very much an organic creation of the likes of Al Zawahiri and later Osama Bin Laden. Lawrence Wright's book however skirts the entire episode and ramifications of of US participation and involvement in the training, arming, and creation of the terrorists that first fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, then the Indians in Kashmir, and now pretty much the entire Western World.

Raman reveals more, later in the same chapter, referring to the hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft in 1984:

The revolver given by the ISI to the hijackers at Lahore before the aircraft was taken to Dubai was of West German make. ... the West German intelligence intimated that the revolver was part of a consignment sold by the company to the Pakistan Army. The Government of India immediately shared the information with US officials and pointed that it was a fit case for declaring Pakistan a State-sponsor of international terrorism. ... But, the US authorities were not prepared to accept this oral evidence as conclusive proof against Pakistan. [page 92]

And further on:

It was this protection extended to Pakistan by the State Department ever since the days of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan and it was their practice of closing their eyes to the spawning of jihadi terrorists in Pakistani territory, that led to the emergence of the Pakistan-Afghanistan region as a breeding ground of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and numerous other jihadi terrorist organizations. [page 281]

...

Even before his (Jagjit Singh Chauhan, one of the major proponents and self-styled leader of the terrorist movement for the separate Sikh state of Khalistan) arrival in the UK, the Pakistani High Commission and the US Embassy in London were in touch with the activists of the Sikh Home Rule Movement. They established contact with Chauhan after his arrival and started encouraging his propaganda against the Government of India in order to embarrass Indira Gandhi. [page 85]

The law of Karma cannot be escaped from. B Raman essentially states that the spectre of terrorism that haunts the West is more or less a creation of the West. Terrorism, grown and nurtured by Pakistan in the hopes that it would destroy its arch enemy, India, now threatens the very existence of Pakistan itself and threatens to render the fabric of its society. Jihadi terrorism, trained and financed by the CIA, in the hopes that it would bleed and defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan, and nurtured by Pakistan, in the hopes that it would bleed India, did just that, but then turned on its creators.

Benazir Bhutto was the daughter of the late Zulfikar Ali Bhtto, the Prime Minister of Pakistan during the war of 1971, when Bangladesh won independence from (West) Pakistan. This terrible loss at the hands of India left a deep and permanent psychological scar on Benazir Bhutto, and was responsible for her antagonistic policy towards of India, especially when it came to the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, parts of which have been under Pakistan occupation since 1948. She desperately wanted to be the daughter that won back from the enemy what her father had lost.

According to the source, Lt. Gen. Gul replied: "Madam, keeping Indian Punjab destabilized is equivalent to the Pakistan Army having two extra Divisions at no cost. If you want me to drop the Sikh card, you have to sanction the creation of two new Divisions." She found this argument compelling and kept quiet. [page 160]
...
While Benazir tried to cut down, if not totally stop, the assistance to the Khalistanis, she wanted to go down in Pakistan's history as the Prime Minister who succeeded in annexing J&K. [page 162]
...
The situation became worse in J&K after she returned to power. Even though she had tried to stop the ISI's assistance to the Khalistani terrorists during her first tenure as the Prime Minister between 1988 and 1990, it was under her that the ISI started helping the Kashmiri terrorist organizations in a big way in 1989. She was the most virulent towards India so far as J&K was concerned and gave the ISI total freedom and the required funds to do whatever it wanted in J&K. [page 260]

B Raman also reserves some stinging criticism for the late Gen Sunderji, who retired as Chief of Army Staff, and considered by many as a "scholar warrior".

Lt. Gen. Sunderji, who co-ordinated the Operation (Bluestar), blamed the intelligence agencies for the untidy operation. ... Over-confidence in his ability to score easy success before launching difficult and sensitive operations and a tendency to blame the intelligence agencies when over-confidence was found to have been misplaced were the defining characteristics of Gen. Sunderji. [page 97]
...
One was told that an over-confident and over-enthusiastic Gen. Sunderji, the then Chief of Army Staff, told Rajiv Gandhi that the IPKF would be able to accomplish its mission within a month. When this did not happen and the IPKF got involved in a quagmire, he put the blame on the intelligence agencies - particularly on the R&AW - for not warning him in advance of the capabilities, strength and motivation of the LTTE. [page 209]

Some points that could be made after reading the book:
Provides a fairly good and broad overview of RAW and some historical perspective on the challenges faced by India.
This book feels very "skimmy". No one topic is covered in much depth. This may be by design, but it does feel like a deficiency of the book. Some of the chapters, like the one on the 1971 India-Pakistan war, or on the terrorism in Kashmir and Punjab, are deserving of entire books for just the intelligence and counter-intelligence aspects.
The style of writing is very much declarative - statements are made, but without much by way of reasoning or backing up with references. Part of this may be because of the nature of the disclosures, but a more academic and rigorous approach would have benefited the book and given it more credibility.


The book, for some reason, and surprising even given the fact it is a hardcover edition, is printed on glossy, art-like paper. An overkill surely.

Some other well known defence and strategic analysts in this space are Brahma Chellaney (Wikipedia link, Blog), Maj. Gen. (retd.) Ashok Mehta, Colonel Anil A Athale (retd.).




© 2010, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.

Makers of India's Foreign Policy, by JN Dixit

Makers of India's Foreign Policy - by JN Dixit (Amazon, Flipkart)


The blurb from the book reads thus:
"

In this brilliant, insightful book, J.N.Dixit chronicles the role of those who have played an important role in fashioning and implementing India's foreign policy since and before independence -- right up to the 12th SAARC summit in Islamabad in January 2004. In doing so he fulfils a major gap in the study of Indian foreign policy, for he focuses not just on the Nehru-Gandhis but also on those who are less well-known, including diplomats and policy advisers. ... Apart from the central role played by Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi, the book highlights the contributions of other prime ministers such as Narasimha Rao, I.K.Gujral, and Atal Behari Vajpayee. Also portrayed are ministers such as V.K. Krishna Menon, Sardar Swaran Singh, Y.B. Chavan, Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha. The role of behind-the-scenes operators like Girija Shankar Bajpai, Badruddin Tyabji, D.P.Dhar, P.N.Haksar and Brajesh Mishra is also recalled.

"

The book's major achievements, in my opinion, are:

1. JN Dixit attempts to classify India's foreign policy influencers and architects into two philosophical camps - the Buddhist/pacifists, and the real-politik/Chanakya followers (Patel, Bose for e.g.).
2. it collects in one place brief accounts of the people who were involved with and contributed to India's foreign policy, and
3. the chapters on Sardar Patel and Lal Bahadur Shastri are very, very good. Sardar Patel's letter to Nehru on the coming threat from China is reproduced in its entirety, and is the gem of the book. Shastri's contributions are duly recognized.

Regarding Dixit's theory on the "two broad strands in terms of attitudes and reactions towards other countries and foreign societies", he states that the "first orientation was that of a feeling of inferiority and inadequacy via-a-vis foreign countries, particularly those of the west..... the second orientation was that of asserting the relevance and importance of India's ancient culture and civilization..." Most of the early Indians who had an impact on India's perspectives on the world are then clubbed into the first or second group. Unsurprisingly, Swami Vivekanand, Lokmanya Tilak, Badruddin Tyabji and others fall in the second group.

However, I am not sure the book can be called "brilliant". It's a decent effort to be sure, and certainly does a good job of collecting in one place all the contributors to India's foreign policy.

The drawbacks to the book are:

1. It lacks any references to background, supporting, or more detailed material that the reader may be interested in. No references, appendix, or footnotes.
2. there are lots of statements made, that in the absence of supporting material come off sounding as opinions... (contrast this with Arun Shourie's style for example where there are copious footnotes and references - which may also be reflective of his academic background - he is a PhD).
3. the book is too politically correct; the author does not take a firm stand against anyone. Many of the statements in the book seem to be manufactured for the sole purpose of being used as blurbs...

Of particular interest to me was Sardar Patel's letter to Jawaharlal Nehru on November 7, 1950. This letter was written to warn Nehru about the impending danger that the annexation of Tibet by the Chinese would pose to India. A little more than a decade later these words proved prophetic as the Chinese army marched into India and overran much of Indian territory, and still hold parts of Jammu & Kashmir.

Here are snippets from that letter...

"

-- even though we regard ourselves as the friends of the Chinese, the Chinese do not regard as as their friends. With the communist mentality of 'whoever is not with them being against them'..."
-- Chinese irredentism and communist imperialism are different from the expansionism or imperialism of the Western Powers. The former has an ideological cloak, which makes it ten times worse.
-- Thus, for the first time after centuries, India's defense has to concentrate on two fronts simultaneously.
-- Hitherto, the Communist Party of India has found some difficulty in contacting communists abroad, or in getting supplies of arms, literature, etc... from them. .... They shall now have a comparatively easy means of access to Chinese communists, and through them to other foreign communists. Infiltration of spies, fifth columnists, and communists would now be easier.

"
Some other related books:
- Inside Story of Sardar Patel
- Lal Bahadur Shastri, Prime Minister of India 1964-1966: A Life of Truth in Politics
- Indira Gandhi: A Biography
- Will the Iron Fence Save a Tree Hollowed by Termites? ; Defence Imperatives Beyond the Military

Book Details:
ISBN: 9788172235925
Cover Price: Rs. 500.00
Format: Hardback
Extent: 328 pages

Buy Makers Of India's Foreign Policy: Raja Ram Mohan Roy To Yashwant Sinha from Flipkart.com
Makers of India's Foreign Policy (Amazon)