K R Malkani's Political Mysteries A Bird's Eye View of the Scandals of Mdern India

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Political Mysteries

K R Malkani

Ocean Books Pvt Ltd

New Delhi

K R Malkani remains to my mind an unforgetable character. I got to know him well when he was the Lt. Governor of Pondicherry and found interacting with him a learning experience. He was a man of endowed with great intellectual capacity and a steel fortified integrity. I knew him well over the course of his stay in Pondicherry as the Lt Governor and he has left a mark here. He was accessible and did not let prtocol come in the way while helping commn people. He was the editor of Organizer for several years and while in Office he  publishe India First, and I cherish the autographed copy of the book he presented me. As he is not amongst us any more I pay respect to his memory. I will always remember Shri K R Malkani. 

The book under review is an interesting selection from some of the lead articles he wrote for the publications he edited. As a journalist, Shri Malkani was unlike the sorry breed today that brandishes fake Harvard credentials, deeply committed to the rigorous pursuit of inconvenient truths. He was well read and could place a seemingly disparate assemblege of facts in a convincing well researched narrative. Most of the pieces collected in this small volume deal with issues that raised considerable interest in its day and though question lingered on, the politisised Media did not pursue truth to its quarry. Malkani was different. He raised tricky questions and sought to answer them without mincing words. Pretty euphemisms were not for him. He was a founding member of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh along with Atal Behari Vajpayee, Advani and Balraj Madok. And he remained true to his convictions until the very end. Except  for a term as a Rajya sabha member and one year as Lt Governor of pondicherry, Malkani did not hold any public office. And he did not let the trappings of high office distory either his vision or his personality. When he passed away, Pondicherry mourned as though it had lost its own.

State sponsored historians generally avoid raising twi issue: One did Nehru and his Congress Party fall into the trap of the British as executed by Mountbatten rush headlong towards Partition without thinking of altenatives. By bringing forward the date of Independence from August 1948 to August 1947 Nehru created conditions that led to an ill prepared and badly executed plan of Partition and all its horrors can be placed at the feet of this man. Malkani brings out his fact along with the shabby manner in which Nehru dealt with Subash Cahndra Bose. While he goes along with the generally accepted theory of the Air Crash in Taiwan killing Bose, Malkani sees a more direct hand of the then Government. Was Bose sacrificed in order to save the Japanese Emperor from facing charges related to Japan's war time atrocities in South East Asia. The non serious Commissions of Inquiry appointed b successive Congress regimes shows lack of interest, ifv not complicity. The second issue pertains to the series of crimes that have taken place in India during successive Congress regimes for which answers are not forthcoming. Though he does not use the term, kleptocracy, sums up the Congress approach to politics and the fig leaf of fake secularism is bandied about as alibi.

As a major and senior leader of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Malkani is obviously interested in the mystery surrounding the murers f Shyama Prasad Mukerjee and Deen Dayal Upadhya. It is obvious from the sequence of events that Shyama Prasad Mukerjee was treated with particular callousness that resulted in his death. A diabetic if deprived of insulin for 40 days is bound to die and so Nwhru should have intervened and saved his life. As in the case of Bose, perhaps Gandhi as well, Nehru had Sheikh Abdullah do the dirty deed for him. As fr Deen Dayal it was certainly a case of planned assasination at Mughalsarai Junction and Indira Gandhi did not even try hanging a fig leaf over this hrrible crime. I would like to add one more which Malkani has nt discussed. The brutal assasination of L N Mishra at Samastipur Railway Station. A few Anand Margis were arrested. But it is now clear that higher ups in the congress Party were interested in seeing the end of L N Mishra whose role in the State Trading Corpration Scandal was unraveling.

Malkani is also very critical of the role played by Indira Gandhi and the Congress is extending support to Bhindrenwale and his Khalistani movement, The cynical calculation behind this destructive policy was the splitting of the Akali vote. Prakash Singh Badal had succeeded in winning a clear majority for the Akalis with the support of the BJ sangh. And Zail Singh and Indira decided n this dangerus game. The fall out of Indira's self destructive policies was of course her own death, the terrible Massacre of Sikhs organized and perpetrated by the Congress Party, the downing of KNISHKA, the Air India Flight from Canada'.

The book is well written and must be read by anyone interested in contemporary politics. The dark deeds of the rulers must be exposed an Malkani has done just that.

The Mitrokhin Archives : The KGB, The Indian National Congress and India

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The Mitrokhin Archives II

The Mitrokhin Archive II is a very important work and all important policy makers in India, particularly those involved with the not so glamorous but necessary world of Espionage, and those involved in making and analysing policy alernatives must read this book. The authors include the reputed historian who has written comprehensive histories of British Intelligence Services, MI I and MI IV,and a life time KGB Vasili Mitrokhin who created a huge archive of secretely copied KGB Reports from the field agents located in different parts of the world. This book contains a great deal of information on KGB operations in Africa and South America as well. But I will concentrate on what the Archives reveal about India, the Indian National Congress and the manner in which the fellow travellers associated with the CPI acquired a stranglehold on the Indian print media and the academic institutions. This sad situation continues until this day.

The Soviet Union for some reason did not take Indian struggle for Independence seriously. Probably the Marxist ideology had somehing to do with this. An underdeveloped colonized country without a "bourgeoise"can scarcely aspire to "Nationhood" has always been an article of faith amongst traditional Marxists.  And hence the Soviet Union dismissed Indian leaders as having litte impact on world events. Gandhi was particularly savaged in the pages of the Soviet Encyclopedia. Right from the beginning the KGB started trapping Indian Embassy officials, usually by honey trapping them, exploiting the well known Indian weakness for white women. Almost all documents transmitted to New Delhi were read by the kGB operatives as an Indian diplomat code named  PROKHOR was recruited by the secret service, Mitrokhin records that this diplomat was provided a monthly retainer of 4000 Rupees. Apart from bribing Indian diplomats, the KGB was successful in recasting Indian political parties particularly the Indian Communist Party (CPI) as a subsidiary of the KGB, Important Cabinet Ministers, Members of Parliament and even the Prime Minister's Office were drawn into an ever expanding web of bribery which extended all the way to the KGB Office in the Soviet Embassy. The authors argue that by the 1960s the KGB had succeeded in completely subverting the Indian Intelligence Bureau (I B) and had turned it essentially into a prop for its own activities. The CPI  an   received regular subventions from the Russian Embassy though the communist leaders pretended to follow an independent "Indian Line". When Ajoy GHosh was the Genneral Secretary anImport and Export Firm was set up so that the profits could be used to carry out Party Programmes in India. It did not strike anyone at that time that such diversion of funds was both illegal and undemocratic. When Rajeswar Rao was the General Secretary of the Party, he was summoned to the Embassy in Delhi to receive his instructions from the "Centre" there. One direct and unfortunate effect of the closeness of the cPI with the Soviet brand of "Communism" was to be felt in the fields of the Press and Higher Education.

Lenin was a great believer in the efficacy of Agit Prop, Agitation and Propaganda and for successful implementation of its propramme the Soviet Union needed "useful idiots" and intellectuals and journalists came in handy. The Mitrkhin Archives documents in great detail the manner in which the Soviets penetrated the Indian Press and used it to carry on propaganda against the US while simultaneously protecting their own image, Articles critical of USSR were seldom published in Indian Newspapers and the Soviets were able to buy the support of the Indian Press by large scale use of money. Forged documents were regularly supplied to select Indian journalists who published "exclusive" exposes based on forged documents. The KGB succeeded in convincing Indira Gandhi that the Khalistani Movement was being funded by the CIA though it is well known that Zail Singh her Home Minister encouraged the separatist faction in order to slip the Skh vote which was tilted heavily in favour of the Akali Dal. The shadow of the Soviet patronage of the Press was long lasting as till this day the English Press is inherently leftist in its ideological underpinnings. 

Indian intellectuals did not redeem themselves either. In the 1960s, a cabal of leftist supporters members of the CPI perhaps with money taken from the Soviets established the Seminar, a journal which was pro Soviet and pro Congress. The power couple, Raj and Krishna Thapar provided a platform for left wing "intellectuals" to propagate their views which were largely in tandem with the Soviet view. Te left ward swing that took the shape of Bank Nationalization and the Abolition of the privy Purse were all populist measures which were first discussed in the Sminar. And with the appointment of the CPI member Nurul Hasan as the Minister of State for Education the entire educational apparatus was staffed with fellow travellers and till this day the sterile domination of the left continues.

This book mst be read by all those who want to know the sordid reality of Indian politics under the Congress rule. Mitrokhin even states that a Cabinet Minister in Indira Gandhi's cabinet offered a whole trance of secret documents for 50,000 US Dollars. The Soviets did not take the offer only because they had already acquired the documents. The role of the defense lobbyists which almost derailed India's Military took shape during these dark years.

The anti Sikh Holocaust and the Congress Party: 25 years on

Today is remembered all over the electronic media as the day Indira Gandhi was killed by her own Sikh bodyguards. The mayhem that the Congress Part under the leadership of the son and successor of the then Prime Minister has been forgotten. Rajiv Gandhi famously remarked: When a big tree falls, the earth shakes. The cynicism inherent in the justification given by Rajiv Gandhi for the wholesale killing of 12,000 Sikhs in the city of New Delhi alone will remain an indelible blot on the recent history of India. The Congress apologist Ramachandra Guha in his India since Gandhi barely mentions this holocaust visited upon the Sikhs. I am not a Sikh and yet have not forgotten or forgiven the Congress Party for its complicity in the crime. If Narendar Modi is pilloried day in and day out by the same liberal media that talks of the post-Godhra riots, I wonder why the Barkha Dutts, the Paranoy Roys and the Arnab Goswamis remain silent about the massacre of the Sikhs in the 3 days of licenced killings in New Delhi, the so-called civilised Capital of the Republic of India. What is even more shameful is that not a single person has been punished in the 25 years since the riots. The Congress and the BJP together have ensured that that sordid chapter in India's past lies buried. The historians of JNU who spew out their liberal rhetoric on NDTV whenever they have a chance have ignored this carnage because they are interested in safe guarding the reputation of their "secular" party, the Indian National Congress.
I recently read a book published from Harvard University Press called the Black Book of Communism. This book documents in great detail the crimes perpetuated in the name of Communism from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to the organised slaughter of Pol Pot and his gang. In fact Communism has killed more than 150 million human beings since the beginning of the 20Th century. Compare this with the mere 13 million of Hitler and his thugs. The biggest crime in India can be laid at the doorstep of the Congress Party and as long as the people of India do not cut the hand that kills them they deserve no mercy.
To day let us take a vow in the name of all that we hold sacred that the criminals the anti-Sikh carnage will not go unpunished and that we will not vote for a party responsible for the largest massacre in Independent India