A LIFE IN THE SHADOWS: A MEMOIR by AS Dulat HarperCollins, Gurugram, 2023, 256 pp., ₹ 699.00
The book review india, MARCH 2023, VOLUME 47, NO 3
AS Dulat is reported to have put out, the book under review has been written without taking clearance from current-day intelligence minders. An earlier government order had it that those serving and retired from intelligence services were required to take such clearance prior to publishing anything related to their work. Dulat, former Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) head and Intelligence Bureau (IB) officer, has cocked a snook at the order with good reason. On the surface, there is nothing in the book that should see him fall afoul of powers-that-be. In other words, there is little upfront in the book for a reviewer to encourage readers to get a copy. The book however says much, if read between the lines.
A major point that the author puts across in his seemingly casual manner is that there is a hard-line operational in Kashmir and against Pakistan. This owes in part to a streak of ruthlessness in the personality of National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval. Dulat devotes the better part of a chapter to get us familiar with his ‘friend’ and former IB colleague, Doval. To Dulat, Doval is the ideally suited security manager for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who enjoys the reputation of a strong man publicized assiduously since his days in Gujarat and now as the Prime Minister taking ownership of surgical strikes.
But it is not only the
personality factor responsible for the situation, but the frame is provided by
the tussle between the two security paradigms: realism and liberalism. Though a
liberal himself, he is realist enough to understands that force has a role to
play in managing internal conflict. His liberal orientation however makes it
obvious to him that dialogue is the answer in such circumstance.
As a Sikh, he was witness to how
the Khalistani insurgency was tackled. There too the liberal-realist tussle
played out in the contrasting approaches of policing heroes, Julio Ribeiro and
KPS Gill. While Ribeiro’s was a people friendly approach, Gill was unapologetic
about strong arm methods. To Dulat, even if effective, as was the case in
Punjab, such rough and ready methods have an avoidable price in societal
alienation.
He applies his finding to Kashmir
and concludes that the policies of suppression operational there are
counter-productive. He rues the inability or unwillingness of the State to
resort to readily available political means such as reaching out to both the
mainstream regional political parties. He believes even the Hurriyat is ripe
for engagement, the security dragnet having suitably tamed its separatism. Pakistan
has also sensibly kept its distance, warned off by India’s public lowering of
its threshold for violent retaliation in surgical strikes.
Being witness to the hard-line is
painful for Dulat, who has had a long professional association with the Kashmir
issue. While he was the intelligence services’ pointsman for Kashmir for the
initial decade and half of the insurgency, he developed a deep understanding of
and affiliation with Kashmiris. That the Kashmiris have been facing the rough
end of the Indian stick lately troubles him. The book thus serves a purpose of
a reasoned and timely critique of Modi’s policies in Kashmir.
Dulat’s is a voice that can
credibly do so. He was the intelligence hand in Kashmir at the outbreak of the
insurgency. Later back in Delhi he headed the Kashmir desk, while Doval was in
the field in Kashmir reporting to him. He became acquainted with Doval’s tough
line back then, but reasons that so long as the cat caught mice, there was no
quibbling over its colour. After the stint as head of the R&AW, he was
absorbed into Vajpayee’s prime ministerial office as adviser on Kashmir. The
episode of the Kandahar hijack is an evocative read, with Doval’s role
recounted being particularly interesting since it shows how Doval reacts under
pressure.
Vajpayee was a votary of a
soft-line in Kashmir and in regard to Pakistan. Dulat has recounted his
experience then in his other book, Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years, recorded
on the dust cover of this book as a bestseller. Unfortunately, Dulat’s efforts
at conflict resolution by bringing the Hurriyat onboard for talks with the Home
Minister Advani could not be taken to culmination by the next government of
Manmohan Singh.
While Singh carried forward the
dialogue, it lost its way - as did India’s Pakistan rapprochement strategy -
with 26/11 Mumbai terror attack writing the epitaph. Dulat nevertheless
persisted in his peace-making efforts, this time at the Track II by participating
in a conclave of intelligence chiefs of both sides. His interaction with
Pakistani spy chief General Durrani is carried in his other ‘bestseller’, The
Spy Chronicles.
The book reviewed here is in part
Dulat’s latest effort in this noble, if thankless, cause. His chapter on Farooq
Abdullah is advocacy for the government to use Abdullah’s good offices in steps
out of the quagmire it has got India into in Kashmir with its wanton
jettisoning of the Article 370 jugular that linked Kashmir to India. The book
gives us insight as to why Dulat is indefatigably on this course, trying to end
a protracted conflict.
The first chapter is about his
family background, suggestive of an elite upbringing with old school values
that have increasingly got out of place in New India. The book is in the form
of a collection of vignettes from his eventful life, covering his association
with President Giani Zail Singh and, as the spook in-charge of security of
visiting dignitaries, with significant political personages of late last
century, such as Margaret Thatcher and Lee Kuan Yew. Of interest to
professionals and faculties in security studies would be his dilation on the
‘trade’, as the world of spooks is known, and his foreign stint in Nepal. Significant
is Dulat’s revelation of how during his tenure as the IB head in Bhopal, that
included the response to the gas tragedy, he was rudely reminded in a mob
attack on a train he was embarked on during the anti-Sikh pogrom that he was
ultimately, Sikh.
Though Dulat presents himself as
a laid-back, cricket-playing chap who enjoys his drinks and conversation, he nevertheless
comes across as a serious security practitioner. He deliberately eschews trying
to impress his reader with any insider knowledge and highfalutin jargon. It’s
almost as though he has exhausted his analytical thrust in his official
missives.
The good that accrues is that the
book then is an accessible one for students of security and peace studies. The
bad part is that it appears there is much unsaid in the book in a
self-censorship that relegates the book to a travel companion to be picked up
at an airport bookstore. Even so, the book is a useful addition in parts to the
books by diplomats – such as Satinder Lambah - that have contributed to the
understanding of the intractable India-Pakistan conflict and to books by reputed
journalists - as Anuradha Bhasin - on the Kashmir conflict.
