In his recently published memoir, Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years, Amarjit Singh Dulat, the former chief of the Research & Analysis Wing, the country's external intelligence agency, has made a number of purported revelations about militants, separatists and some pro-India politicians of Kashmir. But inside Kashmir, these have either been summarily rejected as lies by a spook, or have failed to surprise many.
Dulat is perhaps the most widely known Indian intelligence operative in the restive Jammu and Kashmir state, having played a long innings as station head for the Intelligence Bureau, an all-powerful position for anyone in Kashmir, and later as the chief of the Research and Analysis Wing.
Dulat’s position placed him at the core of political developments and dealings during the most tumultuous and often wobbly period of Kashmir’s contemporary political history, marked by armed militancy and a full-blown challenge to Indian rule of the state.
By his own admission, Dulat has met every character that has played a role in the thick political theatre that Kashmir has been during the last 25 years, except Syed Ali Shah Geelani. This exception also sits well with Geelani’s reputation in Kashmir as a political leader often referred to as “na biknay wala (never a sell-out)”.
Controversial revelations
Thus, the former top spy is eminently qualified to make revelations that can cut both ways. Dulat claims that money and government favours have been routinely used by the state to engage (read co-opt) anti-India militants and separatists. But inside Kashmir that hardly counts for a revelation because if and when any militant commander or a separatist leader appeared to be changing tack, information leaked out of the system that money had exchanged hands. If this revelation is taken at face value then it reveals that bribes, more than any political process, have been an instrument of state policy in Kashmir
Perhaps, the most damning revelation Dulat makes is that the IB facilitated admission into a medical college for the son of Syed Sallahudin, the Muzzafarabad-based chief of Kashmir’s largest militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen. Sallahudin rubbished Dulat’s claim and his son said he got in on merit and that the government only facilitated his transfer to Srinagar from a medical college in Jammu, where he alleged harassment by authorities.
Similarly, Yasin Malik of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front laughed away Dulat’s assertion that his air travels and medical bills were picked up by the state. “He [Dulat] thinks our price is an air ticket,” said Malik, who was operated upon for a heart ailment in Delhi when he was in government custody during the mid-1990s.
Geelani, who holds a near-total sway over the prevailing anti-India sentiment in Kashmir, also dismissed as a “pack of lies” Dulat’s claims that the ailing octogenarian leader has been looked after by the state.
Dulat also claims that Geelani, perhaps the most vocal and bitter critic of PDP patron and chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, has actually been Sayeed's friend and helped form his party. This claim apparently seeks to demolish a widely held belief among separatists, particularly Geelani, who has repeatedly said that Sayeed’s party was a creation of Indian intelligence establishment.
“Dulat is well known in Kashmir as a person whose prime goal is to defame the Kashmiri freedom movement,” Geelani’s spokesman retorted in a statement.
The retired spymaster also draws a picture in which Sayeed is portrayed as close to Jamaat-e-Islami, the ideological edge of armed militancy in Kashmir, and his daughter and president of People's Democratic Party, Mehbooba Mufti, as having had links with the Hizbul Mujahideen, something many in Kashmir already believed as having been facilitated by the intelligence agencies themselves.
It is a portrait of Kashmir’s political theatre in which the pro-India politicians, like the Abdullahs, more commonly referred to as mainstream politicians, are pawns in the hands of New Delhi, and militants and separatists are their behind-the-scenes accomplice beneficiaries. It appears like a matrix in which the state plays a game to stay in the game, with spies as its principal jockeys.
Known truths
All these "revelations" may fall in the realm of contention in a charged political conflict like Kashmir. But Dulat also reconfirms some known truths. Syed Firdous Baba, a former militant commander, was made a legislator by the then chief minister Farooq Abdullah, according to Dulat, on the request of the IB. Baba had years earlier publicly apologised for betraying the Kashmiri people for a place in the mainstream political dispensation of the state. So no revelation here again!
In his interviews to television news channels and newspapers ahead of the release of his memoir, the former top spy also talked about how New Delhi decided who should become the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir and how Farooq Abdullah was once promised the chair of India’s Vice President and later deceived by the Vajpayee-led NDA government. It is a common refrain in Kashmir, even among many who vote during state elections, that New Delhi always decides who will become chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir.
No matter what disclosures Dulat has made, in Kashmir these are mostly taken as an acknowledgement of a popular assertion that whatever the people of Kashmir may desire, or vote for, it is always New Delhi that will impose on them what it chooses. And, this is a complaint as old as Independent India is.
In one of the discussions on NDTV around Dulat’s revelations, a historian, Siddiq Wahid welcomed Dulat’s disclosures as cathartic.
Wahid pointed out that rather than what the people wanted, it was a question of what the Centre wished. “How often it was what New Delhi wanted vis-à-vis Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah, Mirwaiz or all of them,” he said. ”It is ironic that this should be discussed so blandly when in a democracy isn’t it what the people want that we should be concerned about?”
Many in Kashmir might be curious to read Dulat’s memoir, but whatever has come out of it so far as "revelations" has already generated a sense of vindication in the Kashmiri public sphere that the Centre routinely subverts the democratic political process by its covert operations.
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Dulat is perhaps the most widely known Indian intelligence operative in the restive Jammu and Kashmir state, having played a long innings as station head for the Intelligence Bureau, an all-powerful position for anyone in Kashmir, and later as the chief of the Research and Analysis Wing.
Dulat’s position placed him at the core of political developments and dealings during the most tumultuous and often wobbly period of Kashmir’s contemporary political history, marked by armed militancy and a full-blown challenge to Indian rule of the state.
By his own admission, Dulat has met every character that has played a role in the thick political theatre that Kashmir has been during the last 25 years, except Syed Ali Shah Geelani. This exception also sits well with Geelani’s reputation in Kashmir as a political leader often referred to as “na biknay wala (never a sell-out)”.
Controversial revelations
Thus, the former top spy is eminently qualified to make revelations that can cut both ways. Dulat claims that money and government favours have been routinely used by the state to engage (read co-opt) anti-India militants and separatists. But inside Kashmir that hardly counts for a revelation because if and when any militant commander or a separatist leader appeared to be changing tack, information leaked out of the system that money had exchanged hands. If this revelation is taken at face value then it reveals that bribes, more than any political process, have been an instrument of state policy in Kashmir
Perhaps, the most damning revelation Dulat makes is that the IB facilitated admission into a medical college for the son of Syed Sallahudin, the Muzzafarabad-based chief of Kashmir’s largest militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen. Sallahudin rubbished Dulat’s claim and his son said he got in on merit and that the government only facilitated his transfer to Srinagar from a medical college in Jammu, where he alleged harassment by authorities.
Similarly, Yasin Malik of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front laughed away Dulat’s assertion that his air travels and medical bills were picked up by the state. “He [Dulat] thinks our price is an air ticket,” said Malik, who was operated upon for a heart ailment in Delhi when he was in government custody during the mid-1990s.
Geelani, who holds a near-total sway over the prevailing anti-India sentiment in Kashmir, also dismissed as a “pack of lies” Dulat’s claims that the ailing octogenarian leader has been looked after by the state.
Dulat also claims that Geelani, perhaps the most vocal and bitter critic of PDP patron and chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, has actually been Sayeed's friend and helped form his party. This claim apparently seeks to demolish a widely held belief among separatists, particularly Geelani, who has repeatedly said that Sayeed’s party was a creation of Indian intelligence establishment.
“Dulat is well known in Kashmir as a person whose prime goal is to defame the Kashmiri freedom movement,” Geelani’s spokesman retorted in a statement.
The retired spymaster also draws a picture in which Sayeed is portrayed as close to Jamaat-e-Islami, the ideological edge of armed militancy in Kashmir, and his daughter and president of People's Democratic Party, Mehbooba Mufti, as having had links with the Hizbul Mujahideen, something many in Kashmir already believed as having been facilitated by the intelligence agencies themselves.
It is a portrait of Kashmir’s political theatre in which the pro-India politicians, like the Abdullahs, more commonly referred to as mainstream politicians, are pawns in the hands of New Delhi, and militants and separatists are their behind-the-scenes accomplice beneficiaries. It appears like a matrix in which the state plays a game to stay in the game, with spies as its principal jockeys.
Known truths
All these "revelations" may fall in the realm of contention in a charged political conflict like Kashmir. But Dulat also reconfirms some known truths. Syed Firdous Baba, a former militant commander, was made a legislator by the then chief minister Farooq Abdullah, according to Dulat, on the request of the IB. Baba had years earlier publicly apologised for betraying the Kashmiri people for a place in the mainstream political dispensation of the state. So no revelation here again!
In his interviews to television news channels and newspapers ahead of the release of his memoir, the former top spy also talked about how New Delhi decided who should become the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir and how Farooq Abdullah was once promised the chair of India’s Vice President and later deceived by the Vajpayee-led NDA government. It is a common refrain in Kashmir, even among many who vote during state elections, that New Delhi always decides who will become chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir.
No matter what disclosures Dulat has made, in Kashmir these are mostly taken as an acknowledgement of a popular assertion that whatever the people of Kashmir may desire, or vote for, it is always New Delhi that will impose on them what it chooses. And, this is a complaint as old as Independent India is.
In one of the discussions on NDTV around Dulat’s revelations, a historian, Siddiq Wahid welcomed Dulat’s disclosures as cathartic.
“Whenever and however truth comes out Kashmir is going to be happy. What is coming out of it is helpful and cathartic for us in the (Kashmir) valley. We are getting a picture of how states function, and it is not pretty, it is not necessarily moralistic, it’s amoral.”
Wahid pointed out that rather than what the people wanted, it was a question of what the Centre wished. “How often it was what New Delhi wanted vis-à-vis Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah, Mirwaiz or all of them,” he said. ”It is ironic that this should be discussed so blandly when in a democracy isn’t it what the people want that we should be concerned about?”
Many in Kashmir might be curious to read Dulat’s memoir, but whatever has come out of it so far as "revelations" has already generated a sense of vindication in the Kashmiri public sphere that the Centre routinely subverts the democratic political process by its covert operations.