An engrossing spy history
Historians working on India face formidable challenges. Many of our archives are not up to the mark. There is almost an Orwellian consensus in government not to declassify information about key events.
This is not the case for historians working in more advanced democracies. Christopher Andrew, a leading British historian of intelligence, is known in India for his book The Mitrokhin Archives, which blew the lid off the KGB's penetration in Indian politics and government during the Cold War. His new book The Defence of The Realm, a magisterial authorised history of Britain's fabled security service MI5, also has fascinating insights into the service's relationship with Indian intelligence and how the bond weakened as India moved closer to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Professor Andrew had virtually unrestricted access to 400,000 security service files and there is much in his new book to excite Indian readers: an intelligence entente of sorts between India and Britain, a mutual distrust of a maverick left-leaning diplomat and friend of Jawaharlal Nehru, and much later, the unearthing of a plot to kill former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi during a visit to London.
What I found most interesting is the cosy relationship which India established with British intelligence after independence.
"India set an important pattern after the second war for MI5's relation with newly independent states," Professor Andrew told me. "It is very little known that Nehru agreed that an MI5 officer should remain in India after independence. His relations with MI5 were frequently closer than with the Nehru government."
The relationship was forged very early in the day - according to declassified documents quoted in the book. MI5 got a security liaison officer to be based in Delhi after the end of British rule. The secret agreement was agreed with the Nehru-led government in March 1947, a good five months before independence.
Soon enough, there appeared to be a convergence of interests between the newly-independent nation and its former rulers when it came to intelligence assessments. MI5 Deputy Director General Guy Liddell and TG Sanjevi, the first head of India's intelligence agency, which was curiously called Delhi Intelligence Bureau (DIB), were "united in their deep distrust of the first Indian high commissioner in London, VK Krishna Menon, the Congress party's leading left-leaning firebrand," writes Professor Andrew.
Menon, an old friend of Nehru's, was a flawed man of protean talents: he studied at the London School of Economics (LSE), was the first editor at Pelican Books, Penguin's famous non-fiction imprint, and somebody with whom Nehru could discuss, according to a diplomat who knew both the men well, "Marx and Mill, Dickens and Dostoevsky." He is also remembered for a record-busting eight-hour-long speech on Kashmir at the United Nations, and as a federal defence minister who presided over the Indian rout in the hands of China during the 1962 war.
"We are doing what we could to get rid of Krishna Menon," Liddle wrote in his diary, about a man who, in Professor Andrew's words, had a "passionate loathing for the British Raj which independence did little to abate". How it wanted to "get rid" of the Communist-loving high commissioner is not clear. "The attempt failed," writes Prof Andrew.
The love affair between the DIB and the security service continued unabated: the two shared intelligence on "Communist subversion" freely, and the Indians, according to Professor Andrew, even asked for an experienced counter-espionage officer to visit the DIB headquarters and for help in training transcribers.
Most of the service's special liaison people appointed to Delhi were "gregarious people, fond of India and good at getting on with both the DIB and their high commission colleagues," writes Professor Andrew. Even a chill in Indo-British diplomatic relations after the Anglo-French invasion of Suez which Nehru roundly condemned "had little impact on collaboration between the DIB and MI5."
But one special liaison officer, John Allen, was prescient when he feared that "with so many unfavourable winds blowing between India and Britain, if Nehru realised how close collaboration between the DIB and MI5 was, he would probably forbid much of it."
But that was not to be.
"Nehru, however, either never discovered how close the relationship was or - less probably - did discover and took no action," writes Professor Andrew.
As the 1960s arrived, the relationship evidently grew feebler. There was mounting frustration inside MI5 over how it was losing out to the Soviets as India became a key ally of the Soviet Union. "In the view of the security service," writes Professor Andrew, "the DIB was increasingly unequal to coping with the Soviet intelligence presence in India, greater than in any other country in the developing world." 
In February 1964, a senior MI5 officer reported that the Russians were "having almost a free run for their money both in the espionage and subversive fields" in New Delhi.
Two decades later, the service was taking note of the "increasing danger" of Sikh extremism in the UK. It had, Professor Andrew writes, become a major threat during the summer and autumn of 1984. The invasion of the Golden Temple in Amritsar by Indian troops to put down a separatist rebellion and the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 triggered off by the killing of premier Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards had produced an upsurge of support within the Sikh community for the creation of an independent Sikh state of Khalistan in India.
Prof Andrew reveals "plots" to kill prime minister Rajiv Gandhi during a state visit to Britain in October 1985 were unearthed by MI5. "Good intelligence, combined with the arrest of Sikh and Kashmiri extremists, was believed to have frustrated plots to attack Rajiv Gandhi during the state visit," Professor Andrew writes.
It is for all this and more that we owe Professor Andrew some gratitude. He will be possibly surprised to know that India's prime minister's office alone sits atop some 28,000 files which it resolutely refuses to declassify. Two years ago, it declassified 37 files dating back to 1947, up from a single file in 2005. It is a wonder that history gets written at all in India.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~48~RS~)
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Very interesting post on an unknown intelligence story. It is interesting how India could not shed its colonial hangover to collaborate with British on intelligence. But I find it difficult to believe that Nehru was in the dark about the relationship as Prof Andrew says. Maybe he should dig deeper into the archives and get more details! And thank you for bringing this to light!
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Why did not MI5 prevent British born muslims funding anti india gangs
before London thing ?
Just to secure muslim vote bank ?
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MI5 and its track record...
After Pakistan and Afghanistan, the UK has been traditionally for many years the largest sanctuary to foreign terrorists and extremists.Everybody, who is somebody in the world of terrorism, has found a rear base in the UK--- the Khalistanis in the past, the Liberation Tigers ofTamil Eelam (LTTE), the Mirpuris from Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), the Chechens, the Al Muhajiroun, the Hizbut Tehrir etc. Havingallowed such a medley of terrorists and extremists to operate unchecked from their territory for so long, the British intelligence just doesnot have a correct estimate of how many sleeper cells are operating from their country and of which organisations.
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"The intelligence agencies of the US and the UK went along with Zia's policy of Arabising/Wahabising the Muslims of Pakistan because thiscontributed to an increase in the flow of jihadi terrorists to fight against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Till 1983, the members of thePakistani diaspora in the UK were considered a largely law-abiding people. The first signs of the radicalisation of the diaspora appeared in1983 when a group of jihadi terrorists kidnapped Ravi Mhatre, an Indian diplomat posted in the Indian Assistant High Commission inBirmingham, and demanded the release of Maqbool Butt, the leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), who was thenawaiting execution in the Tihar jail in Delhi following his conviction on charges of murder. When the Government of India rejected theirdemand, the terrorists killed Mhatre and threw his dead body into one of the streets. This kidnapping and murder was allegedlyorchestrated by Amanullah Khan, a Gilgiti from Pakistan. He was assisted by some Mirpuris of the Pakistani diaspora. The British wereunco-operative with India in the investigation of this case and declined to hand over those involved in the kidnapping and murder to India forinvestigation and prosecution. By closing their eyes to the terrorist activities of the Mirpuris from their territory, they encouraged the furtherradicalisation of the diaspora.
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A careful examination of the details relating to the various jihadi terrorism-related cases in the UK would reveal that the MI 5 was intercepting the telephone conversations of these Mirpuris and other Punjabi Muslims with their friends and relatives in which they spoke oftheir going to Pakistan for jihadi training. It did not take any action against them because it thought that they were going to wage a jihadonly against the Indians and hence did not pose a threat to the British. The MI 5 intercepted the telephone conversation of even one of theperpetrators of the London blasts of July 2005, about his going to Pakistan for jihadi training. It did not act on it thinking he intended towage a jihad against the Indians. Only after the London blasts of July, 2005, did the MI 5 realise with a rude shock that this Mirpuri was talking not of going to India to wage a jihad against the Indians, but to London to wage a jihad against the British.
"There is a sheepish, but indirect admission of this in the statement issued by the MI 5 rebutting criticism of its perceived failure to preventthe London blasts. It says: "RUMOUR: In February 2004, the Security Service recorded Khan's (Mohammed Siddique Khan) wish to fight andhim saying goodbye to his family - a clear indication that he intended a suicide mission. REALITY: The Security Service did recordconversations involving an individual identified after 7 July as Khan. From the context of the recorded conversation it is probable that Khanwas talking about going to fight with militia groups in the Pakistan border areas. He was not talking about acts of terrorism in the UK."
" Today, innocent British civilians are paying for the sins of commission and omission of their authorities since jihadi terrorism broke out inIndian territory in 1989. It would be very difficult for the MI 5 to have an accurate idea of the number of trained Pakistani jihadis already intheir midst. Reliable Police sources in Pakistan say that there are at least about 200 trained, potential suicide bombers in the Pakistanidiaspora in the UK waiting for an opportunity to strike. These trained potential suicide bombers also provide a recruitment reservoir forfuture operations of Al Qaeda in the US homeland.
"The position in the Pakistani diaspora in the US is somewhat different. The initial wave of migrants to the US from Pakistan consistedlargely of Urdu-speaking Mohajirs from Sindh, who originally went to Pakistan from India. The influence of the more tolerant Barelvi sect onthem is still very strong. The extremist Deobandi/Wahabi ideology has not yet made the same impact on them as it has on thePunjabi-speaking Pakistani diaspora in the UK. Moreover, there has hardly been any migration of the Mirpuris from the POK into the US.Most of the Kashmiri migration into the US has been of ethnic Kashmiris----either the Hindu Pandits, who were driven out of the Valley by thejihadi terrorists after 1989, or sufi Muslims from the Valley. The Muslims from the valley, who had migrated to the US from J&K, are politicallyactive against India, but they have so far kept away from the Deobandis and Wahabis.
"Since the 1980s, there has been an increase in the migration of Punjabi-speaking Muslims from Pakistan into the US. There has beengrowing Deobandi/Wahabi influence on them. It is these elements that Al Qaeda has been targeting for recruitment. A saving grace is thatthe US intelligence has a better awareness than the British of the dangers that could arise from its population of Pakistani origin and hasbeen keeping a tight watch on them. The British are paying a heavy price for their negligence till now."
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The plot gets thicker thanks to Mr Baked Beans informative comments on Soutik's post. He's right. If Britain has become the sanctuary of so many terrorists, then either the MI5 is not doing its job properly, or is playing favourites. No wonder it lost out to the Soviets in India during the Cold War. The British are on the defensive everywhere in the world.
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My point is Menon was correct to loathe MI5 .Every country has its own agenda just like UK or India or USA.Indians do not owe anything to anybody.
Check this web site for indepth analysis of MI5-India relations.
www.southasiaanalysis.org/
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well we all know the British and Indian though pakistan would collapse after 6 months yet here it is 60 years on
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>>> well we all know the British and Indian though pakistan would collapse after 6 months yet here it is 60 years on
Yeah it is there with UK visa processing centre for Pakistan running in Middle East and many brotherly muslim countries denying visa for Pak citizens.Get it ?
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Is there any info why Nehru kept MI5 liaison officer in Delhi?
It is not clear how come Nehru allowed the new nation's intelligence to come to that of our enemy, who caused so many deaths to provide us freedom, that too after a long time.
I suspect, Nehru was doing everything possible to remove or destroy files, information and life of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, so that Nehru remains undisputed Prime Minister of India as long as he wished.
British were more than happy to have a stooge in the highest office of India even after royally raping and looting India for 200 years!
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India has always been unfortunate in its leaders. India's freedom was and has been Nehru's corrupt socialism. It is very strange that India's first education minister was a maulana, ie an ismlamic priest, particularly when viewed in context of partition.
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Yes its really baffling to know that we allowed a MI5 officer at the highest place. But if it was the case why did we not carry a good relation and had better cooperation.
More than that thanks to mrbakedbeans for that insightful story about the indian officer.
Nice blog Soutik and it would be really nice to see such stories.
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Thank you Soutik for bringing up such an interesting article.Is is not about time that the government declassify many documents related to important events in post independent India?When will the students learn the true history which they are entitled to?What a shame.
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8. At 9:27pm on 14 Oct 2009, robson90 wrote:
well we all know the British and Indian though pakistan would collapse after 6 months yet here it is 60 years on
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But in what a state! Almost classed with failed states, democracy still a dream and considered useful by the west as a base to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan and in the border regions, and falling between all stools, trying to placate the US, the local home-grown radicals, the military, the intelligence forces.
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What has been accomplished by the great spy networks? Disharmony, mistrust and assasinations. Children with secrets...mischief at hand..directing the force of history over which they have no control. Over many many years of civilization none have figured out how to get along with each other. Suffering human beings only continue their suffering. The very poor and uneducated know nothing of this and care less, they only want to eat.
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Soutik,
Already a good story and, thanks for the excellent news story about
India's spy history....
~Dennis Junior~
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