Indeed Mr. Modi’s karma awaits him. And so does Mr. Rahul Gandhi’s and mine and yours and every one else’s.
Maybe Rahul Gandhi is just overwhelmed by the “laws of Karma”. He might have just come across this Hindu laws during this festival of elections which Indians have been not only aware of but also have been living these laws generations after generations.
Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were Martyrs; says who? Was it their Karma? Did the people who like to call them martyrs take out some time to see if any of their actions caused their unfortunate demise?
Since, obviously Mr. Rahul Gandhi is more interested in keeping a track of PM Modi’s karma, I could at least highlight some of the actions (karamas) taken by Mrs. Indira Gandhi and later by Mr. Rajiv Gandhi which straight away lead to their sad demise. This particular article is based on a book “The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down memory lane” by B. Raman, a former R&AW officer who was also a one time head of counter terrorism division of India’s external intelligence agency i.e. Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). So at any point in time you feel it is a propaganda and feel like hurling abuses towards me, do some “karma“, read the book and verify the facts.
Back in 1968, R&AW was carved out of Intelligence Bureau, making R&AW an explicit external agency. This was an excellent ‘karma‘ by Indira Gandhi. A good karma. The world saw the fruits of this in 1971, during the Bangladesh’s (former East Pakistan) Liberation War. The author of the book spoke highly about Indira Gandhi at this point in time, he considered this as both Indira Gandhi’s and R&AW’s success. And indeed it was.
But things changed.
“Somebody” started controlling the recruitment process of the officers. Union Public Service Commission, UPSC was sidelined, recommendations and references took the front seat. Promotions were awarded at “somebody’s” whim. Sons and daughters of some of the senior officers got recruited. Nepotism started killing the quality of the agency. Not only this, the agency which was supposed to be an external agency, was doing a heavy lifting within the country. All of a sudden there were offices in every other city in the country. The officers were used to keep a track on certain politicians. The author himself when posted in Paris got an instruction from the headquarter to digout/track the where about of Mrs Leila Kabir, wife of late Mr. George Fernandes.
You could make a guess who that “somebody” was.
The intelligence quality deteriorated to such an extent that they lost their strong hold in Bangladesh, where people were actually pro India till then. The Pakistan sponsored terror factories in Chittagong Hill Tract, which were almost shut down after 1971, resuscitated. The ones who were terrorizing Mizoram and Nagaland had now started moving inwards towards, Tripura, Assam along with Mizoram and Nagaland. And R&AW had no clue. They were busy somewhere else or the officers promoted or recruited were not upto the mark.
R&AW’s first official embarrassment was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s assassination in 1975. The intelligence agency had no clue whatsoever. R&AW’s predictions about different election outcomes based on intelligence also started deviating with a huge variance. They were failing to keep a track of things.
Even though, Morarji Desai’s government tried to clean up the agency, made it lean by shutting a lot of offices within the country. But the condition did not improve. It might have, but Indira Gandhi came again in 1980. Pakistan had been supporting Khalistanis, providing them with the necessary training and weapons. Khalistanis had started using IEDs and hijacking airplanes. In fact the author claims that the fifth hijacking the Khalistanis did in 1984 was a bummer. They did not have a real gun, they used a toy gun to hijack a plane. ISI later provided them with a gun when the plane landed in Pakistan, one of the passengers saw the gun exchange and later informed the authorities.
The biggest blow came when the Khalistanis captured the Golden Temple. Although, Rameshwar Nath Kao, the then R&AW chief categorically asked Indira Gandhi to not employ army. But she ignored his advice and sent the army any how. The author of the book did not understand why. A week long mess named Operation Blue star worsened the already tensed situation. Moreover, the author claims that R&AW had incorrect information about who was inside the temple. As per them there were Pakistani terrorists also.
Two of her security guards shot her. Intelligence agency had no clue. In fact till today (as per book) it is not certain if Khalistanis were involved or ISI was involved or someone else.
Also read: ASAT, ABM and the shifting Nuclear Paradigm
So, now you or Mr. Gandhi should decide whose karma was involved in destroying the intelligence agency which was supposed to protect Indians from threats. It is very easy to blame an institution for the failures, but it is relatively difficult to gauge the effects of poor or rather selfish leadership decisions imposed on the institutions which lead to the failures.
I think it was her, her arrogance, her hunger of power and need to control that destroyed a fairly successful institution which in turn lead to the unfortunate incident. It is of utter shame that the head of the state was not protected.
If you think sending Army was the only option, you are wrong. Some terrorists re-captured Golden Temple few years later under Rajiv Gandhi’s rule. He took the advice of agency and employed a very different tactic; Operation Black Thunder. As per the author of the book, the terrorists were trapped in the temple for more than a week, nothing going in or coming out, they desecrated the temple by defecating inside the temple. The place was stinking when the NSG commandos went inside. This hurt the sentiments of the majority and they started disassociating themselves from the Khalistanis.A good karma indeed. A win-win solution.
He was very different from Indira Gandhi. He was not so interested in politics and so was not power hungry. He was more into material pleasures, holidaying, flying, fast cars etc. The author claims that Rajiv Gandhi received a brand new Mercedes from a royal prince as a “gift“. Unfortunately he had to give it up when the Bofors Scandal was highlighted.
Also read: The Magician becomes the Hat!!!: The Indian Politician doing tricks
Bofors scam was not highlighted by the opposition parties in India. The issue was raised by a Swedish Journalist and a Swedish NGO. The complain was against the company who had illegally sold weapons by bribing to several countries. India happened to be one of them.
The author also tell that the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) that Rajiv Gadhi authorized, did not do its job properly. They spoke to people who had negligible information about the case. They willingly ignored the ones who knew more. For example, the authors says that the JPC members did not speak to the Swedish lady journalist who was following the case since day one. They did not speak to Prakash Hinduja (who was alleged beneficiary of the deals), however, they spoke to his brother, who was not involved in this case. Moreover, the JPC had five days for these interactions, but they wound up their interactions in less than four days and instead of returning to India, they went holidaying in London. Giving an impression that they were working for all five days.
A recently de-classified CIA document titled “Sweden’S Bofors Arms Scandal” (available online as a pdf) dated March 4, 1988 fills in a lot of gaps regarding Bofors Scandal. The report gives the exact amount given to different middlemen and the names of countries involved in the scandal. One of the quite interesting statements made in the report is that “Stockholm terminated the bribery investigation in 1988 when Rajiv Gandhi made a trip to Stockholm. Stockholm wanted to save PM Gandhi from the domestic troubles caused because of the Swedish Leaks.” As per the document, “Bofors certainly made payments (bribed) — either straight to the Indian officials or to the middleman who in turn paid off the officials. Word of the Pay-Offs leaked causing domestic difficulties for Mr. Rajiv Gandhi”
However, the most interesting thing was that in India’s case the middle men happened to be Rajiv Gandhi’s close relatives or contacts. As per the author, Rajiv Gandhi used R&AW officers to cover up. The author was upset because the officers were more than happy to do that. Just a thought!!! with Nehru ji long gone, Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi assassinated, who was left in his close family who had contacts with Italian Businessmen? Quite tricky! huh. One more thought, if he was Mr. Clean, what was he trying to cover up? Or who was he trying to protect?
Once again, he was walking on his mother’s footprints. He was controlling the institutions like her. If you do the same thing the same way you get the same results. Too many Yes Sirs, Yes Ma’ams and bootlickers in the team are dangerous. He sent Indian Peace Keeping Force, IPKF (peak size 100,000) to Sri Lanka without discussing it with the cabinet. Indian intelligence agencies provided with flawed intels. More than 1200 Indian soldiers died because of no mistake of their own. They were sent without preparation, in an unknown terrain. Gandhis and Nehru-Gandhi have undoubtedly sacrificed more soldiers than any one else. Be it Mahatma Gandhi, sending a 100,000 soldiers in WWI or 2 million in WWII to fight for some one else’s war or the Nehru-Gandhis.
Also read: The only way to get rid of terrorism!!!
This IPKF was the sole reason for his assassination. A civil war in a different country costed us one of our prime ministers.
So, Mr. Rahul Gandhi is absolutely correct. Karma awaits everyone. The laws of karma talks not only about the relationship between actions and consequences, but also the moral reasons or intentions behind actions.
You could take international examples and see the consequence of Karma.
Indians kept on asking the Canadian government and the UK governments to not entertain Khalistanis, but they didn’t pay heed. They did not do their karma. They paid the price when the Khalistanis blew up the Kanishk in 1985 killing more than 300 passengers out of which majority were Candian citizens.
Pakistan sponsored terror in India, they under estimated the consequence of their karma. Look what they got, more than 70,000 civilians (as per Pakistan’s claims) and a state on the verge of bankruptcy.
Also read: Mumbai’s Black Friday to Lanka’s Ester Sunday: The Appeasement Journey
9/11 was a consequence of CIA’s karma. They created Al Queda and Bin Laden to counter Soviet in Afghanistan and under estimated the consequences of their actions. It costed them more than 2500 civilians.
The author of the book says “I do not wish ill for the US, but if some day terrorists originating from Pakistan end up using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) on the US soil, it would be the result of state department’s previous karma”
The author of the book rated R&AW on several parameters but one of the parameters interested me “Strong in investigation but weak in prevention, strong in crisis management but weak in crisis prevention“.
I think after five years of a nationalist government these two have definitely changed. Otherwise, we would have definitely seen something like 1993 or 2001 or 2008 after 2014, but we didn’t.
It does not matter who you are, which caste, creed, color, race, gender, religion, party, country you belong to, you will bear the fruits of your Karma.
Karma never fails.
Thanks for reading!
Please stay tuned to my blog: Infinite Sea of Opportunities for my next article: Why we can not or rather should not trust Pakistan!
