Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years Part 1

Kashmir.

The Vajpayee Years.

Dulat, A.S, Sinha, Aditya.

For My mother Raj, and my father Shamsher, an avid reader who would have enjoyed my Kashmir story.

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as night the day, Thou can'st not then be false to any man.-Shakespeare (Hamlet).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

Since this book is about Kashmir, Kashmir and Kashmiris must remain centre stage. Kashmir has been a huge education. I have learnt more in the last ten years since I left the government than when I was in the government and thought I knew everything. I am indebted for this education, which transformed itself into a story, to innumerable friends with whom I spent endless hours talking, discussing and learning about Kashmir. It is not possible to name them all, and many may prefer to remain anonymous. But to those who have been more indulgent I owe a huge debt: my friend, philosopher and guide who helped keep the flock intact during most trying times, Prof. Abdul Ghani Bhat; manager Ghulam Ha.s.san Mir, who was a storehouse of knowledge but also simplified my understanding of Kashmir; the kind, gentle and underestimated Firdous Syed; the more mercurial Sajad, not only TV anchor Barkha Dutt's favourite but mine also; the macho Has.h.i.+m ever ready to take on both adversaries in Kashmir and even those across; Altaf, a businessman to his political fingers; Zafar, who everyone always thought was on the wrong side; Nadir, my ready reckoner; Prof. Riyaz Punjabi, who gave me my first lesson on Kashmir. Agha SahibAshraf Aliwas the most remarkable human being I have ever come across. My education of Kashmir would have remained incomplete without his words of wisdom. That he was always indulgent towards me was my great fortune and I can never thank him enough.

How can one forget Dillu (Dilshad Shaikh), not only the most beautiful woman, but warm, hospitable and with the best table in Srinagar. As Aarooji once said, 'You haven't seen the true beauty of Kashmir unless you have been to Gulmarg and met Dilshad Shaikh.' Thanks, Dillu, for your affection and great food.

My family has been a pillar of strength. As with everything in my life, this would not have happened but for the inspiration of my wife, Paran. She, most of all, made me believe that I had a story that needed to be told. During the last year and more, she has been my confidante, private secretary and typist, apart from helping with the computer and internet, about using which I am still clueless. But above all she has been by my side at times of doubt when I have thought of chucking it all up in exchange for the mess I made of the house with papers strewn in every room. She also helped me gather photographs and recollect important events as we went down memory lane.

The Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the great inst.i.tution of the Friday Meeting made men out of boys. Not just the dozen chiefs I had the privilege to serve under, but so many seniors from whom one learnt so much. In particular, M.K. Narayanan not only sent me to Kashmir but also tolerated me as a roommate during my first two years in the Bureau, which gave me an opportunity to see the master at work from close quarters and get my first whiff of intelligence. I am equally grateful to my colleagues in the K-group, each one a thorough professional, which made for an excellent team that made an impact in Kashmir.

A special thanks to my colleagues C.D. Sahay and K.M. Singh, with whom I had the good fortune of working closely. C.D. and K.M. not only helped put events and personalities in Kashmir in proper perspective but helped with the editing as well. My thanks to the Research and a.n.a.lysis Wing for continuing its support to me during my term in the PMO.

Finally I must thank Krishan Chopra of HarperCollins for believing that I had a story to tell. Krishan could qualify as one of Smiley's People for the way he led me up and down the alleys and staircases of Khan Market for our meetings. Thanks also to Rajinder Ganju, who provided valuable backup in taking the book through to press in a short time, and also took an interest in and appreciated the story in these pages.

Last but not the least, I must say a big thank you to 'boss', without whom there would have been no book. Aditya has been an old friend since the 1990s but when we began together (some would say he was the ghost writer but that somehow sounds spooky) as collaborators (not Ikhwanis in the Mirza Waheed sense!) he made it well known who the boss was and that's the only way it would have worked. Thanks, friend.

INTRODUCTION.

Aadaab. Baat Niklegi Toh Phir Door Talak Jayegi.-Kafeel Azzer.

One day during my tenure in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO)where I unexpectedly landed after my time heading the Research & a.n.a.lysis Wing (R&AW) was upI was as usual discussing Kashmir with Brajesh Mishra, the princ.i.p.al secretary to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who also served as India's first national security advisor). 'Do you know, Dulat, the only thing straight in Kashmir are the poplars?' he said. Kashmir has been a part of my life since I first visited in 1987, in preparation for my posting there as deputy director in the Intelligence Bureau. The Kashmir Valley is beautiful all year round and it's difficult to say which season is most beautiful. Spring, however, is special, with fruit blossoms, tulips, daffodils and narcissi. So even after retirement, come the 'Darbar' move, Paran, my wife, and I still make our annual const.i.tutional visit to Srinagar to savour the crispness of the air and a round or two of golf but most of all to catch up with old friends.

Paran thinks I'm nuts, interacting with Kashmiris on an almost daily basis even ten years after I left the government. She herself is acquainted with many Kashmiri voices, literally: when I was deeply involved with Kashmir in the 1990s, our day in New Delhi normally began with a telephone call, which Paran would receive with an 'Aadaab'. This was before mobile phones. In due course she recognised regular callers to whom she a.s.signed nicknames: 'Tweedledee and Tweedledum', 'Beehive', 'Sidekick', 'Gingersnaps', 'Drone', 'Sleepyhead', 'Aap ka Bhai', etc. G.o.d knows how she came up with these names but we would laugh our guts out; it was the lighter side of what was a stressful period. Paran's favourite was 'Gingersnaps', who was politeness personified.

In 2012 I was in Srinagar with Paran and six of her friends, and a regular visitor to our hut at the Centaur Hotel was Firdous Syed, a former militant commander-in-chief who went by the name of Babar Badr. The ladies were excited at meeting a militant and one of them, Sonia Pandhi, sacrificed a trip to Gulmarg to spend the morning listening to Firdous's story. 'How could such a decent person ever have been a terrorist?' she asked me afterwards. I explained that Firdous was not a terrorist in the way she imagined one to be, but one of many disillusioned Kashmiris who took to the gun. More significantly, Firdous understood the futility of violence as early as 1994 when he wrote of his 'shattered dream', quoting Faiz Ahmed Faiz: 's.h.i.+shon ka koi messiah nahin, kyon aas lagaye baithe ho.'

Reports of boys like Firdous coming and going to Pakistan began to trickle in as soon as I was posted to Srinagar in May 1988. There was no hint of this when I had come for my familiarisation visit six months earlier; at that time it all seemed like a holiday with a grand farewell party at Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah's residence for my predecessor K.P. Singh, who was on his way to the National Defence College, and we had vodka and kebabs by the fireside at Highland Park with Praveen Mahendru, a colleague, while it snowed outside during my first visit to Gulmarg. It all seemed like a picnic. Kashmir was at its glorious best. Soon I would also see it at its worst.

The first report of serious concern I got came a month into my tenure from an unlikely source. Praneet Sahni was a young, suave, good-looking Punjabi businessman whose father Raj owned a flour mill and used to be called Sheikh Abdullah's 'fourth son'. Praneet had a lot of Kashmiri friends, a lot of contacts, and his family was known to us. 'Please find out, whatever is happening there is not good,' he said.

'What are you implying?' I asked.

'Boys from downtown Srinagar are turning to Pakistan,' he said. 'You need to be on your guard.'

There was a lot of going-to-and-coming-from Pakistan, and for someone new in the Valley like me, who was tasked basically to keep Farooq Abdullah in good humour, it was bewildering.

I was grateful to Praneet, who sadly met a tragic end when militancy took centre stage in Kashmir in 1990. As mentioned, his father Raj was part of Srinagar's Punjabi business community; he was a post-Part.i.tion Dilliwala who went to Srinagar and started a business. In time Raj Sahni built the most beautiful house in town, standing on Gupkar Road in the same line as Farooq's place and Farooq's sister's house; his house had central heating and we would head there often in the winter because it was warm and he laid a good table. Raj, incidentally, was raided by the income tax authorities in the late 1970s, which became a political controversy at the time.

Raj Sahni had three children, two daughters and a son, Praneet, who was very smart and was taking control of the family business. Praneet got married in January of 1990 and there was a reception for him in Jammu on 1 March 1990, which I attended. I asked him how his mum and dad were.

'Dad is in Srinagar, so I'm going to Srinagar,' Praneet said.

'You have just got married. Why do you want to go to Srinagar, in this mess?' I said. It was true; there were a lot of targeted killings and it was near-anarchy in Srinagar.

'No, Dad is all alone,' he said. 'He needs me there.'

Praneet told his 19-year-old bride Upma that he would be back in two days, after which they would have the concluding day of the month-long marriage ceremony and then embark on their honeymoon. But when he reached Srinagar, he was shot dead on his mill premises. Raj and his wife left Srinagar. Praneet was cremated in Delhi, at the Lodhi Road crematorium, and I didn't have the nerve to ask them what happened. They never went back; they wanted nothing to do with Kashmir again. Even later, I never asked what happened to their property. They were just not interested.

There was a story, though, that Praneet was involved with a Muslim girl from a prominent family. And that this was not so much a militancy killing as a revenge killing or honour killing. That Praneet had transgressed into the one area that a non- Kashmiri dare not enter. It was, in any case, a huge tragedy, and one of the stories of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits and Punjabis from Kashmir: that someone as big as Raj Sahni had to leave in this kind of a circ.u.mstance.

Yet there were also people who refused to leave. One was a remarkable lady, Aarooji, whose husband Prakash Soni ran a photo studio in Srinagar. In better timesor maybe it was the lull before the stormI remember Aarooji regaling the elite of Srinagar with her enchanting voice at a song recital one beautiful late-September evening in 1989. The occasion was a celebration at senior bureaucrat O.P. Bhutani's residence of his son's wedding. So seductive was her rendering of 'Aaj jaane ki zid na karo' that the guests, including Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and Chief Justice A.S. Anand, who were in high spirits, stayed till the wee hours of the morning.

Aarooji and her husband refused to budge and stuck it out in the worst days of terrorism. When things got really bad they sometimes did not venture out of their home in Rajbagh for days on end, except to buy groceries. But they stayed on. Even after her husband pa.s.sed away a few years ago, Aaroo refused to leave. I once asked her if she was not afraid of living alone and she said: 'This is my home and no militant dare touch me.'

Anyone who has been to Kashmir frequently enough realises what Aarooji meant. It is a different experience from any other part of the country. Indeed, Kashmir is unique. Over time it becomes a pa.s.sion, and then an obsession.

So I was fortunate that once I was transferred out of Srinagar back to the IB HQ (the time was so h.e.l.lish that I was relieved to be out of Kashmir and back to doing counter-intelligence) in March 1990, I was eventually put in the IB's Kashmir Group. Whenever someone mentions dialogue with the Kashmiri leaders.h.i.+p, people mostly remember the talks between the separatist All Parties Hurriyat Conference and the then deputy prime minister, L.K. Advani, in 2004. But we in the government had been talking to Kashmiris since 1990. It was not easy to begin with. People like Shabir Shah and Yasin Malik were dismissive. So we talked about talking. And that opened the floodgates.

I have talked and talked and talked, to Kashmiris in Srinagar and in Delhi, and also to Kashmiris abroad. In 2013 I met a Kashmiri named Shabir Choudhury in London and the first question that he asked me was whether there was a Kashmiri leader that I had not yet met. 'Syed Ali Shah Geelani,' I said. But what he really wanted to know was whom I had met or was meeting in London. Kashmiris are happiest talking to you one on one, without anyone else knowing about it. Kashmiris generally don't trust one another.

After leaving the government, our residence in south Delhi has remained open to Kashmiris, and at times, to their deep embarra.s.sment, separatist leaders have b.u.mped into one another there. It has been discussed even in Hurriyat meetings. After the 2002 Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) a.s.sembly election, Farooq Abdullah met Ghulam Ha.s.san Mir, a senior leader of the rival People's Democratic Party (PDP), at our residence. In the next election, in 2008, while campaigning against Mir in the latter's const.i.tuency of Tangmarg, Farooq publicly declared that he had met Mir at the R&AW chief's residence, thereby hoping to discredit him as no one trusts the intelligence agencies.

The Kashmiri is a most complex character, and not easy to fathom or engage with. He is the nicest, gentlest, kindest, most sensitive of human beings. Yet he can also be devious and p.r.o.ne to exaggeration. Ask any militant his life story and he will inevitably begin with the grievances of Kashmir and Kashmiris, sighing every now and then to express his predicament and curse his luck.

The Kashmiri rarely speaks the truth to you because he feels that you are lying to him. Brajesh Mishra was right when he bluntly said the only thing straight in Kashmir was the poplar tree. But it is we who have made him that way. The problem with Delhi has been that it sees everything in black and white, whereas Kashmir's favourite colour is grey.

Perhaps to find a way around this, the Kashmiri often resorts to symbolism, more so when he is under pressure. What he cannot say he will find some way of demonstrating. Sheikh Saheb was said to have spoken in different voices in Srinagar, Jammu and Delhi. After his arrest in 1953, the founder members of his National Conference (NC) formed the Plebiscite Front and resorted to doublespeak, the most famous example being Sheikh's closest lieutenant Mirza Afzal Beg, who went around holding Pakistani 'noon' (rock salt) to demonstrate Kashmir's affinity with Pakistan. Party flags in Kashmir all contain green, except the National Conference (red) and the People's Conference (blue), to symbolise Islam. When the Muslim United Front (MUF) was formed in 1987 it chose green as its flag's colour. PDP president Mehb.o.o.ba Mufti's favourite colour is green, which she uses while campaigning. All militant organisations make free use of green.

While Pakistan has been our main concern, it does not give two hoots about Kashmir, and is often filled with contempt for Kashmiris. In the 1980s, Pakistani dictator Zia-ul-Haq, who had devised his 'thousand cuts' strategy against India, was trying to rope in the Kashmiris but was unsuccessful; he called them 'Brahmin ke aulaad' (Kashmiris are originally Nagas descended from Saraswat Brahmins). The term 'haatho' (coolie) originates from Pakistani Punjab, and in Kashmir became a familiar form of address, somewhat like 'oye'. And then there is the joke starring the famous wrestler from Gujranwala, Gama Pahalwan: a Kashmiri had Gama pinned down, but was weeping. When he was asked why he was weeping, he replied: 'When I get off him, he will thrash me.' This is what Pakistanis think of Kashmiris.

The late Balraj Puri, a noted Kashmiri scholar, once told me: 'A Punjabi Hindu can never understand Kashmir; he carries too much baggage of Part.i.tion.' As someone used to calling a spade a spade, I found it even more difficult. You need more than a lifetime to understand Kashmir and Kashmiris: there are layers within layers and you still may not get to the truth.

Kashmir has been a trouble spot since Part.i.tion because Pakistan has never accepted the finality of its accession to India; it still remains in some perverse minds its unfinished agenda, despite three wars.

Pakistan continues to fish in the troubled waters of Kashmir, raising the bogey of persecution of Muslims when all else fails. Little wonder Kashmir remains an issue and is even talked about as a possible nuclear flashpoint. And the poor Kashmiri finds himself squeezed between Pakistan's 'jugular vein' and our 'atoot ang' with his best bet being not the 'azaadi' he sometimes dreams of but normal, cordial relations between India and Pakistan. As Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah says in his autobiography, Aatish-e-Chinar, 'Unless India and Pakistan come close the Kashmir problem will remain. It is imperative that these neighbourly countries learn to trust one another. That is the only way to safeguard their interests as well as the interests of Kashmir.'

Kashmir acceded to India like all the other princely states except in extraordinary circ.u.mstances because of the invasion by Pakistan in October 1947, as a result of which (and the fact that it is the only Muslim-majority state in the Union) it enjoys a special status. That the accession was endorsed by the people of Kashmir owes a great deal to the common vision and special relations.h.i.+p between Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, and Sheikh Abdullah, the tallest and most undisputed leader of Kashmir. As Sheikh said in a letter to Nehru in July 1951: 'I have stated again and over again that we have acceded to India because of the two luminous stars of our hope thereGandhiji and yourself. That is why, despite several affinities between us and Pakistan, we did not join it, because we thought our programmes were not in conformity with their thoughts.' Their inexplicable falling apart (which lies buried in the NehruSheikh correspondence) is one of the many tragedies of Kashmir. By taking Kashmir to the United Nations we only confounded an already complex matter by the intervention of international players with their wheels within wheels. The West sided with Pakistan till 9/11 shook the United States like no other event since the attack on Pearl Harbour. Russia has generally sided with us, and China has so far remained neutral, but for how long, with our recent tilt towards the US, it is difficult to say.

A Kashmiri friend who has repeatedly stressed that we should never underestimate Pakistan told me of an intriguing dream he claims he had recently that Pakistan was flouris.h.i.+ng, stable and secure but when he focussed more intently he found the soldiers guarding the frontiers were Chinese!

Pandit Nehru apart, the only other prime minister who modelled himself on Nehru and had the vision, time and inclination to devote himself to Kashmir was Atal Bihari Vajpayee. As far back as early 1995, when he was leader of the opposition, Vajpayee told the separatist leader, Shabir Ahmed Shah, who met him in Delhi, that we (Indians and Kashmiris) needed to sit together to resolve the Kashmir issue. It made a big impact on the Nelson Mandela of Kashmir on his first visit to Delhi. As prime minister, Vajpayee was of the firm belief that we needed to end our permanent confrontation with Pakistan and move forward in Kashmir. That is why Atalji is still revered in the Valley long after Nehru has been forgotten.

As an IB/R&AW officer I knew I could never be totally trusted by Kashmiris. Once, though, at a wedding in Srinagar, Sajad Lone and I came out together and he said that being invited to a wedding was the epitome of social acceptability in Kashmir. I pa.s.sed that test on more than one occasion.

I still continue to receive calls from Kashmir. In the winter of 2013, when our son suffered a stroke, many Kashmiri friends called to enquire about his welfare. One of the more touching was a call from Ras.h.i.+d Baba, who was Farooq Abdullah's man Friday for many yearshe was a security officer who carried a diary rather than a gun and thus graduated to companion, caretaker, household manager, private secretary and conscience keeper to the chief minister. He was the first to inform Farooq of a revolt brewing in his party when Delhi planned his dismissal in 1984.

There comes a time in one's life when one feels it should all be put down before memory fades, without embarra.s.sing anyone. There are endless memories and I have carried a story with me for a long time. If something had been written soon after I left the government in 2004 it would have aroused greater interest, but there were events, some of which involved me, which were too contemporary to be made public. Just as well, for I think I have learnt more of Kashmir in the ten years that I have been retired than when I was in service. So I have tried to give a witness's account of events since terrorism began in the Kashmir Valley in 1988, and Prime Minister Vajpayee's way of dealing with them.

When I first seriously thought about writing this book in 2012, I began by researching Kashmir through reading as much as I could. This was tiresome. Books at best provide information, not answers. Those come from conversations. Kashmir is far too complex to be understood from books. So I made it a mission to talk to Kashmiris of every hue whenever and wherever I could, enquiring about events and rechecking facts which, thanks to Kashmiri friends, has yielded a wealth of information. I have relied not just on spoken words but also on shrugs, glances and whispers, which are a significant part of the Kashmiri psyche.

As veteran Kashmiri journalist Zafar Mehraj once said to me, whether facts are true or not, rumours are generally true in Kashmir. Or as Prof. Abdul Ghani Bhat put it, Kashmir is quite often a narrative of chance encounters and remarks. My one regret is that I could not get to the storehouse of knowledge that is Farooq Abdullah. Though he was one of the first to encourage me to write, he was in indifferent health when I began. So much for taking the great man for granted.

This book was written in good faith, with diligence to the truth, and as a matter of public service. Some of what I write may be contested. But the whole purpose of the book is to arouse interest in Kashmir and learn from past mistakes. In any case, mine can't be the last word on Kashmir, but I hope it will be the nearest to the truth.

At a dinner some years back I was telling the host how M.K. Narayanan, former director of the Intelligence Bureau and subsequently national security advisor in the first term of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, had got me stuck in Kashmir when he pa.s.sed by. He turned and said: 'Are you complaining? Do you realise that you became whatever you did only because of Kashmir?' True.

But also because of Vajpayee and Brajesh Mishra, who figured that if they needed someone on Kashmir in the PMO, it might as well be someone who had spent the previous ten years talking to Kashmiris and who had a relations.h.i.+p with the Abdullah family. Frankly I was surprised being drafted into the PMO as soon as I was finished with the R&AW. But Brajesh Mishra more than anyone else understood the importance of engaging with Kashmiris, and Vajpayee was clear that we needed to move forward and end our permanent confrontation with Pakistan.

Who would have imagined that a young a.s.sistant superintendent of police, overawed at entering North Block to join the IB in March 1969, would end up in the PMO? Who could think that a former R&AW chief would visit Pakistan four times in the past five years? It has all been much more than I could ever have dreamt.

December 2014.

1.

CUTTING THE GORDIAN KNOT.

On 29 November 2014, former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir and supremo of the PDP Mufti Mohammad Sayeed told the Indian Express's Muzamil Jaleel that there was only one way for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to move forward on Kashmir and to end hostilities with Pakistan: 'the Vajpayee way'. According to Mufti, this meant only one thingdialogue. 'The rest is a waste of time,' he said. The occasion for this observation was the election campaign for the J&K a.s.sembly election. It had been just over six months of Modi's tenure, enough for disappointment with the prime minister to set in among Kashmiris who, unlike Indian Muslims in other parts of India, had not been apprehensive of Modi taking control of the central government. After all, Modi was the Gujarat chief minister when widespread riots in 2002 claimed over a thousand lives; he was unapologetic about it. But for the Muslims of Kashmir, Modi was the candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and this gave hope that he could be like the only BJP prime minister India had so far seen: Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

No wonder then that separatist leaders like the chief priest of Kashmir, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who also headed the moderate faction of the All Parties Hurriyat (freedom) Conference, told journalists in April, just as the general elections were getting under way, that he felt that Modi was the 'best bet' to sort out the Kashmir dispute. 'There was forward movement on Kashmir during Vajpayee's tenure as PM,' the Mirwaiz said.

The Mirwaiz was hopeful because the ten years that the UPA was in power (200414) had turned out to be the Kashmiris' 'lost decade'. He not only called these ten years 'most depressing and discouraging' in press interviews, he went so far as to accuse the UPA of undoing the work of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Certainly Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh couldn't clinch anything they had started on either the Pakistan front or vis-a-vis Kashmir during that time.

And despite a promising start with the swearing-in of Modi, to which Pakistan's prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was invited, things went into deep freeze. The Mirwaiz and others tried hard to get things back on track: 'Prime Minister Modi must pick up the threads of former PM Vajpayee's peace process where he spoke of insaniyat,' the Mirwaiz told the Hindu in July. But not only did voices in the government speak about ending Kashmir's special statusby abrogating the Const.i.tution's Article 370, a long-standing right-wing demand but Modi called off the talks between India's and Pakistan's foreign secretaries when the Pakistani high commissioner met Kashmiri separatists in Augusta practice that had not perturbed Indian governments for almost two decades.

Modi during his first six months belied the hope of the Mirwaiz and other Kashmiris. Modi's campaign promise to continue Vajpayee's good work turned out to be just that: a campaign promise, forgotten once the campaign was over. Modi was no Vajpayee, they felt.

What was Vajpayee trying to do that had so enamoured the Kashmiris? As he once put it to those of us in his national security team, 'Iss gutthi ko suljhana hai': he was determined to cut the Gordian knot that was the country's lingering problem since Independence, namely IndiaPakistanKashmir. I had joined his national security team as the head of India's external intelligence agency, the R&AW. I continued on Vajpayee's team after my tenure at R&AW ended, when he inducted me into the PMO to work with his princ.i.p.al secretary, Brajesh Mishra, who also functioned as India's first national security advisor. It was from this vantage point that I watched Prime Minister Vajpayee, one of India's most experienced and respected politicians, evolve a grand plan with an enlightened strategy on cutting that Gordian knot.

The strategy was simple: dialogue. But even a simple thing like dialogue requires a lot of preparation. My role in the team was to do the preparation, and that groundwork was a time- consuming process of talking. I had spent the ten years before I joined the Vajpayee team talking to Kashmiris: to separatists, mainstream politicians, intellectuals, businessmen, students, and, of course, terrorists. From December 1989, when I negotiated the release of Dr Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of the country's newly appointed home minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, till July 1999, when I took over as the head of R&AW, I talked and talked and talked. I wasn't a negotiator: in popular perception, that's the guy who bargains urgently with terrorists or kidnappers. I was, behind the scenes, building relations.h.i.+ps with people who had lost faith in India; and it was a long, slow process that required a lot of patience. Even at the worst of times, you just have to keep talking.

You had to talk if you wanted the separatists in the Hurriyat to enter formal talks with the government. And if you wanted peace in Kashmir, if you wanted peace with Pakistan, you had to have some kind of accord with the Hurriyat. Vajpayee grasped this, which is why I call his strategy enlightened. It's a strategy that remained relevant even ten years after he stepped down from the prime ministers.h.i.+p.

How I ended up in Vajpayee's team was itself something that not even my wife would have predicted. First, because not long after I joined the Indian Police Service (IPS) in 1965, as a Rajasthan cadre officer, I was deputed to the Intelligence Bureau (IB), reputed to be the world's oldest intelligence agency, where I spent thirty years; and second, I was supposed to retire in 1998 at the age of fifty-eight as the second-in-command at the IB, but to my good fortune the government that very year decided to raise the age of retirement to sixty, and so I got another two years in service.

The IB, which was set up by the British Raj in 1887, gathers intelligence inside the country and along the borders, and is also responsible for counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism. Before Independence it kept a tab on Indian revolutionaries (among other things); after Independence it has been at the forefront of tackling insurgencies, along with other matters. I joined the IB in March 1969, just six months after then prime minister Indira Gandhi created a new agency by hiving off the external intelligence division from the IB, reportedly following the failures of the 1962 India-China war and the 1965 India- Pakistan war. It was named the Research and a.n.a.lysis Wing of the Cabinet Secretariat; as a wing of the secretariat, it legally lay outside the purview of parliamentary oversight and audit.

I went to the IB because of a selection process put in place by the legendary B.N. Mullik, who was the director of the IB (DIB) from 1950 till the end of the tenure of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1964. Mullik thought the best way to get officers was to select five or six fairly green IPS officers from the top ten of each new batch in the hope that they make a career in the IB. Mullik figured these officers would do six years in the IB, return to their parent cadre, do a district, and then come back to the IB. This didn't happen. Those who joined stuck on for the rest of their careers; some of those who returned to their cadre never came back to the IB. Rarely did anyone come and go and come back again. You joined the Bureau, it became a career, you stuck on.

When I joined, I was pretty excited; I was promoted from a.s.sistant superintendent of police to joint a.s.sistant director, and I shared a room with the seniormost a.s.sistant director, a man named M.K. Narayanan, already a hotshot in the IB who everyone believed would one day be DIBthe director, that is. We also received a special pay of Rs 200 to 300 in addition to our salary, which in those days was a big deal. The other bit of excitement when I joined was the fact that some of the staff were carrying desks and chairs out, and heading over to the recently created R&AW.

My career in the IB can be divided into two parts: pre-1988 and the period till I joined R&AW. During almost the first twenty years, like any other officer, I did a mix of counter- intelligence and state postings. Counter-intelligence, as the name suggests, is an activity against foreign espionage, sabotage, subversion and a.s.sa.s.sination. The state postings meant an officer was deployed in each state capital to serve as a link between the central government and the state government; the IB administratively came under the home ministry though the DIB reported directly to the prime minister. My state postings during this time included Chandigarh, where I met the chief minister and future president, Giani Zail Singh, and Bhopal, where the chief minister was the wily Arjun Singh, who would go on in 1985 to serve as governor of Punjab at a crucial time. Though his tenure as governor was only of eight months, it was during this time that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi signed an accord with the Akali Dal chief, Harcharan Singh Longowal, in an attempt to end the Khalistan movement. Both Gianiji and Arjun Singh were veteran pract.i.tioners of the art of politics, and I learned sufficiently from them.

My first meeting with Gianiji, in late 1975, was by chance because the boss of the Chandigarh station was out of town and the chief minister did not want to wait to meet somebody from the IB, so I had to go. I went at lunch time to the Chandigarh guest house, where I waited until the chief minister arrived with his tiffin-carrier lunch. We had some rather nice chicken curry and he asked me to tell him about Punjab politics. At the time there was dissidence brewing in the Punjab Congress. I made a remark that apparently stuck in Gianiji's head, about a Congress MP who was supposed to be close to Gianiji but was going to Delhi and b.i.t.c.hing about him. When I told Gianiji he didn't like it.

So in 1980 when he became home minister (and I had returned from a stint in Kathmandu) he brought his secretary, Inderjeet Bindra, to Delhi to be his joint secretary. Bindra and I were friends from my Chandigarh days, when he was deputy commissioner in Patiala, and I went to say h.e.l.lo to him. 'Gianiji has a strange impression about you,' Bindra said. 'He told me one day, "Yeh Akali hai."' I thought if I ever b.u.mped into Gianiji, I'd clarify.

In mid-July 1982 I was posted to Lucknow and I was to take over immediately, hence on 31 July I signed out of counter- intelligence thinking the next day I would sign in at Lucknow. But then I got a message that my father was not well. I headed home and found that he had pa.s.sed away. I needed to sort things out at home and was unavailable for a couple of weeks. In the meantime someone else was sent off to Lucknow. When I returned to work I was without a job, and had to wait for a posting.

Gianiji had become President of India and in September he had to travel to Houston, USA, for an open heart surgery to be conducted by world-famous cardiologist Denton Cooley. When either the president or prime minister travel abroad they are accompanied by an IB official who is called the security officer. The DIB, T.V. Rajeswar, was looking for a Punjabi to go with the president and since I was at a loose end, he picked me. When I heard, I was sitting with my friend and colleague Ratan Sehgal, and we were with a senior officer, Dr K.V.H. Padmanabhan, who was known for his puns. He said: 'He was supposed to go to Lucknow, and look at his luck now.'

It was a small group of us who went to Houston: besides me, the military secretary, his secretary, his joint secretary Bindra, the two ADCs, and members of Gianiji's family. My job was to look after security and liaise with the local authorities for that. We spent three weeks, which were good fun, and on the way back stopped for a night in New York, where Gianiji got to know me a little better. He would tell the others to be careful of what they said in front of me: 'Arre bhai, yeh IB-wale hain, inke saamne dhyan se baat karna.'

When we returned, Gianiji's official visits began. In normal course, the job of security officer is rotated among officials posted at the IB headquarters in Delhi and very rarely among those posted in state capitals. Somehow Gianiji took a liking to me and he always insisted that the IB depute me. 'Your department was trying to send somebody else but I made it be known to them that I want you,' the president told me. I thanked him. 'No, no, security officers can't be changed like that, you must remain with me,' he said.

Obviously Gianiji felt comfortable with me. It was embarra.s.sing at first, and especially when I was posted to Bhopal in May 1984. But thanks to him I saw the world from 1982 to '87, during his five years as president.

On and off we would chat. He pretended to be simpler than he was; actually he was very canny. Vajpayee may have been a statesman but Gianiji was a smart politician who had made quite a journey from his humble beginnings to become President of India. Like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru he insisted on wearing a rose in his achkan. I came to appreciate his earthy common sense. I would like to think that later in my career when I talked to separatists, militants and politicians, I had imbibed many lessons from Gianiji.

He had a standard line wherever we went abroad: we have come to your beautiful country, we want to extend our hand of friends.h.i.+p, and my delegation has come to win you over even if you don't like us. Though he only spoke in Punjabi he was a good speaker. He required an interpreter and if no one in the delegation knew the local language then somebody from the local community would do the honours.

Once, in Athens, there was a girl at the university who knew Greek and she was roped in and given a copy of her speech, which she translated. She stood in front of him and was reading it out. Gianiji noticed she had a prepared text, and he would always deviate from whatever he was given. After a couple of sentences he got annoyed and s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from her, telling her, 'Miss, yeh aise nahin chalega.'

On a visit to Warsaw, Poland (then a communist nation), we were walking the cobbled streets in the central market area. A tall youngster from the Ministry of External Affairs was with us; he walked on one side of the president and I on the other. Gianiji saw a church in the distance, and people coming out of it. There was a Pole with us, so Gianiji said to him: 'Why in your country do they say they don't believe in G.o.d when I see a church and people coming out?'

The MEA fellow was nervy and he blurted out: 'President sir, zara dekh ke.'

'Shut up!' Gianiji snapped at him. 'I know what I'm talking.'

He continued: 'How can you not believe in G.o.d? There is G.o.d. Everybody knows there is G.o.d. Everybody believes in G.o.d. Yet you say there is no G.o.d. And there's a church here.'

The poor Pole did not know what to say. 'We have believers and non-believers,' he muttered.

Gianiji could be like that.

Once on a return from Los Angeles we made a stopover at Hong Kong, where we spent the night. Since it was Hong Kong, everyone, including the accompanying minister, N.K.P. Salve, veteran Congressman and father of Harish Salve, who would go on to become India's solicitor general, went shopping. I was told the president would like to go for a drive around Hong Kong, so I went to his room. He was all by himself. 'I was thinking what the city is like,' he said.