India-Its Spy-Masters and Spies

India-Its Spy-Masters and Spies
by: Maloy Krishna Dhar

Better forget about Nathan Hale, the American “patriot spy” who was hanged in UK in 1917, Mata Hari, hanged in France in 1917 and other famous names like Burgess, Blunt, and MacLean, Philby Guy Francis (Cambridge group) who basked in international limelight and have been transported to the folklore of espionage.In independent India Col. Bhattachariya, arrested by East Pakistan intelligence allegedly in the act of contacting his Pakistani agent in North West Bengal border had attained national attention, because of prevailing warlike situation between India and Pakistan in early sixties. Bhattachariya was a spymaster and not a spy. He was arrested in the handling process. Later postmortem process established that the MI officer had not scrupulously applied all the tradecraft precautions before trying to contact his trans-border agent.
During last decade and a half the electronic and print media have attained the stature of national ombudsmen. They have reached every nook and corner of national, regional and international activities. Their sweep covers mundane to marvelous happenings.
Sensationalisation of news and events beyond all proportions without any respect and regards for space, privacy and secrecy required by national intelligence agencies increase TRP of the channels. However, in the process, either by adding wailings of the relatives of the claimed spy, they generate mass hysteria and force the governments to move tactically, diplomatically and often foolishly to satisfy the voters.
However, while highlighting the plights of “Indian Spies” detained in Pakistan and utter neglect by the government of India, in case they are lucky enough to escape the gallows and black-death behind dark prison walls, the media focus emphasis on humanitarian aspects and inevitably suggest that some institutional, if not constitutional, safeguards should be devised for the patriotic spies.
I am afraid such hypes, though laudable as humanitarian concern, are based on certain misperceptions. Espionage is a part of Statecraft, extended diplomacy and elongated efforts for war and peace. War and Peace are integral parts of a nation’s philosophy of existence and survival. There cannot be any Ramrajya where there would not be any war and there would not be any need for espionage. Such chimera exists in the souls of saints and philosophers who are not trained to think in terms of cultural, ethnic and geopolitical nationhood. Absence of these very ingredients in ancient India had led to fragmented clan and dynastic nationalities. The Europe and many parts of Asia have gone through this process and the concept of ‘Nationhood’ is rather a gift of new human identity achieved during fifteenth and sixteenth century. In India the concept had started emerging after the British conquest of India, spread of modern education and the spark of Renaissance. The unintended attitude of treating Bharat as a Ramrajya by the Nehru government had pushed India into the throes of a humiliating military and diplomatic defeat in the hands of China. India is still unable to emerge out of that ghostly shadow of Ramrajya experiment.
Our examination of the trade of Espionage cannot be complete without falling back to the Arthashashtra of Kautilya.
Espionage is the assigned Trade of the spy agencies. They use Tradecrafts to hone their professional approaches to the task of creation of Human Intelligence Assets (HumInt). This is a complicated subject and would require a few volumes to explain the details.
This concept is as old as the organised human society is. Interested readers may like to glance through chapter eleven, section seven, eight, nine onwards of Kautilyan Arthasastra by M. B. Chande (Atlantic Publishers, New Delhi). Kautilya had compiled his treatise on various aspects of espionage as it suited the kings of his days. However, the eternal aspects of human fallibility have been explained by him, by exploiting which the trained intelligence generators create their agents. This is called Tradecraft, techniques of the trade of espionage.
The concept has remained unchanged: at the end of the day a curious housewife wants to what is cooked in her neighbour’s pot what and who sleeps with her rival neighbour under her sheets. Enlarge the inquisitive individual. This simple information is vital for “chaupal” gossip and important for social cohesiveness. Enlarge this orbit. A modern nation state cannot survive without having prior warning about its neighbour’s intentions. Whenever some stupid state scions like to indulge in the luxury of indulgent ignorance or philosophical utopianism we get surprised by broken China of Hindi-Chini Bahi Bahi and Kargil. Unfortunately, in India such slumbering philosophers are treated as national heroes and blundering officers are crowned with governor’s laurels.
It is not my intention to drag you through the minefields of intelligence generation tools. This is a vast subject and cannot be narrated in a column. My intention is to narrate certain developments involving national crisis reactions in the public and the media, which have exposed the raw sides of weakness and unpreparedness of our governing tools and vulnerability of our media and members of the public.
Hijacking of IC 814 from Kathmandu to Kandahar is a glaring example of intelligence and security failure of the governments of India and Nepal. This single incident had created several chain reactions-creation of new jihadi tanzeems called Jais-e-Mohammad, killing of Daniel Pearl, a grand kidnapping for ransom in Kolkata, transfer of part of the ransom money to Mohammad Atta by the ISI and utilization of that fund in the 9/11 attacks on Twin Towers and the Indian Parliament. The chain reaction continues even today, the USA behaving like a Nation State and India reacting as a lump of clay. The USA had brought in Homeland Security Act; India enacted and abolished POTA to prove that it is a better secular country and more democratic than the USA. Long live Bharat!
Besides these monumental cascading consequences I would like to draw attention of the readers to the video footages of demonstration by family members and workers of certain secular political parties, beating chest and wailing and forcing a government to free the hijacked passengers and the plain at great national humiliation and cost. The sounds of humiliation still echoes; political parties blaming each other in the name of communalism and secularism and faux pas committed and uncommitted.
Have you ever seen on electronic and print media the peoples of Israel and USA surrounding the Knesset and the White House to force the governments to take action to get their relatives released or declare wars on the perpetrators? Even at the height of national crisis the US media and people displayed dignified and solemn reactions-no chest-beating and no electronic wailing.
The same thing happened over the issue of death sentence awarded to one Manjit Singh by the Apex Court in Pakistan on charges of his alleged involvement in subversive and sabotage activities. His severity of the sentence was not because of his alleged involvement in espionage activities. Around the same time another person was repatriated from Pakistan after he completed jail sentence on charges of espionage inside Pakistan. The gentleman entered India raising hands and proclaiming before print and electronic media that he was an Indian spy and the government of India neglected to honour his welfare. His wails were beamed to attract national attention and to the alleged fact that India does not look after its spies.
I have no point to make on the issue if Manjit Singh had acted as an Indian saboteur inside Pakistan. I have no knowledge and no government would ever admit that it carries out espionage and acts of sabotage and subversion in another country. Whenever, such incidents happen in India we blame Pakistani and Bangladeshi intelligence agencies and their agent-organisations. Similarly they also blame our intelligence agencies.
The point to make is that no people in any nation in the West behaved in war and peace times during World Wars and Cold War conundrum. Their media did not wail and expose the nation’s raw hides with vengeance. An unwritten code is followed by the countries of the Dollar and Euro world as well as the countries behind the so-called Iron and Bamboo Curtains. In India we do not pretend to have any curtains at all. We dance nakedly at national discomfiture. We dance in electronic media, do some “Bahnagra” and Bharat Natyam in print media and leave the matters to “secular” and “communal” political parties to slug at each other with the holy objective of exposing our rotten national bones.
We must understand a few home truths:
• Every informer is not a SPY, but every Spy is an informer.
• No government would ever admit charges of carrying out espionage and sabotage activities.
• Spies are, if they are, a group of professionals, who are exposed to usual professional risk, like a soldier at the front and a policeman before a rioting mob. They are trained to get killed and maimed. They do not come back home amidst sounds of cymbals and horns. They return, if they return at all, quietly and live as quietly for which they are trained and paid.
• Espionage is not a salariat (in Urdu), meaning salaried job with encoded service rules. This trade is based on unwritten laws governing their tradecraft training, single or continued compensation package, security instructions, and no lost baggage claim principle.
• The entire trade is outside the purview of media glare and not based on any Act of the country.
• The media have unwritten sets of rules to honour national secrets and to ignore certain facts even if such hypes are likely to increase their TRP.
• The Public are expected to be more patriotic and heroic to the point suffering great personal loss, which nave been exhibited in cases of our soldiers and security personnel martyring themselves in action fields. Millions have perished in several wars, but nations have survived. Individuals and organised societies survive honourably only when the people gain strength to suffer silently. War losses are not matters for street-wailing. Intelligence warfare is another kind of war nations wage through extended diplomatic activities.
From the lowest category of spies or agents to the highest category there exist several intermediary layers. A mere trans-border smuggler used as a “single task” informer or a “deep penetration itinerary spy” is different from a well trained, embedded Long Term Resident Agent (LTRA) or a trained saboteur. Sabotage and subversion activities are unadmitted tools of silent or proxy-warfare. Most nations do and deny it. The ultimate test of success is the desired results and Deniability. No country would own up a lost, caught and punished spy. No country makes a hero out of a spy like Pakistan did to Abdul Kader Khan, the great nuclear bandit and pirate, aka a scientist.
Self-confessed informers like Mohanlal Bhashkar, Ruplal and Kashmir Singh (as claimed by them) are single task border smugglers and itinerants. They work on a specific task and after successful completion; failure or abortion the handling officer has no legal and moral responsibility towards their welfare. One-package-compensation is the law of the game. The person who agrees to do the job does so willingly out of a genuine or generated motivation. Creation of motivation is part of the tradecraft. Getting motivated is part either a part of patriotic feeling or simple greed for easy money.
Their brief is limited and the tasks are specific. Most of these trans-border human assets are not elaborately trained and briefed. As most of these border smugglers and illegal traders are left to device their own security aspects. They move like eels across international borders and straightaway sent to the frying pan when caught. Such assets are “feed and milk” type human agents. Some of them are known as “double agents.” A same talent may work for Indian and Pakistani agencies.
However, well trained, indoctrinated and Tradecraft oriented deep penetration Long Term Resident Agents are akin to classical agents of the type of Philby, Ethel and Julius Rosenburg etc. Such spies are very rare to come by. The agency takes full responsibility of locating, cultivating and if possible retrieving such highly priced agents. The lucky ones manage to trek back. Some are retrieved and most are lost, once detected by the agencies of the target countries. Some are forgotten and some are transported to folklore.
Spies are unsung soldiers and heroes of Statecraft. No country would admit spying in another country. They would deny existence of any agent, once they are caught in action and maintain deathly silence even if the media hype up such incidents. Normally the media has an unwritten understanding of the rules of the game and acts of successful or failed espionage activities do not form part of TRP increase marketing device. Every nation follows this golden rule, except, perhaps India, the infinite free country, where one is free to peep into the forbidden areas of statecraft.
Espionage is both real and unreal.
Every Trade and every Profession has inbuilt advantages and risks. A soldier is trained to die on the front. A policeman is taught to face brickbats and bullets and a spy is taught to gather intelligence and forget that he had any emotional, legal and moral bondage with his handler.
Some spies mix up smuggling, trans-border illegal trading with tidbit intelligence gathering. Some are prepared to face the gallows if caught in more serious violation of the laws of the country where they are stationed.
During Cold War the US, USSR, West and West Germany often “traded in” exchange of “Security Prisoners”- a euphemism for spies. India and Pakistan have not developed such bilateral convention of periodical exchange. No Pakistani spy or saboteur has so far been sentenced to death by any Indian court. Pakistan have awarded death sentence on some compromised Indian agents. This unwritten systemic protocol is rarely tinkered with at diplomatic level. However, India was forced on few occasions to intercede diplomatically without success.
Stealing national secrets is an offence under respective Official Secrets Acts and other Penal provisions. Once exposed and caught the spies are tried and punished. Governments decline to admit existence of such spies. This is the reason that leads to incarceration of Indian and Pakistani spies in jails for unspecified periods. Perhaps sufficient confidence building measures have not been established to reach that level of international protocol, which can facilitate periodical exchange of routine spies caught in actions of espionage.
There is no question of “bad” or “good” treatment to informers, often hyped as spies. The agencies are known to be reasonably responsive to the families of distressed informers. Often the compensation package is fat.
There is simply no institutionalised mechanism to attend to the human aspect of the Spy-trade. Response of the agencies depend on category of the concerned spy, importance of the mission, magnitude of results delivered and bondage of trust between the agent and his handling agency. Hyping up in expectation of a fat package of compensation does not always pay. Intelligence agencies are like proverbial leeches. They shrink back when sprayed with salts of media hype.
It is patriotic, heroic and great honour to be a high grade SPY, if one understands the rules of the game clearly. It is simply give and take, feed and milk and forget…forget…forget game; not to be immersed in emotional tears.
Intelligence is as remorseless a war as frontline wars are. The citizens are expected to honour this unwritten law of unwritten saga of statecraft.

(Article link : http://maloykrishnadhar.com/india-its-spy-masters-and-spies)