All are naked in the bath

All are naked in the bath - Deccan Herald - Kuldip Nayar : "THERE is nothing new in the charge about foreign money coming to India during elections. This has been repeated time and again. Once the government got so irritated that it ordered the CBI to inquire into “the nature and extent” of foreign assistance. To its horror, New Delhi found that many countries had provided funds to political parties through “overt and covert” channels, institutions and individuals.

The Home Ministry which examined the report came to the conclusion that “several countries have been providing financial assistance for diverse activities,” mostly political. The ministry observed that financial assistance from the Soviet and American sources has been, however, “more sustained and much larger” as compared to such assistance from other countries. The ministry recorded its main reading: some instances of overt assistance had been provided with ulterior motives. Thus, in the case of some American funds it was found that the “ultimate source” was the CIA. The ministry considered two courses of action to check various forms of overt assistance. One was that foreign foundations and organisations which received funds “reasonably suspected to have originated from intelligence agencies, such as the CIA,” should not be permitted to carry on their activities. Nor should they be allowed to extend further assistance to any institution, organisation or individual in India, irrespective of the purpose for which such assistance was extended in the past.

Because of such thinking, the government stopped funding of the Asia Foundation in the country. The second course of action considered appropriate was that receipt of donations and other forms of financial assistance from foreign sources should be subject to more rigorous control and activity. A new legislation was contemplated. During the course of probe by the CBI, it was discovered that overt assistance was coming in two ways. The first was through direct payment in foreign currency outside the country to selected individuals for being passed on to political or other organisations. Foreign embassies located in India or organisations and prominent individuals were also associated with funding political parties. The second course was indirect payments through commission on sale of literature imported from abroad..

The modus operandi was subventions paid out of trade profits by bilateral understanding between commercial enterprises and political parties; advertisement charges, translation charges, etc. to newspapers and periodicals at very high rates. I recall that the USIS was cheated by a contractor who printed the same material under different covers. The revelations made by The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World, are however startling. It is alleged that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the Congress party used to receive money from the KGB during the cold war. In April 1971, a second secret fund of 2.5 million rubles was reportedly made available for “operations” in India. The book describes how the “honey trap” was set up to seduce Indian diplomats and lower ranks working at the Indian mission in Moscow. No doubt, the allegations and counter-allegations of political parties being on the payroll of foreign countries have stopped for some years. Still the general impression a few years ago was that the Congress was flushed with funds. The accusing finger was always directed at the USSR.

But Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once the American Ambassador to India, accused Mrs Indira Gandhi directly for accepting money in his post-retirement book, A Dangerous Place. He wrote: “…In New Delhi I had pressed the embassy to go back over the whole of our quarter-century in India, to establish just what we had been up to. In the end I was satisfied we had been up to very little. We had twice, but only twice, interfered in Indian politics to the extent of providing money to a political party. Both times this was done in the face of a prospective Communist victory in a state election, once in Kerala and once in West Bengal, where Calcutta is located. Both times the money was given to the Congress Party, which had asked for it. Once it was given to Mrs Gandhi herself, who was then a party official. Still, as we were no longer giving any money to her, it was understandable that she should wonder just to whom we were giving it. It is not a practice to be encouraged.” The Congress did not counter Moynihan formally but there were general protests to the America’s claim of financial assistances to political parties. Despite Moynihan’s charge, the Congress coffers were said to be filled by Soviet money. But there was no proof. Before the Congress split in 1969, N. Nijalingappa, the harassed Congress president, wrote in his diary that Mrs Gandhi was getting money from the Soviet Union. The then Congress leader S.K. Patil from Maharashtra alleged that suitcases were coming from the Soviet embassy located in Delhi. The reason why the charge has surfaced again is the material available from the archives of Moscow. All secret papers of the cold war days have been made public. The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World, incorporating some of the information, is the first in the series. The next one, I believe, names some 375 Indians who were on the Soviet Union payrolls.

The BJP has gone to town on the charges. The party did not exist at that time. I do not know how reliable are the accusations. When I was India’s High Commissioner in London in 1990, I inquired from a Soviet busybody,

who wanted a free Air India ticket to travel to Delhi, what type of information had come out of the Soviet archives thrown open. I was interested to find out if there were some papers on the death of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri at Tashkent. He said a categorical ‘no’ to my queries on Shastri. “But other types of papers are there,” he said. During the talks he hinted at the money paid to Indian political parties and

newspapers. He was not willing to give their names.

I do not know whether the BJP is all that pure as it claims to be. After all, its earlier incarnation was in the shape of Jana Sangh. In the CBI probe, the party was said to be involved. The BJP’s sin is even greater because the Atal Behari Vajpayee government is said to have financed elections in some neighbouring countries. When I was in Dhaka last, top Awami League

leaders told me: “Your government financed Khaleda’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) during the last elections in the country.”

I am not opposed to the probe that the BJP has demanded after the publication of extracts from the The Mitrokhin Archive II. But the probe, if it is to be held, should cover all foreign sources of funding to all political parties. It is no use beating about the bush. My feeling is when in the bath all are naked. "