Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer
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In case of India neither the politicians nor the bureaucrats of the general administration and the intelligence community are accountable to anyone.
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I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter. Winston Churchill
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It is only intellect that keeps me sane; perhaps this makes me overvalue intellect against feeling. Bertrand Russell.
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The coming events should not be opposed without understanding the contours of the future that lay hidden in the womb of time.
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realised that fire of adversity alone could not shape me up. The challenge before me was to match the ferocity of the fire in which I was thrown in.
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He was a paper pusher and had good connectivity with the elites of the ruling ethnic group in Delhi.
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Manipur is a unique example of Indian expertise in allowing the simple democratic aspirations of the people for better political dispensation, economic advancement and cultural assimilation to degenerate into a cult of violence. Assam emulated the Meiteis after about two decades.
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The politicians and bureaucrats simply looted the public exchequer in the name of maintaining law and order. They were neither interested nor capable of addressing the grievances of the people.
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Most of these allocations, even a blind person can perceive, travel straight to the private coffers of the adventurers and fortune hunters. That’s how the development activities are implemented in India to remove poverty and to bring the people up to civilised standard of living!
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A nation’s geography and history are determined by its capability to protect and promote its citizen and not by its constitution, law, armed forces and moralistic and patriotic jargon.
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God must love the common man, he made so many of them. Abraham Lincoln.
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By that time I had come to realise that intelligence machineries are blatantly used for promoting political interests. Agencies like IB are not mere tools of safeguarding the security of the country. They are required to serve the narrow political interest of the ruling elite.
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The difference between a politician and a statesman is: a politician thinks of the next election and a statesman thinks of the next generation. James Freeman Clarke
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Moreover, Indira Gandhi, as I came to know better a little later in my career, could hit more ruthlessly than a gladiator cornered in the ring. Nobody could ever doubt her fighting spirit. She was a born fighter.
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Some of the Indian bureaucrats were quick to come to their rescue by teaching them the Indian rope tricks that made budgetary provisions vanish into thin air.
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I suffered from serious pain to witness the simple people of the North East and Sikkim imitating the people of mainland India, immersing them in corruption and degrading their intrinsic values. That’s the decisive march of democracy!
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Bhandari did nothing new. The political breed in India enjoys almost constitutional protection in their acts of plundering the national coffers and the pockets of the poor. He simply followed the illustrious footsteps of his senior partners in Delhi and elsewhere in India.
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The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. George Bernard Shaw
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Most human organizations that fall short of their goals do so not because of stupidity or faulty doctrines, but because of internal decay and rigidification. They grow stiff in the joints. They get in a rut. They go to seed. James Gardner
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When you’re a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you’re older, it’s a straight part. Sir Laurence Olivier
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Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstances. Bruce Burton
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A man’s faults are the faults of his time while his virtues are his own. J.W. von Goethe
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Those who suffered from the delusion of reviving the Congress of the independence movement had failed to comprehend that Indira had discarded it long back. The Indira Congress had substituted the Indian National Congress. Sanjay was an integral part of that change over. He had a rightful claim to the inheritance.
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It’s the ‘family’ that was identified by millions of Indians, rightly or wrongly, with the legacies of the pre-independence Congress. No body, not even the political rivals of Indira had taken pains to drive the point home that the new Congress was a ‘Family’ affair. It did not reflect the aura of the bygone days.
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Canada has never been a melting pot; more like a tossed salad. Arnold Edinborough
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The middle of the road is all of the stable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters. Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Many political analysts have questioned the dynastic succession of Rajiv. They forget that Indira Congress had the right to choose a leader who could keep his mother’s party together and keep happy the power barnacles attached to it by distributing the spoils of office. People who confuse Indira Congress with the Indian National Congress of post-independence days obviously have been caught in the time-wrap. The new Congress was not even a clone of the past one. It was a mutant.
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If Sanjay was responsible for polluting the political system and allowing cohabitation of crime and politics beyond repair, it was Rajiv and his advisers who had opened up the nation’s conscience to the robbers and plunderers who passed by the name of corporate houses.
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Nevertheless, of all the illustrious sons of Gujarat I always rated Dhirubhai as the most important modern day Chanakya, who corrupted everybody by applying his unique technique of shredding human values, constitutional propriety, and legal concepts of administration in his unique marching machine.
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Hindutwa and Bharatiyatwa are not synonymous.
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He was not exposed to the education that whiffs of power are more polluting than the fumes of fossil fuel.
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The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding. Justice Louis D. Brandeis
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gathered a clear perception that Muni Sushil was not loyal either to the PM or to the HM. He was loyal to himself and was angling for three steps towards nirvana: money, membership of the Upper House of the Parliament and a Padma award.
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This is a classical example of how the entire machinery suffered because of lack of institutionalised control on the executive segments by the apex constitutional bodies in the country.
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An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured. Konrad Adenauer
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The USA and UK, as history testifies, act only on their respective national interests and not on woeful cries of maidens in distress. However beautifully dressed up and however heartrending were the distress cries of the NDA government the ‘free world’ knights did not come to India’s rescue. So much so for brave patriotism of the Sangh Parivar’s political face: the BJP!
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There are examples galore to prove the point that ‘sterile secular’ stances had grievously compromised national security. India, as a nation state, must rise above petty vote bank politics and should shun using the concept of ‘secularism’ as a tool of ‘apartheid’ to insulate and isolate the Muslim community.
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A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery. James Joyce
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Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism and doubt. Henri Frederic Amiel
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Racism is man’s gravest threat to man—the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason. Abraham Joshua Heschel
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way. A noble person, high above many around him, however, was enormously misunderstood because of series of error of judgement. He was not cut out to tackle the jackals around him as his mother was. He had failed to understand that the Congress Establishment that existed almost all over the country, as residue of the original Indian National Congress had tried to use him for perpetuating their power bases. Rajiv did not possess the capability of fusing them into a pan-national political force. After the honeymoon period he was simply overwhelmed by them.
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If you admit that to silence your opponent by force is to win an intellectual argument, then you admit the right to silence people by force. Hans Eysenck
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Fear often blurs the rational thinking process; insecurity invariably makes a man aggressive. I was not afraid and I refused to be intimidated by subjective views of people.
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He that is born to be hanged shall never be drowned. Thomas Fuller
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The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehood which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplace, but which all experience refutes. John Stuart Mill
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I was impressed by Mr. Vhora’s pragmatic approach and felt elated when I was directed to assist him in preparation of the materials to establish linkages between the politicians and criminals: in short, a poignant study on criminalisation of politics. His stupendous labour of love was later submitted as a report to the government, which, as usual, is gathering dust somewhere in the black hole of the North Block.
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It is required for the Imam (leader) of the Muslims to despatch the army routinely once or twice a year towards the kufr countries. It is also the duty of the Muslim public to assist the Imam in this noble cause. If the Imam does not send an army, he will be considered sinful. Fatwa Shami. (On offensive Jihad)
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The Muslims of Bengal, Maharashtra, Bihar etc provinces had assimilated several social practices and despite Islamist propaganda continue to be Bengalis and Maharashtrians first and Muslims next. Pan-Islamism dreaded these polluting factors more than ‘ferengi’ influence. These forces had never ceased working on purification of the sub-continental Muslims out of such impurities.
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Doctrines get inside of a man’s own reason and betray him against himself. Civilised men have done their fiercest fighting for doctrines. William Graham Sumner
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No one can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices. Edward R. Murrow