Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer

by Maloy Krishna Dhar

The verdant vegetation was disturbed only by the squatting human figures evacuating their bowels.

The merger had inextricably molested the political and moral virginity of the once innocent people. I had seen the same rat race towards the cesspool of corruption amongst the politicians and bureaucrats in the North East. Bhartvarsha like the Imperial India believed in the political philosophy of stuffing the gullet of the concerned people with currency bills to keep them silent and contended. 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!

Has democracy been the harbinger of corruption and total degradation? Well! History will decide this fascinating story of decline of democratic values and moral integrity of the people of India. Some sort of free election alone does not make a country democratic. It requires stringent implementation of the concepts of liberty, equality, and fraternity as enshrined in the constitution.

However, my depression forced me to consult Sunanda about the feasibility of my resignation from the IPS and joining the JP movement. She appreciated my sentiments but pointed out that we had raised a family and she was not equipped to fend for herself and the kids in my absence. What was my priority, my depression or the welfare of my family? She was unwilling to go back to her parental home and counselled me to try to see the positive sides of the emergency. I quite did not agree with her, but I understood the values of her reasoning. I did not have any anchor besides my job. I had no parental home and I did not inherit family largesse. I stood alone by myself and I was fully responsible for the welfare of my family, which I had agreed to raise and take care. I could not abandon them. I struggled a lot to quieten down the quarrelling squirrels within me, albeit temporarily.

All said and done, I still believed that India has not had its encounter with a more dynamic prime minister than Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, minus the emergency aberration, which I liked to believe, was hastened by a spate of extra-democratic agitations of her political opponents, some of whom were suspected to have been inspired by outside forces. A person of complex character as Indira was could not be judged by her follies alone. India needed her at that glorious and inglorious moment of history. Oh! What a history it was to live with! I had closer encounter with her in her worse days and in the end of it all I strongly feel that she alone cannot be blamed for all the ills of India. She was the tallest person among the pygmies around her and the shamelessly emasculated later day political breed.

The ‘revolution’ initiated by Jayaprakash Narayan was squandered away by the hungry and tactless politicians of the Janata conglomerate.

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding. Justice Louis D. Brandeis