Press: CIA ... From America with love

 

NK SINGH

For the Indian media, the last month was a CIA month. Provoked by tirade fired against the mighty American espionage agency by all manner and shades of politicians in this country--ranging from Golwalkar to A K Gopalan and from the Prime Minister to the local netas --  almost all the Indian newspapers and periodicals had something to say on the issue. 

The voices were discordant and the attitudes adopted were different. But all agreed on one common point rather no one had the guts to disagree -- i.e., the CIA was active in India.

Among the not-so-secret admirers of the CIA, Jammat-e Islami's Radiance, which described the entire episode as "wild charges" and "prime facie absurdity", was the most outspoken on the issue. 

Indirectly, it explained the reason for it's not overtly forthcoming "in defence of the CIA or the Government of the United States"; "the very action of challenging the allegation of Congress leaders will be regarded as incontrovertible proof of the challenger being a CIA agent."

No wonder, the national dailies, barring the Indian Express, treated the subject in a lighter vein. No editorial comments were available. 

However, humour writers and cartoonists tried to make fun of the CIA scare; it was suggested that Mrs. Gandhi could have easily held the CIA 1esponsible not only for public violence in various places but even for natural calamities like cyclones, floods and drought. 

The rightist newspapers, such as The Current tried to counter the CIA issue either by raising the KGB (the Russian espionage agency) scare or by playing up reports of telephone tapping in this country and the alleged activities of an official it described as "Mrs Gandhi's secret policeman" and his agents.

The leftist Press did grab the opportunity to re-expose the notorious intelligence agency with renewed vigour and energy. A small section of the leftist Press saw in the anti-CIA tirade a bid to crush the microscopic position.

Ridiculus

Linking up of the various economic and mass agitations. and the usual wave of September violence with the CIA was ridiculed by friends and foes alike.

As Rajinder Puri's Stir, a newly launched weekly newsmagazine, put it, "the peccadilloes fired against the CIA by all manner of politicians in this country, from the Prime Minister down, and on all manner of issues, including Delhi Congress Chief Radha Raman's bank account, have no doubt their comical aspect which has already attracted sufficient satire and tongue-in-cheek ridicule."

The Indian Express, which was the only national daily to editorially comment on the issue, wrote: "Me thinks she protests too much. First, it is the CIA responsible for most of India's ills, including the giddy spiral of prices and cost of living and the steep, sharp ascent in unemployment, to say nothing of cyclones in East India and near famine in Bihar. Student riots erupt in Delhi and Punjab. There are language stirs in Assam. The long arm of the CIA has reached these areas and is busy inciting mischief."

Some other examples: "A few days back the Congress President blamed the Central Intelligence Agency of the USA for the recent trouble in Shahdara. Later he accused the USA of encouraging the Jana Sangh. The learned doctor sounded pretty mad, but then Dr. SD Sharma has never been known for a high IQ." (The Motherland)

"Dr SD Sharma seems to be of the view that right from drought down to spiralling prices, it is American Intelligence that is responsible. In a press conference, last week he gave the impression that it was the CIA that was behind all that was going against the interests of the Ruling Party -- be it hartal in Agartala, stir in Jammu, arson in Kota, or power shortage in Punjab, strike in Nangal plant or demonstration by Patna students." (Radiance)

Even friends were harsh. Initially, Blitz seemed to support Dr. Sharma, but later on, perhaps after a second thought, it revised its stand. In an editorial of its September 30 issue, the pro-Moscow weekly had written: "The charge that the CIA was behind the recent riots in New Delhi will not come as a surprise to anyone. In every riot in recent years could be seen the hidden hand of a foreign agency."

The aim of the CIA seems to be the breaking down of the law and order situation in the country." Quoting the Congress President it suspected the CIA hand behind some of the major industrial disputes and said that "a deliberate attempt is made to sabotage the economy of the country." 

However in a later write-up (October 21, 1972) the weekly to put it mildly tried to retract its step. In his 'Capital Close up' Blitz correspondent A Raghavan commented: "Some of the initial statements by Shankar Dayal Sharma gave a further handle to the CIA lovers; especially to the commentators and cartoonists in the tycoon press. 

Punjab Chief Minister Giani Zail Singh made it worse by linking the student agitations in his State with the CIA. However, realisation is dawning on some that this kind of linking would make the charges against the CIA less credible among the honest sections of the people.

Writing in New Age, the mouth organ of his party, CPI, Bhupesh Gupta, who also happens to be the editor of the magazine, also condemned the viewpoint. Although appreciating Dr SD Sharma for his "fine patriotic sentiments" and for coming out "so sharply and in so devastating a manner against the CIA," Bhupesh Gupta wrote, "It is wide off the mark even to suggest that popular agitations against price rise, unemployment. etc., are CIA inspired".

Among the leftist papers, New Wave which is believed to represent the CPI-oriented Congressmen, gave the issue the most violent treatment. It made a scathing editorial attack on Dr Sharma for weakening his case and exposing himself to "the danger of misrepresentation by looking for the agents and friends of the CIA not where they are to be found, but among innocent people who are sometimes driven to violence by the desperate conditions of their life." 

The Weekly asked, "where exactly are the main links of this network to be founded? In Shahdara or in high business, administrative and political circles, Who is more likely to be a CIA agent -- a corrupt bureaucrat, a benal politician and an overgreedy businessman, or an unemployed young man of a Delhi or Calcutta slum whose patience has been exhausted by the endless sermons and unfulfilled promises of leaders?"

It concluded, "That the people of Shahdara knew how to escape into lanes to save themselves from the blind fury of a hysterical police force or that some of them were even able to throw back an unexploded tear gas shall does not indicate that they had been trained by the CIA in guerilla warfare. The discontent of the people that is bursting here and there into strikes, bandhs and clashes with the police has not been fabricated by any political group or foreign agency."

Congress & CIA

Many journals-- both rightist and leftist--blamed Congress for strengthening the CIA all these years and still taking no action against it. Some of them went as far as to suggest a collusion between the two.

Jana Sangh's Motherland and Organiser (the same person edits both the journals) scathingly attacked the government for having "failed to protect the country from the depredations of foreign agents". To quote him "Governments are expected to keep track of foreign spies, follow their contacts, try to win them over as double agents and, when a spy is found going too far, to arrest and prosecute him or declare him persona non grata and throw him out of the country. However, apart from rings of Pakistani spies, we do not know any American, Russian or Chinese spies being thrown out or thrown into jail."

No wonder, both the Organiser (Jana Sangh) and New Age (CPI) questioned the government's wisdom in not asking the CIA to "pack up and go home." The Organiser asked, "Why should Shri Chavan go all the way to Washington to cadge for a 'Friendship-pact' with the US ?"

Many journals warned the Congress against American agents in its organisation. While the Blitz asked the Congress President to "realise that there are many CIA-minded members in his party", the New Wave asked the Congress leaders to "turn the searchlight inward. It said, "to open the Congress" doors to the former Chairman of the Swatantra Party and then to search for CIA agents in Shahdara is a bad joke, not serious politics, nor patriotism."

The critics were far more vehement. "If there is any place where the CIA can be most probably found it is the government establishment itself." (Point of View)

"The hundreds of crores of rupees that the USA and the USSR have been allowed to accumulate in India make it very easy for these foreign powers to finance their espionage activities on a gigantic scale. MPS and Ministers are living well beyond their means. The country I would like to know who their financiers are and whether they do not include some foreign sources. Indeed we will not be surprised if there are foreign agents right inside the Prime Minister's Secretariate." (The Motherland)

"The first characteristic of foreign agents, particularly those used for subverting opinion, is their masked identity, and their effort to mingle among people and merge with places where the hand of their principals is least suspected. Their second characteristic is an unceasing effort to occupy significant positions of authority from where they can best and most effectively further the interests of their masters. Keeping these characteristics in mind, in which political party are CIA agents most likely to be active? They would be most effective if they infiltrated the higher offices of the ruling party and the government, and mouthed all the anti-American and radical slogans to effectively mask their true identity from the people." (Stir)

Sangh & CIA

The leftist papers, in their turn, attacked their opponents, especially the Jana Sangh and the Swatantra. The pro-Moscow news weekly Link said, "The Prime Minister, the Congress President and others have in recent days repeatedly drawn attention to the mischief being brewed. Not unexpectedly, such references have made them unpopular with certain journals and journalists who have a vested interest in the activities of the CIA in this country."

Patriot, a daily published by the same establishment, was more direct. In his "New Delhi Report", Narad observed: "From the early fifties CIA hands have made extensive studies on the Jana Sangh, taking an unusually active interest in its growth. Craig Baxter, currently back in India, is not the only one who has specialised in the Jana Sangh. One of his predecessors at the job was John Curran who, 20 years ago, prepared of course under the auspices of an academic body a work expounding the potentialities of the RSS as an organ of "militant Hinduism"?

New Age, hinted a link between the CIA and the JS. "It would hardly require any probing to identify the soil in the political life of the country the CIA is cultivating. The more the rightist leaders scream on the subject, the more the link between the CIA and the political forces of reaction... The right reaction is the CIA's political mainstay in our country and it is perhaps this awareness of the sense of guilt that makes the rightist and communalists so sensitive and irate the moment the CIA is lambasted."

The paper said that to divert the "popular indignation and vigilance against the CIA", the JS is trying to raise the KGB bogey." It concludes, "The style anyhow smacks of the CIA tactics."

New Wave branded the JS as "CIA's friends", it commented that the JS leaders who had publicly offered to support President Johnson in his war against the people of Vietnam, "are neither so innocent nor so militantly nationalist as they pretend to be. Their guru and mentor MS Golwalkar described the US war against the people of Vietnam as one between dharma and adharma and said that the US was on the side of dharma and as such deserved his support. (What else would the CIA want from its friends in India?)"

Forte of Critics

"The Indira wave is withering, and to divert the public attention from the steeping economic deterioration the ruling party is raising the CIA bogey" -- this was the forte of critics. Indian Express: "'Whenever I hear the word, culture', said Goering, I reach out for a gun. Whenever the ruling Congress is reminded of the deteriorating economic plight of this country, it reaches out for a scapegoat. The scapegoats. range from the Opposition Parties, the reactionaries, the communalists, subversive bureaucrats, journalists and judges to all communists save those of the CPI which just now is the government's temporary conscience keeper.... Having run the gamut through these domestic plotters and having failed to make a dent either in them or in public opinion inside the country, the Congress is casting its net wider. According to the latest official version, the real culprits criminals are not masterminded by indigenous sources within the country but are remote-controlled from outside by the CIA which is also operating inside India."

Motherland: "The Prime Minister's talks of spies can have only one objective, to divert public attention from the Simla sell-out and the soaring prices to foreign spies -- in other words from bread to circus. And her singling out of American spies can be explained only by her anxiety to find an excuse for taking the country into a deeper Russian embrace.'

Radiance: "The ruling party and its leader, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, seems to have become acutely conscious of the increasing loss of their popularity in the country. That is one of the reasons why they are so desperately in search of scapegoats.."

Stir too thought that it was "another piece of political wizardry conjured by one of Mrs Gandhi's advisers to overwhelm the opposition and divert the public from its growing hardship."

Writing in Motherland Subramanian Swamy of 'Swadeshi Plan' fame went as far as to suggest that the whole campaign may be "for inviting donations of food from the USA." The learned Professor argued, "After all, if the USSR can denounce American capitalism and then beg for 10 million metric tons of wheat from Nixon, why not the other 'high contracting' parties?"

Forte of Admirers

Patriot came to the ruling party's rescue: "As these warnings have come amid public discontent at the steep rise in prices, some of the critics of the Government have been attacking the Congress leadership for raising a new bogey to divert public attention from the worsening economic situation.'

Blitz agreed: "There is no gainsaying that the timing of the campaign against the US espionage agency by the Prime Minister and Congress President had given rise to the misgivings that it was designed to disrupt the developing mass movement against galloping economic distress." 

It contended, "Maybe, the Government would not have mounted a campaign against the CIA at this juncture if it was not convinced that certain forces of this country, hell-bent upon discrediting and dislodging the Indira Gandhi government by capitalising on the economic crisis, would get whole-hearted support from America's invisible government.. That should explain the charge that the Government's tirade against CIA was belated and motivated."

Ruskies Vs Yankees

One of the tactics adopted by the right Press was to raise the KGB scare. For instance, The Motherland published the same day and on the same page two articles, 'Know the CIA' and 'Know the KGB'. In an editorial, the daily commented. "In the present Indian context, the USA and its CIA are something of a back number. Apart from Pakistan, therefore, the intelligence menace would arise most from Russia, whose agents have penetrated all kinds of sensitive and strategic spots."

Radiance argued it can be only in the interest of the Soviet Union, or the Indian Communists to "wreck the free economy of free (Capitalist) India.. since nothing can turn the people of a country so violently against capitalism and its high priests than the phenomenon of constantly rising price.' The paper had, however, the wisdom to confess the "absurdity" of its so-called argument.

National Herald replied: "The CIA is not only the most powerful of the secret services but belongs to a country the relations of which with this country have been periodically bad and which is now pursuing a relentless anti-Indian policy. The relations between India and the Soviet Union have been consistently good.."

There were leftist critics as well. The most outspoken of them was Frontier. The political views of the Congress President, it said, "can be summed up as anyone critical of the government is a CIA agent. By this criterion only the ruling party and its ally, the CPI, are chaste: how the CIA failed to entice these two is perhaps a state secret which even the Congress President cannot divulge."

Point of View too had the same point: "There is a danger that the CIA phobia may be used 1 by reckless and irresponsible people to stigmatize all kinds of opposition and dissent."

The CPM journal People's Democracy remarked: "On the one side they talk about the CIA being a threat, on the other, they would not lift a little finger to stop the activities of US imperialism and its strong-arm agency. The only conclusion is that the Congress leaders are trying desperately to damn the legitimate growing popular movements against their policies by slandering them as CIA-inspired and so on."

Secular Democracy

November 9, 1972