Beyond the Lines: An Autobiography

by Kuldip Nayar

  After Sheikh Abdullah’s death in 1953, my contact with Kashmir lessened each year. I knew Farooq Abdullah well but did not share the same proximity to him which I had with his father. In fact, I was in Srinagar on Abdullah’s invitation to celebrate Farooq’s successor as the president of the National Conference. It was a large crowd and Begum Sahiba, his wife, remarked that ‘you (Sheikh) never received such a reception; not even when you took over as the prime minister of Jammu & Kashmir’.

  This was towards the end of 2010, when I interacted with young Kashmiris in Delhi and Srinagar. I found some of them eager to revive the two-nation theory, little realizing that a secular India would be utterly shocked to hear that. They even threatened to start a movement for an alliance with Pakistan if India did not concede their demand for azadi, but what nipped this tendency in the bud was the precarious state in which Pakistan was at that time.

  Indeed, of late, politics in Kashmir appears to be taking a new direction. The demand for self-determination remains as strong as earlier but the azadi constituency has acquired greater self-confidence in its ability to take on India. The stone-pelters, however, representing the angry youth, were aware that they needed to find a peaceful solution to their demand. Their movement did not last long. This may be because of Kashmir’s increasing faith in non-violent agitation. The voice of youth, who speak from the experience of growing up in the years of terror in the 1990s, is becoming increasingly more audible on the streets as well as in media discourses and elsewhere. Yasin Malik takes the credit of diverting the Kashmiris from a pro-Pakistan approach to one for azadi.

  In all these respects, 2010 was a watershed year. The understanding in the society as a whole was to move away from the gun towards a democratic solution of the issues involved. This does provide New Delhi some space and civil society can also contribute. The trouble is, however, that the government in Delhi has not been able to strike a chord of trust with the Hurriyat or other separatist forces and therefore the latter has concluded that the only way to the Valley is through Islamabad rather than directly. The role of interlocutors, appointed by New Delhi, has been of little help because their brief was limited and the expectations of Kashmiris were high.

  The sum total of such developments amount to very little because secession by the Valley will never be acceptable to Indian society, however accommodative it may become in the years ahead. The best that can happen is that India may be brought round to amending the constitution in order to arrive at a genuinely federal arrangement and find a place in that for an autonomous Kashmir. What the Kashmiris have to understand is that India may one day accept their separate identity outside the constitution but it would love to be within India.

  I did not witness much of the working of the V.P. Singh government because I went to London as India’s high commissioner in 1990. I was at a party at India International Centre in New Delhi when Foreign Minister Inder Kumar Gujral took me aside and asked me whether I would go as India’s envoy to the UK. I was surprised because I had never expected or contemplated such an appointment.

  I asked, ‘Why not Islamabad?’ He said that should I be appointed as such there would be many expectations in Pakistan which I would be in no position to fulfill. He told me that I would be able to do more useful work in London, an influential centre of the media.

  It was a difficult decision because, as a human-rights activist and as a journalist, it would be odd to become part of the establishment. What eventually persuaded me was Gujral’s argument that I might be able to bring the Sikh community back into the mainstream. London was the hub of the Khalistan movement. I sought and received cabinet status in order to be effective. This helped me to circumvent the babus in government.

  The news about my selection was leaked to the press even before the proposal reached London. This was an embarrassment and there was a mixed reaction. One comment was that I had been rewarded for my consistent criticism of Indira Gandhi and her son, Rajiv. For many, I was a welcome choice. Some said that my wings had been clipped. Indeed, I had not spared the Janata government (1977-9) when it had failed to live up to its electoral promises.

  The press fraternity was uncertain about how I would fare in the field of diplomacy. I sensed an element of jealousy in some of their remarks. The Indian Foreign Service itself was far from happy because I was an outsider, although the fact was that London had rarely gone to a serving foreign service officer. Some retired hands of the MEA openly said that Gujral would rue the day he chose me. A few of my colleagues at the Citizens for Democracy (CFD), a voluntary organization I headed, were disappointed. They felt I was leaving for a cushy, ‘phoren’ job.

  The briefing at the MEA was perfunctory. No one seemed to take me seriously. Was it a bias against an outsider or an intrinsic part of the nonchalant manner in which I found the foreign office functioning? The atmosphere at South Block was officious. When I went from room to room to meet the secretary, additional secretary, deputy secretary, and the officers below them I was addressed as ‘Sir’, probably because of the rank of cabinet minister I enjoyed. I detected a ring of formality but not respect. This became more apparent when they phoned me because most of them would get their stenographers to ring before picking up the phone themselves. The protocol section was worse and I had to speak to Foreign Secretary S.K. Singh even to get my luggage cleared at the airport.

  ‘There are a few key files you must see before you go,’ S.K. told me. He and I had been friends for years. I was familiar with his pompous, patronizing style, but he was knowledgeable and intelligent. Whatever his views, he carried out instructions diligently. Gujral never felt comfortable with him; a case of trust deficit. I could sense the tension between the two. Such a relationship between a minister and his secretary could not long subsist and I was not at all surprised when S.K. resigned a few weeks later to make way for Muchkund Dubey.

  The external affairs ministry never showed me any files. When I persisted, I was told that copies of all the documents were available in the archives of the high commission in London. This proved to be incorrect because I never found any worthwhile ‘files’ there. Whatever was shown to me was disjointed and routine. It is possible that the ‘key files’ were purposely kept away from me, or there were no ‘key files’, as Salman Haidar, deputy high commissioner, put it. Whatever the truth, a former Indian foreign service hand, Mani Shankar Aiyar, complained to Rajiv Gandhi, his mentor, that I was making ‘copious notes’ from the files.

  The government was keen that I quickly assume charge as President R. Venkataraman was scheduled to pay a state visit to the UK in early April 1990. We were well into March but there was still no word from London on the acceptance of my appointment. The delay was reportedly because of my writings against Margaret Thatcher, the then British prime minister. I had called her authoritarian and going the way of Indira Gandhi, a close friend of hers. The agreement did, however, eventually arrive, albeit somewhat late.

  Before my departure, I was able to call on the president and vice-president. I also spent about an hour with Rajiv Gandhi, then the leader of the Opposition. I found him well informed in foreign affairs and candid in his comments. I told him I wished I had met him earlier, and he reciprocated the sentiment.

  One person whom I was unable to meet was Prime Minister V.P. Singh, who did not respond to several requests, not even to a formal communication from the Ministry of External Affairs about the date of my departure. I left for London after writing to him: ‘Even as a journalist I tried twice to meet you; this time the reason was important because I wanted to talk about my assignment in London.’ I subsequently received a note of regret from him.

  A British protocol officer welcomed me at Heathrow. A superintendent of police from Scotland Yard, also present, warned me about the security hazards faced by the Indian high commissioner. He wanted me to travel in a police vehicle which my predecessor, P.C. Alexander, had used during his tenure. I refused but was unable to shake off the British security office
r, who remained with me until I left London.

  Presenting my credentials to the Queen was a laborious exercise. It began with a ride in a buggy drawn by three horses (a special dispensation for envoys from the Commonwealth, for others there were only two!). It was a comic sight, because the Marshal Chief of Protocol, an officer in a tail coat, followed the carriage, keeping pace with the trotting horses from the Royal stables. In my case, the ride was for 4 km, from the high commissioner’s residence at Kensington Gardens, known as Millionaires’ Row, to the palace.

  When I presented my credentials to the Queen I found myself face to face with an individual I had seen in photographs on innumerable occasions. She was somewhat different from her photographs, having grown greyer and heavier. She was friendly and informal, and advised my wife, who joined me at the palace, to always carry a shawl with her as the London weather was very unpredictable. The exercise ended with an informal tea reception. It was a boring affair, too officious and too long. There were no photographers because the Queen does not allow any photographs to be taken within the palace.

  During my short stint in London what struck me most was the fiendish pleasure that successful Indians settled in England took in humiliating the British. Many Indian settlers had made a great success of their lives, having generally arrived in London with a few pounds in their pockets and become millionaires, a few even billionaires. This spoke well of their hard work and dedication. For them, it was a form of revenge on the British, once their rulers.

  They would hire Britishers as their chauffeurs or house attendants and made it a point to parade them before me whenever I visited their homes. The security man, who accompanied me to the Indian houses, would often remark ruefully after a visit, ‘How rich these people are.’

  President Venkataraman’s formal talks with Margaret Thatcher were held in the cabinet room at 10 Downing Street. She told us that the table around which we sat was the one where the momentous decision on the transfer of power to India was taken. I marvelled how an ordinary, green flannelled, long, rectangular, wooden table could have played such a significant role in a matter affecting the destinies of millions!

  During his talks with Margaret Thatcher, the president concentrated on Pakistan’s complicity in Punjab and Kashmir. She expressed no surprise. He also introduced South Africa, to her chagrin, to make the point that perceptions of India and the UK were poles apart when it came to racial matters.

  Thatcher’s lunch, also at 10 Downing Street, was a crowded affair: a five-course meal was served in less than an hour to approximately 200 invitees at large tables in a room where even half the number would have been too many. I thought a buffet would have been a far better idea but the British are fastidious in such matters. They do not have buffets when they entertain guests, particularly from foreign countries. For them it is preposterous to even imagine that the prime minister would host anything but a sit-down meal for a visiting president.

  I met some familiar faces at the lunch. Film-maker David Lean was in a wheelchair. A good-looking man, his was a friendly handshake. Though he said he did not want to talk about films, he warmly recalled the shooting of A Passage to India (which I thought was more of a passage to England; underlining the stereotyped India with which the British are most comfortable). For a man who had married five times, he looked amazingly relaxed.

  Richard Attenborough, director of the film Gandhi, and a man who always looks pleased with himself, was there too. We had met in Delhi earlier, but he did not remember. This is the problem with British celebrities or the British generally; you have to be introduced to them anew every time you meet them.

  I sat next to Margaret Thatcher and spoke to her for nearly two hours on a variety of subjects. She was communicative and forthright. She said she had refused to visit a gurdwara despite many invitations. ‘Those people killed Mrs Gandhi,’ she said. ‘What kind of people must they be!’ She compared the violence in Punjab with the Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) terrorism. ‘Of course, yours is on a bigger scale,’ she said. She was reticent on Kashmir, though she did say that nothing should be done at the expense of India’s unity and integrity.

  As our conversation progressed, Margaret Thatcher spoke about her personal problems, pouring her heart out to a person who had met her only two days earlier. Her son, she said, had to move to the US because of the ‘wild charges’ (of using his position to get favours from the government) made against him. She missed her grandchildren but she considered it a price she had to pay to be in politics.

  I remarked that ethical standards were disappearing from politics and that our own experience in India was that politicians enjoyed hitting each other below the belt. She said that in Britain it was worse. They would ‘kick you’ and even when you had fallen, they would not stop hitting you.

  She recalled her intimate relationship with Indira Gandhi. ‘Even when we differed, our personal equation, did not suffer,’ she said. ‘We often spoke to each other over the phone,’ at times only to ‘talk’. Her impression of Rajiv Gandhi was that he was ‘sweet boy’ but she made no claim of having any rapport with him.

  For mid-March, the weather in London was surprisingly pleasant. The snow-melt of winter had washed the exteriors of the buildings clean. The stores were bright with goods and the pavements were dotted with the people in a variety of sartorial attire. Above all, there were no tongas, and no scooters.

  I had first visited London in 1948 on my way to the US. Then I was a student seeking a degree in journalism. I remembered how excited I had been walking through the city’s streets for hours. Indian history was scattered throughout London. I also recalled the time when, as a schoolboy, I had received a lash from a cane inflicted by a white policeman for being part of a procession in my home town, Sialkot, clamouring for India’s Independence. Again, in August 1942, I was detained at a police station for a few hours in Sialkot for responding to Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘Quit India’ call against the British and organizing a strike at the British-run Murray College where I had studied before going to Lahore.

  India House, which was the chancery, is a heritage property. When Sir Herbert Baker designed the building in 1920, he provided high ceiling and a huge central dome. Murals have been painted on many of its walls. The most striking feature of the paintings adorning India House is the organic link with contemporary movements in Indian art, especially the Bengal School.

  I found portraits most of the of national leaders hanging in the reception hall on the first floor, Maulana Azad’s portrait conspicuous by its absence. I requested M.F. Hussain to paint one. He promised to make one but did not, busy as he was with other more profitable ventures.

  My first shock at India House was that the Indian high commission’s main gate was not open to Sikhs. Through an aperture in the door the security man would scrutinize the visitors and tell a Sikh to enter through the back door. I was aghast by this discrimination. I asked Salman Haider why Sikhs were barred entrance from the front gate. He said that P.C. Alexander, who believed that most Sikhs in London were sympathetic to terrorists, had ordered this.

  Alexander had been Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s principal secretary and had been affected by her assassination by her Sikh security guards. I had in fact, before coming to London, gone to Chennai to meet him and get a briefing on the workings of the high commission. He asked me about my priorities. I told him that I wanted to bridge the gap between the Sikh community and India. He had a fit and warned me against fraternizing with the Sikhs who he said were responsible for the assassination of Indira Gandhi. I told him that some Sikhs were responsible, but not the entire community. I saw no change in his attitude after my remark.

  In any event, I ordered that the gate be opened to all without any discrimination. The following day I received a telegram from a committee of secretaries to the Government of India warning me that I would be held responsible should any harm befall high commission personnel who I was exposing to security hazards. I rang up Gujral to identif
y the species to which this committee belonged. He said I should deal with the matter in the manner I saw fit.

  Apparently, some officials at the high commission were unhappy with my decision because a top Scotland Yard officer met me to protest against the decision to throw open the gate. He told me that the British government would not be responsible for the security of high commission personnel. He toned down when I told him that we would in turn withdraw the 24-hour security provided to the British high commissioner in Delhi. The opening of the gate was welcomed by the Sikh community.

  As the attempt to bring back the Sikhs into the Indian mainstream had been my principal motivation for accepting the assignment, I planned to approach the community which had not forgotten either Operation Bluestar in 1984 or the massacre of Sikhs in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination.

  I was probably hasty in my first step. I decided to visit, along with my wife, the largest gurdwara in London, at Havelock in Southall. This was a locality which could be mistaken for Amritsar, Jalandhar, or Ludhiana, just as Wembley could have formed any part of Gujarat. The gurdwara was then under the control of militants. Some young Sikhs had got wind of my visit and decided to stage a demonstration.

  No sooner had my wife and I entered the gurdwara than slogans of ‘Indian dogs go back’ and ‘Khalistan Zindabad’ resounded and I was pushed around by the saffron-turbaned youths. This did not daunt me or my wife. The British security man accompanying us asked us to turn back but we made our way to the inner sanctum where the Granth Sahib was placed. We bowed before it and withdrew.