Doctor Sahib and the Spook

THE THEME OF AS Dulat’s latest book, The Chief Minister and the Spy is the special relationship that three generations of the Abdullah family had and continue to have with Kashmir and India, a relationship that has had a unique significance for our national security. The author had the rare opportunity to nurture an unusual friendship with Farooq Abdullah (or Doctor Sahib as he was popularly known).

What exactly is the value of a book that a spy writes about a chief minister? Well, the key to the answer is that the author, Dulat, was not just a spy, but a spy master. A more appropriate title for the book would have been ‘The Chief Minister and the Spy Chief’. Dulat served as the chief of India’s external intelligence agency, but the major part of his interaction with Abdullah was in the former’s capacity as chief of India’s internal intelligence agency’s set-up in Srinagar with the responsibility to keep watch over developments in the sensitive state of Jammu & Kashmir and report to the Union home ministry. Those holding this crucial post generally get to play an advisory role in shaping the destiny of Kashmir. Theoretically the chief minister of the state can directly get in touch with the prime minister or the Union home minister, but in practical terms, the local IB chief, acting as the eyes and ears of the Union home ministry is an important link in the channel of communication. This is how and why the relationship between the spy chief and the chief minister becomes important.

Normally, an intelligence officer deputed to any particular station ceases to have the responsibility of maintaining a relationship with the chief minister, once he or she is transferred out of the state. But the relationship between Dulat and Abdullah was of an entirely different nature and the authorities in Delhi seem to have found it expedient to let the former continue his special access to the latter, regardless of whether Abdullah was in or out of power. The result is this extremely readable book, as easy to go through as if one is perusing a work of fiction. It is almost a panegyric to the Doctor Sahib who has been straddling the political scene in Jammu and Kashmir for decades.

I, therefore, thought it prudent to compare Dulat’s views on Abdullah with the views expressed in another book (Kashmir Under 370: A Personal History by J&K’s Former Director General of Police) written by another distinguished retired IPS officer, namely, Mahendra Sabharwal, a former director general of police in J&K, who, as Dulat mentions, was not one of the then CM’s favourites, a fact which comes out clearly in Sabharwal’s book too. Yet Sabharwal would also seem to endorse the view that the three generations of Abdullahs were totally committed to India. It is that family’s concept of and demand for autonomy in Kashmir that led from time to time to skirmishes with Delhi, and incarceration, to which all the three generations were subjected.

This review is being written after yet another terrorist attack in Kashmir led to yet another armed confrontation with Pakistan. The question that arises as one reads Dulat’s views on Kashmir is this—could we have acquitted ourselves better in handling this vexed problem had we not let those whose “hearts beat for India” feel let down?

Dulat says that Abdullah has always hoped for and dreamt of that world renewed which Prophet Isaiah envisioned in the Old Testament, “where things of the past should not be remembered or come to mind and the wolf and the lamb shall graze alike”. I guess the chief minister and the spy chief are both entitled to dream, thus, of their beloved Kashmir.

AS DulatbooksFarooq AbdullahJammu and Kashmirpolitics