The coded language of espionage

Harvinder Khetal

“Watan ke aage kuchh nahi.... khud bhi nahi.” (Nothing is more important than my country ... not even me).

This is a moving dialogue from the movie “Raazi”. As I absorbed the audacious and determined resolve of the protagonist, gun pointed at her husband (from the enemy country), I thought anyone who has not watched the film would, in all probability, presume that it would have been mouthed by a loyal soldier. But that it is not so. There are a lot of other jobs that people do for their country, shrouded in secrecy, and they are no less patriotic. This line was spoken by Sehmat, the protagonist played by Alia Bhat, in “Raazi”. And Sehmat is a spy.  Recognising and applauding the work of these incognito nationalists, Kanwaljit Singh, essaying the role of a general in the picture, in another context, says:

“Hamaare itihaas mein aise kayi log hain jinhe koi inaam, koi medal nahi milta ... hum unka naam tak nahi jaante ... na hi unhe pehchante hai ... sirf watan ke jhande par apni yaad chhod jaate hain.” (There are many people in our history who don’t get any medal or recognition ... we don't even know their names... neither can we identify them ... they just leave behind their memories on the country’s flag).

That the movie is based on a real-life girl from Jammu and Kashmir who agrees (raazi) to snoop in Pakistan for the Indian Intelligence lends it an authenticity and awe for the characters. Sehmat is no fictional James Bond, but she is no less daring than any heroic spy, real or fictional. To uncover information as the Indo-Pak war looms large in 1971, Sehmat gets married to a Pakistani army officer son of a brigadier. Strategic scenes of Sehmat the spy snooping for sensitive secrets and sneaking them out stealthily scorch the screen. I gasp as the peril gripping the gritty girl going about deceiving with guile her gullible in-laws grasps me. Meghna Gulzar has adroitly adapted the film from Harinder Sikka’s thrilling biography ‘Calling Sehmat’. 

Then there’s another interesting dialogue from the film that stayed with me:

“Billi ke liye garam kapde chahiye.” (I need warm clothes for the cat).

Sehmat uses this code language with other hidden Indian agents in Pakistan. ‘Billi’ is the code name for her brother-in-law. It provides some comic relief in the tense drama involving putting up bugs (a small piece of electronic equipment used for secretly listening to what people are saying) in the house.

Well! Espionage is not easy; your live on the edge (perilously). It calls for training as well as quick wits, lest your cover is blown (to cause one’s true identity or the true nature of one’s work to be revealed). Espionage is the practice of spying or of using spies, typically by governments to obtain political and military information. This late 18th century word comes from French espionnage, from espionner ‘to spy’, from espion ‘a spy’.

While an agent, like Sehmat, is someone who works for a country’s secret service and collects secret information about foreign governments, a double agent is one who pretends to act as a spy for one country or organisation while in fact acting on behalf of an enemy. In espionage thrillers, one regularly comes across moles. A mole (also called a “penetration agent”, “deep cover agent”, or “sleeper agent”) is a long-term spy who is recruited before having access to secret intelligence, subsequently managing to get into the target organisation. However, it is popularly used to mean any long-term clandestine spy or informant within an organisation, government or private.

Fresh out of the cinema hall, and aware that the lives of spies are fraught with danger of being caught, I read with acute sensitivity this news of an Indian having been arrested from his home in Pithoragarh, Uttarakhand, for allegedly spying for Pakistan’s ISI while working as a domestic help at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad. The suspected spy, Ramesh Singh Kanyal, landed the job through his brother, reportedly an Indian Army jawan. A senior Indian official allegedly hired him to work as a domestic help in 2015. Ramesh returned to India in 2017 and ran a shop in his village. He was allegedly paid $1,300 for spying for Inter-Services Intelligence. He would pass on confidential information about army installations in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand to his Pakistani handlers. The investigation is on.

I am reminded of Mohanlal Bhaskar, the spy who wrote the fascinating novel, “An Indian Spy in Pakistan”.  Patriotic to the core, Mohanlal, in 1965 happily underwent circumcision, converted to Islam and took the name of Mohammad Aslam to spy for the nation in Pakistan without letting his family get any inkling. His mission was to extract information about their nuclear programme. However, one of his colleagues who worked as a double agent for both India and Pakistan blew his cover. After spending 14 years in jail, Bhaskar was released as a part of a prisoner exchange between India and Pakistan. 

But Ravindra Kaushik was not so lucky. RAW officials saw the making of a spy in this theatre artist when he was only 21. He learnt Urdu and Islamic religious texts and about Pakistan before crossing over in 1975 as Nabi Ahmed Shakir ostensibly to study law in Karachi University. Then he joined the Pakistani Army as an officer and married a local girl. He passed classified information to the Indian army till he was caught in 1985. He spent the last 16 years of his life in Mianwali jail where he died of TB in 2001.

Well, in these days of hi-tech gadgets and stories such as those of Wikileaks, Philip K Dick’s statement is worth pondering over: “There will come a time when it isn’t ‘They're spying on me through my phone' anymore. Eventually, it will be 'My phone is spying on me’.” 

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