Spymaster AS Dulat says it from heart in his memoir 'A Life in the Shadows'

Sandeep Dikshit

IN the words of life-long spymaster AS Dulat, trouble has followed him wherever he has gone. After placid years at a desk-bound stint in the Intelligence Bureau, he learnt that the field was a different ballgame when thrown in the deep-end. The deadly swirl of militancy in Kashmir, the Kandahar hijacking, the sight of people gasping for breath in the infamous Bhopal gas leak, the audiences with the greats and his extensive and often rollicking travels with then President Zail Singh “is my story, told from the heart, in my own words”.

As he says, this is not a linear narrative but salami slices of his life which make the pages skim. Though told within the confines of the Official Secrets Act, it offers engaging snapshots of a sleuth’s journey from the desk to field, which offered access to the highest echelons as well as to the “rascals” who populate his fraternity as well as those of adversaries.

Dulat was a standout in the intelligence fraternity due to his penchant for engagement and dialogue over the ‘maar do goli salon ko’ approach. It was applied during his stint at Srinagar with the IB during the worst period that Kashmir went through and came to be known as the Dulat model.

Intelligence, he feels, dries up when there is coercion, though this did not apply during KPS Gill’s heavy-handed suppression of militancy in Punjab. Does it apply to Kashmir after revocation of Article 370 and the mass incarceration of almost its entire political leadership? The fact that he was called back, what appears to be to build bridges with Farooq Abdullah, would indicate that there would be no escape from dialogue unless the idea is to let the guns rule Kashmir ad infinitum. His continuing contacts with the Kashmiris tell him that this muscular policy is avalanching the Valley into radicalisation. Once, the boys fought for Azadi or for Pakistan. Today, they fight for Allah.

Synonymous with Kashmir, Dulat’s views today also need closer scrutiny on Pakistan. And why is it that there is aversion to engaging with Pakistani sleuths, he wonders. An almost certain walk-in Pakistani double agent was dismissed as “harami hai”. But these are the type of rascals we need, he points out.

The stint as RAW chief and an earlier posting in Nepal may have also helped crystalise this view. At that time, too junior to impose his operational methods, Dulat feels a coercive approach to Nepal has now erupted into the problem that New Delhi tries to douse.

While the Indians were always trying to tutor the Nepalese, their breathing over the Bhutanese too much led to the Doklam stand-off with China in 2017 where India chose to step in though Thimphu was already protesting to the Chinese. Today, the Chinese have built the road that was the bone of contention and also set up a village inside Bhutanese territory. “The old King was a sharp man and today his remarks have been prophetic,” recalls Dulat.

Article 370, he concedes and so do some of his separatist contacts, got eroded over time. But why deprive the Kashmiris of the lone fig leaf of dignity, he asks.

Having landed in Kashmir when militancy blew up, the killing of four IB officers in three weeks ushered the realisation that the gun is the most counterproductive means to an end. “If we have to die by the gun, why not talk?” he had mused.

If these views indicate a divergence with NSA Ajit Doval, as an intelligence operator he is unabashedly appreciative of his junior colleague’s skills, from Mizoram to Pakistan and Punjab.

Dwelling quite a bit on Doval’s career, Dulat provides a ring of authenticity to some of his intelligence coups but for some he prefers to quote from articles, perhaps due to the rules of secrecy. The admiration for Doval is only surpassed by his veneration of another Indian NSA, MK Narayanan, who felt Dulat was a good carrot to the current NSA’s stick.

A difficult transition as RAW chief is sketched with wide-eyed wonder, but Dulat was firm enough to stay involved with Kashmir even if it riled his batchmate and IB chief, Shyamal Dutta.

At an off-limits address by Prime Minister Modi at the RAW awards ceremony in 2021, a comment that stayed with Dulat was “goodwill banana bahut zaroori hai” (it is important to build goodwill). “That is what I tried to do in Kashmir. Perhaps other people have noted it,” he wistfully wonders. If they haven't, they would gain by doing so.