| by B.Raman
( September 29, 2012, Chennai,
Sri Lanka Guardian) Brajesh Mishra, who was National Security Adviser to Shri
Atal Behari Vajpayee between November 1998 and May 2004, passed away on the
night of September28,2012. He was 84 and belonged to the 1951 batch of the
Indian Foreign Service.
2.He became famous in May 1970
when he was heading the Indian Embassy in Beijing as Charge d’Affaires. At the
traditional May Day function at Beijing, Mao Dzedong shook hands with
Mishra, conveyed his greetings to our
Prime Minister and President in that order and said: “We cannot go on
quarrelling like this. We must become friends again. We will become friends
again.”
3. Mishra sent a detailed report
on it to the Ministry of External Affairs. A few days later, an account of
Mao’s friendly references to India, which came almost eight years after the
Sino-Indian war of 1962, leaked out to the Indian media which added some masala
to it while flashing it, saying that Mao smiled at Mishra when he made his
observations. This was followed by feverish speculation regarding the significance
of Mao’s smile.
4. The truth was Mao never smiled
at Mishra when he made his observations, but “Mao’s famous smile” and its
significance became an exciting narrative in the history of India’s relations
with China and the role of Mishra in it. An authentic account of what happened
that day in Beijing was written on December 2,2009, for the web site of the
Chennai Centre For China Studies by Shri G.S.Iyer, who was then the only
Chinese-knowing member of the staff of the Indian Embassy in Beijing. He subsequently
became India’s Ambassador to Morocco and Mexico before retiring from the Indian
Foreign Service. Shri Iyer’s authentic account of the meeting is annexed.
5.Shri Mishra again hit the
headlines in the beginning of 1980. But under a different context. He had been
posted as India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York by
the Morarji Desai Government. He was occupying that post when the Soviet troops
invaded Afghanistan. There were reports that the Charan Singh Government, which
was then in office, had misgivings about the Soviet invasion and was
disinclined to support the Soviet action.
6.Indira Gandhi, who returned to
office as Prime Minister in January 1980, had Narasimha Rao sent to New York to
support the Soviet action. Mishra read out before the UN General Assembly a
prepared text not disapproving of the Soviet invasion. During his retirement
days, Mishra was reported to have told his close friends that he read out the
statement on orders, but was not in agreement with its text.
7. Shortly thereafter, he took
premature retirement from the Indian Foreign Service and joined the staff of
the UN Secretary-General. He left the job and returned to India in 1987 and
joined the BJP in 1991 to help it establish a Foreign Affairs Cell in its
headquarters. In that capacity, he used to advise BJP leaders on foreign policy
matters and assist them during their meetings with foreign dignitaries.
8.Mishra and Vajpayee came close
to each other during this period and Vajpayee developed immense trust in
Mishra’s judgement and advice. When Vajpayee took over as the Prime Minister in
March 1998, he appointed Brajesh Mishra as the Principal Secretary to the Prime
Minister. In that capacity, he headed the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and
co-ordinated its functioning.
9. Mishra played an important
role in the deliberations that preceded the decision of Vajpayee to authorise
India’s nuclear tests of May 1998. The credit for maintaining the secrecy of
the decision and of the preparations for the tests should go to the political
leaders of the BJP who were involved in the decision, Mishra who supervised the
execution of the decision and Dr.Abdul Kalam and his scientists who carried it
out.
10. The USA’s Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) was totally taken by surprise by the tests, which led
to considerable friction in India’s relations inter alia with the US and China.
Mishra committed a major faux pas while drafting a letter from Vajpayee to then
President Bill Clinton explaining why India carried out the tests. The letter
referred to India’s fears of a possible threat from China as a reason for the
decision. The State Department mischievously leaked that letter to the US
media, thereby adding to the friction between India and China.
11.It spoke well of the
diplomatic skills of Mishra and the pragmatism of Beijing that they did not
allow this aggravation of friction to permanently damage the bilateral
relations.
12.Shortly after the nuclear
tests, Vajpayee, on the recommendation of a three-member committee on national
security headed by Shri K.C.Pant, decided to revamp the national security
infrastructure. As part of this revamp, a post of National Security Adviser
(NSA) was created. The National Security Council (NSC) created by V.P.Singh,
which had become dormant, was revived and a National Security Council
Secretariat and a National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) of non-Governmental
advisers were set up.
13. Vajpayee asked Mishra to hold
additional charge as the NSA. Thus, he wore two hats----as the Principal
Secretary to the PM and as his NSA. K.Subramanyam, the strategic affairs
expert, was appointed the first Convenor of the NSAB.
14. Even at that time, questions
were raised by some regarding the wisdom of one individual, however capable,
wearing both these hats. It was reported that the Pant Committee was in favour
of an independent NSA. So was K.Subramanyam, who, on two occasions, had
publicly expressed his misgivings about combining the two posts of Principal
Secretary to the PM and NSA. He felt that as the Principal Secretary, Mishra
would be so preoccupied with running the PMO that he would not be able to
devote adequate attention to his job as the NSA.
15. Mishra strongly felt that if
the same officer held both the posts, he could prevent conflicting advice on
national security matters reaching the PM. During this period, I had written a
number of articles stressing the need for the revival of the covert action capability of the R&AW that had been
downgraded by Shri I.JK.Gujral when he was the Prime Minister in 1997.Mishra,
who had read these articles, sent word to me through his office that I should
call on him during one of my visits to New Delhi.
16. I did so in 1999. He referred
to what I had been writing on the need for the revival of the covert action
capability and said: “ You don’t have to convince me. I was convinced long
before you were, but the Prime Minister is not in favour of it. We have to go
by his wishes.”
17. Subsequently, I had occasion
to meet him three times. The first occasion was alone in his office. On his
own, he referred to criticisms being made about Shri Vajpayee’s decision to ask
him to hold additional charge as the NSA and said: “ I do not want any
confusion in the advice reaching the PM on national security matters. It is
better that all advice on national security goes to the Prime Minister from
this office.” He was sitting in his office as the Principal Secretary to the
PM.
18. My next meeting with him was as a member of the Special Task Force for
the Revamp of the Intelligence Apparatus headed by Shri G.C.Saxena, former
chief of the R&AW and then Governor of J&K. He was asked by one of the
members about his views regarding the performance of the Intelligence Bureau
(IB) and the R&AW.
19.He replied: “ I do not see all
the reports of the IB. Hence, I cannot comment on its performance. I see all
the reports of the R&AW, which works directly under me. When I was in the
IFS, I used to think negatively of the R&AW. Now I think positively of it. I am regularly seeing its
work and capabilities. It has been doing very well.”
20. His remarks were an indirect
confirmation of the speculation then circulating in New Delhi that Shri
L.K.Advani, the then Home Minister, had kept him out of any active role in
supervising the performance of the IB.
21.My fourth meeting with him was
just before the elections of 2004. There was some criticism in sections of the
media about his role as the NSA. It was alleged that he had not implemented
many of the important recommendations made by the various task forces on
national security set up by the Vajpayee Government after the Kargil conflict
of 1999.
22. He had invited some of us for
a briefing on the recommendations that had already been implemented. The
briefing was given by the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS). He
wanted us in our individual capacities to explain to the media and others
regarding the action already taken by the Government.
23. Some of the recommendations
of the G.C.Saxena Task Force had related to the State Police and the
coordination between the central intelligence agencies and the State Police.
Sections of the media were speculating regarding these recommendations. Some
State police officers had contacted me and said that the Government of India
had not kept the State Governments in the picture regarding these
recommendations. I mentioned this to Mishra at this meeting.
24. Mishra replied: “ Raman, you
don’t know what problems I have been having sorting out the quarrels among the central agencies regarding the
implementation. Let me sort them out first. I will then sort out the
recommendations relating to the State Police.”
25.I consider the brilliant manner
in which Mishra handled the diplomatic consequences of the nuclear tests as his
greatest achievement as the NSA. The Clinton Administration was very petulant.
China was furious. The European Union was not very sympathetic. Only Russia was
sympathetic. Many of us feared that India would be confined to the diplomatic
dog house.
26. The fact that India was not
and that our relations with these
countries again improved spoke very highly of the way Mishra handled the
sequel. He also saw to it that a Nuclear Doctrine was drafted, approved and put
in place within a year of the tests.
27. He travelled a lot in this
connection as a secret emissary of Vajpayee and I was given to understand that
the R&AW played an important role in assisting him through its web of
liaison relations with the countries which were angry with India over the
nuclear tests. I had personally heard Mishra pay high tributes to the
assistance from the R&AW in this regard.
28. He handled very creditably
the sequel to the Kargil conflict with Pakistan and the sequel to the attack on
the Indian Parliament. However, there was some criticism---not invalid in my
view--- of what was seen by many as his mishandling of the Kandahar hijacking
and the case of Major Rabinder Singh, the CIA’s mole in the R&AW, who
managed to escape to the US in 2004.
29. He was allegedly totally
unaware of the details of the crisis management drill to deal with hijackings
that had been laid down in the 1980s when Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were
Prime Ministers. It was alleged by people in New Delhi, who were not ill
disposed to Mishra, that he was confused and did not know how to handle the
situation. As a result, the hijacked plane managed to take off from Amritsar
airport, leave the Indian airspace and reach Kandahar. We lost control of the
situation and had no other option but to concede the demands of the hijackers.
30. There was an inexcusable
delay on the part of the R&AW in alerting Mishra that Rabinder Singh was
suspected of working as a CIA mole and was under surveillance. Initially, the
R&AW kept not only Mishra, but also the IB in the dark. In fact, the moment
they developed suspicion about Rabinder Singh, the R&AW should have alerted
the IB and asked it to mount a surveillance on him.
31.When the case was belatedly
brought to the notice of Mishra, one would have expected him to lose his temper
for not keeping him informed and order that the surveillance be handed over to
the IB. He did not do anything of the sort. He seemed to have gone along with
the R&AW’s decision to keep the IB in the dark and advised the R&AW to
be discreet in its surveillance since he was worried that any embarrassment
could damage his efforts to develop a strategic partnership with the US.
32. There is no other way of
explaining his silence on the R&AW keeping the IB in the dark except to
believe that he did not want Shri Advani to prematurely know about it lest he
complicate matters. Those were the months before the 2004 elections when
Mishra’s style of national security management had started coming under
criticism from some of his usual detractors as well as others. He apparently
did not want any premature publicity to add to his difficulties.
33. To quote Shri Amar Bhushan,
the then head of counter-intelligence and security in the R&AW, who had
written an account of the case under the cover of a fiction titled “Escape To
Nowhere” : “ Coming from a diplomatic background, he (NSA) is naturally
apprehensive of the adverse impact of the investigation on bilateral relations.
He may be wondering why we make such a fuss about the restrictive security when
senior officers routinely talk and exchange ideas among themselves.”
34. Amar Bhushan also quotes
C.D.Sahay, the then head of the R&AW, as telling him after a meeting with
Mishra: “ He thinks that the case has been badly handled and its gravity blown
out of proportion. He is of the view that we should have dealt with the case
administratively as soon as we knew that he (Rabinder) was making conscious
efforts to elicit unauthorised information from his colleagues.”
35.Right from the beginning since
Mishra took over as the NSA, there was an impression that he
was feeling out of depth in internal security matters. He hardly had any
influence over the State Governments. His word and advice carried little weight in the State corridors
of decision-making.
36.R.N.Kao, who shared this
impression, had suggested to Shri Vajpayee the creation of a post of Deputy
National Security Adviser under Mishra to be filled up by an IAS or IPS officer
well-versed in internal security management. According to Kao, Shri Vajpayee
appeared to be amenable to accepting the idea. By the time the post was
created, Kao was dead. It was filled by another retired IFS officer.
37. There was another reason why
Mishra was weak in internal security management. Shri Advani, who looked upon
himself as the internal security Czar, was disinclined to give Mishra any
substantive role in it.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd),
Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director,
Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For
China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com
Twitter @SORBONNE75)
ANNEXURE
MAO’S SMILE REVISITED: SOME
OBSERVATIONS
G.S.Iyer, C3S Paper No.413 dated
December 2, 2009
The meeting at the Tiananmen
rostrum of Mao Dzedong with Mr Brajesh Mishra, the then Indian Charge
d’affaires in our Embassy in Peking (as it was called then) on May 1, 1970 is
an important historical moment in Indian diplomatic history worthy of correct recollection
and recording. The meeting came as the climax of a series of signals from India
in the previous years which were being responded to, and was a deliberate and
conscious move on the part of the Chinese.
I was working in the Embassy in
Peking and was the only Chinese speaking Foreign Service officer of the mission
from July 1968, when I succeeded Mr Vinod Khanna, till summer of 1970 when Mr
Vijay Nambiar joined the mission — the receiving end of ‘the receiving end’ so
to say. I had also accompanied Mr Mishra for some of the meetings with the
Chinese Foreign Office in 1970 subsequent to the exchange on the Tiananmen
rostrum. With this background, I believe I have some observations to offer on
the history of this event.
Despite various signals from our
side since 1967, as far as I can recall, there was not much of a chance for a
dialogue between the Embassy and the Chinese Foreign Ministry in 1969. I can
recollect only two calls by the Head of the Mission in 1969, the initial
courtesy visit and the second to protest a particularly vicious attack on Mrs
Indira Gandhi in the Xinhua bulletin. Further, in late April 1969, Mr Mishra
walked out of a reception given by Zhou Enlai in honour of Air Marshal Nur
Khan, the No. 2 in the ruling Pakistani military junta to protest the standard
Chinese remark about supporting the people of Jammu and Kashmir in their
‘struggle for self-determination’. This was, in a way, a hardening of our line
as these remarks were regularly uttered by the Chinese hosts at all receptions
and dinners in honour of visiting Pakistani leaders and no Indian Head of
Mission had walked out of any Chinese reception between 1962 and 1969 in
response to such remarks. Perhaps they should have. The volume and shrillness
of propaganda by the Chinese official media against India had only increased in
1969. Indira Gandhi whose name is written with Chinese characters Yingdila
Gandi was lampooned in the People’s Daily as Meidila (‘pulled about by American
imperialism’)! This was when we were one of the few governments to speak
publicly against the Vietnam war even to our detriment. That was the year the
centenary of the Mahatma’s birth was celebrated with solemnity and reverence
globally. The only country that ignored that event entirely was China. The
Chinese also made a wholesale boycott of the Gandhi Centenary function held in
the Embassy on October 2, 1969, without even a token representation. (The
Pakistani mission, which obviously knew what the Chinese planned to do sent a
Third Secretary, their juniormost diplomat to the function, the only mission
not represented by the Ambassador—surely a most disgraceful behaviour.) 1969
was also the year of the Naxalbari events which I will come back to later. Thus
1969 was a very bad year for India-China relations despite some serious efforts
by us to get some movement.
A few days before the May Day of
1970, the Chinese Foreign Office called the Embassy to go over and collect the
invitation cards for the event which was to take place in the evening. I went
to pick up the invitations. In those days before China’s recklessly polluting
industrialization, May Day could be very cold and the Foreign Office
specifically asked us to bring overcoats while watching the function from the
steps facing the Tiananmen! Two sets of cards were handed over to me, one for
Mr. and Mrs. Mishra to go up the rostrum from where Mao and the other leaders
would watch the show, and another for the other diplomats of the embassy to
watch from the steps below.
Quite characteristically, the
immediate question from Mr. Mishra on my handing over his card was when such an
arrangement had occurred earlier. I had the answer ready. I replied promptly
that it was on the May Day of 1967 when Mao and several other leaders walked
down the ranks of Heads of Missions and shook hands with everybody. Therefore
another handshaking was on the cards and both the Mission and Delhi knew what
could be expected.
From our perch down below in the
steps, we were watching the gradual progress of Mao down the line and noticed
his pausing occasionally to talk to somebody or the other but could not make
out who they were, even with the help of binoculars. But we knew that our
Charge had a chance to meet Mao. Early the next day I knew it was more than
that because Mr. Mishra had sent a report of the meeting to the Government on
his return from the function. As soon as I reached the Embassy, he called me
and gave me the report to read. It was a stunning moment for a young man barely
four years into his profession to read the words spoken by one of the giants of
that century about relations with his country. Here was Mao saying ‘We cannot
go on quarrelling like this. We must become friends again. We will become
friends again.’
There was much other matter of
interest that day. China had launched a satellite a week earlier; and it was
inevitable that every ambassador would say his word of congratulation to Mao.
The British Charge stood to the right of Mr. Mishra and he too did his bit. Mao
acknowledged the congratulations and responded, “We also wish Great Britain
great technological successes”, a response which left Mr. Denson and his
younger colleagues steaming and furious for many many days. They read it
correctly as a dig at UK not being the only major power with no satellite
program. Mao also conveyed his greetings to our ‘Prime Minister and President’
conscious of the relative importance of the two leaders in our system of
politics. It also showed that Mao was alert and had his wit and capacity for
repartee intact. Mao also talked at some length to the Soviet Charge. He held
the hands of the Czechoslovak ambassador for an inordinately long time and
shook it without saying anything, almost as if he was commiserating with the
plight of that hapless country invaded by their allies only a few months
earlier!
Mr. Mishra asked for instructions
on follow up conversations, but even before they arrived, the story of the
meeting was leaked to the Indian press in a twisted and trivialised way, that
Mao smiled at Mishra during the May Day event. There was no need to leak that
story at all, and if it was thought important to share it with the people of
our country, an exact account was what our people were entitled to hear.
Matters got only worse when a question was asked in the Parliament about the
‘smile’ and it was replied to from the government side that we will not be
taken in by a mere smile. This distorted version was surely unfair both to the
people of our country who our Government is answerable to and to China who
valued and respected the fact that something very important was being conveyed
at the level of their Chairman. We misled the Indian people and deeply offended
and upset the Chinese government in one stroke – another remarkable action of
shooting at our own feet in a bit of diplomatic and public relations
hamhandedness of which we have more than enough examples in India.
The exchange between Mao and
Brajesh Mishra was followed by some exploratory conversations with the Asia
Department of the Chinese Foreign Office. The Director who received Mr. Mishra
was Yang Kungsu who had then been resurrected from the wherever he was
consigned during the Cultural Revolution. Though known as a Tibet expert, he
was more than that and was the counterpart of Shri J.S.Mehta in the joint
committee of officials which met in 1960 and agreed to disagree of the report
to be submitted to the two governments on solving the border question. The
point about his reemergence in the wake of the words of Mao was precisely that
an expert on the border was brought in for the dialogue. The dialogue did go on
through 1970 and, as with various other initiatives earlier and later, fell
victim to non-bilateral developments, because the Chinese let it peter out
after the arrest of Sheikh Mujib and the beginning of the liberation struggle
in Bangladesh where the Chinese notoriously supported Pakistan and opposed
self-determination of Bengali people.
What exactly did Mao say? He
said, “We cannot go on quarrelling like this. We must become friends again. We
will become friends again.” That these are the exact words can be confirmed
because these were repeated by Yang Kungsu in Chinese in a meeting with Shri
Mishra. I heard Yang Kungsu quote Mao because I was present in the meeting.
There is no way anybody could quote Mao other than exactly. In any case, Yang
would have been a party to the preparation of words to be spoken by Mao on that
occasion. The Chinese words are, ‘Women puhui zheiyang chaoxiaqu. Women yingai
yao zuo pengyu. Women yiding zuo pengyu’, confirming that it was an emphatic
call to end the mutual distrust.
Some Chinese scholars have
claimed recently that Mao also said “Indian nation is a great nation. Indian
people are a great people” to Shri Mishra. I do not think so. Let me explain.
These sentences came to our attention as a quote from Mao in 1969 in an article
in the People’s Daily titled ‘Spring Thunder over India’ which was a review of
the Naxalite movement, claiming how that movement was overwhelming the
‘reactionary Indian authorities under the inspiration of Chairman Mao’s
teachings’. It was obligatory for all articles in newspapers to have a quote
from Mao. This article concluded with the quote above and an exhortation to the
‘Indian people’ to seize power Maoist style. I made a diligent but unsuccessful
search for the quote in the Collected Works of Chairman Mao. Several weeks
later, while rummaging through old bound magazines in the embassy basement I
discovered a report in an English publication on the celebration of our
Republic Day by the embassy in 1951. Mao, who was the President of the country,
broke protocol and attended the reception given by Ambassador Raghavan and personally
replied to the toast with the words, ‘Indian nation is a great nation and
Indian people are a great people’ and proceeded to drink to the health of
President Rajendra Prasad and prosperity of India. Isn’t it remarkable that
this lone reference to India to fall from the lips of Mao was preserved and
quoted by the People’s Daily 18 years later to urge the overthrow of the
constitutional government of the very republic Mao was originally toasting! It
is even more remarkable that the words used in the context of a report on
Naxalite violence are now quoted as a gesture from Mao!
It also shows beyond doubt that
Mao did not use these words in his exchange with Brajesh Mishra. Mao really did
not need to quote himself; a scholar, writer and poet of his calibre was not
that wanting in words as to repeat himself. That is why I believe he did not
say them to Shri Mishra in 1970. The Chinese scholars rewriting the quote
should also make up their mind which context of the quote they wish to remember
today and in the future.
Why the initiative from China at
the level of Mao at that moment of time? By 1969, China was amply encircled and
had the desperate need to break out of the situation in which they could only
count on the ilks of Albania and Pakistan as friends. There was a skirmish
along the Sino-Soviet border and there were ominous noises coming from Moscow
about an attack on Chinese nuclear facilities, what the American media
described then in the gruesome phrase, nuclear castration. We forget now that
China was the archetypical destabilizing power then, verbally and materially
supporting the overthrow of every established government in South East Asia and
had grievously wounded by the failure of the attempted coup in Indonesia and
the attack on the Chinese community in the aftermath. The Vietnam war was not
ending, which meant they had to find a new way of coping with the USA, other
than an open ended confrontation. In late 1969, the contacts between China and
the USA resumed in Warsaw. The American table tennis team came to China in
1970, roughly at the same time Mao spoke to us. It was all parts of a plan to
break the encirclement.
The arrest of Sheikh Mujib and
the Chinese decision to go over to the side of Pakistan in violation of all
their professed ideological principles ended forward movement in the initiative
with India. On the other hand, the very same event helped US-China relations
move forward. Could China have taken a different position on Bangladesh? That
they did not do so despite the high level investment in improvement in
relations with India an year earlier could be proof of both the weight of
Pakistan in China’s subcontinent diplomacy and the limits of unorthodox
initiatives when faced with entrenched habits of thought and behavior.
(The writer, Mr G.S.Iyer, Indian
Foreign Service -Retired, was formerly India’s Ambassador to Morocco and
Mexico. He also held senior positions in Indian missions in Beijing and
Tokyo.Email:sankaran61@yahoo.com)
 Brajesh Mishra, who was National Security Adviser to Shri Atal Be...){kind=link}