The bumbling havaldar of Mumbai films, who chases the wrong man and slips on a banana peel in the process, seems to have a comic counterpart in the Intelligence Bureau. Some months ago, this newspaper caught the IB reading letters of private citizens. Now it has been discovered writing letters to newspapers in the names of private citizens. Strange, indeed, are the ways of the country's supersleuths. When issues that need the Bureau's snooping skills remain unresolved, the vexed Purulia arms dropping case is a good example, it seems to be spending an inordinate amount of time and energy in crafting exquisite epistles (in triplicate) to sundry editors. It can, of course, be argued that moulding the minds of opinion-makers is one of the legitimate activities of any respectable intelligence agency. In his recent autobiography, A Spy for All Seasons: My Life in the CIA, Duanne Clarridge, who happened to be posted in India, reveals how he worked long and hard to counter the perceived propaganda efforts of publications alleged to have been close to Moscow and Beijing. In one instance, he claims to have undermined a Left-oriented state government by getting a pro-Beijing newspaper to become even more virulently radical in its attacks on it.

Clarridge and the US, no doubt, justified such actions on the grounds that it was protecting the world from communism in those shadowy days of the Cold War. The IB, too, can claim that it writes these letters to the editor to protect India's national security concerns. But ``national security'' is an umbrella term that is open to a wide range of interpretations and is, therefore, liable to be misused. Certainly, there is something distinctly Orwellian in the names of ordinary citizens being hijacked without their knowledge for purposes of lending authenticity to the letters the IB wrote.

Secrecy is essential for effective espionage. But it is precisely because such institutions function away from the public gaze that they sometimes violate established norms. In fact, no one is more conscious of this than IB personnel themselves. They often don't know whom they are to address their grievances and insecurities to. There have been very few attempts to periodically assess this institution and finetune its orientation to the changing security requirements of the nation. There have been even fewer attempts to let in some light into its dark corridors. When B.N. Mullick, the man who served as director of the Bureau the longest, came out with his memoirs, it was roundly condemned. A book that should have caused some debate and discussion only resulted in the shroud of secrecy being drawn even more tightly around the IB. Ironically, such inordinate discretion does not lend efficiency to its functioning, rather it lays it open to political manipulation. The manner in which the IB came to be misused by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during the Emergency for her own political ends should have served as a constant reminder that such institutions cannot function as extra-constitutional powers. The IB's letter-writing activities indicate that it has not learnt this lesson.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.