The charge by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a former US ambassador in India, that the Congress under Indira Gandhi was a recipient of the CIA’s largesse is a reminder of the 1950s and ’60s when the American spooks cast a long shadow over the country. Apart from Kalimpong in north Bengal acquiring the distinction of being a spy town in the wake of the Chinese invasion, the American wife of the Chogyal of Sikkim was also tainted with the same brush. Since nearly all political moves, especially by the Right-wing outfits, were linked to the machinations of the US intelligence agency, Piloo Mody of the Swatantra Party wore a banner saying ‘I am a CIA agent’ on his way to Parliament.
What is surprising is that the most serious allegations about such links with the shadowy organisation in Langley, Virginia, have been about the then Left-wing Congress. It isn’t only about the period when Indira Gandhi was at the helm that such charges were levelled, among those who were directly named was Y B Chavan. All hell broke loose when a Bombay newspaper — as the city was known then — published the accusation, forcing the editor to resign. In contrast, the latest report has created no more than a faint ripple in political and media circles with the Congress dismissing it as unworthy of a rebuttal.
Arguably, Right-wing policies have gained such acceptability in recent years that a CIA connection is seen as a matter of little importance unlike the past when it raised the spectre of an American imperialist conspiracy. Even the communists have kept quiet, not even suggesting that the Leftist inclinations of the earlier Congress were a sham and that the party was always a Rightist one.
There may be another reason, however, why Moynihan’s ‘revelations’ are being largely ignored. As the documents from the Mitrokhin archives have shown, the CIA was not the only agency which was active in India, the KGB was no less so. What is more, the latter was not only suspected of aiding and abetting its ideological allies in the Indian communist parties, it was in touch with the ‘socialistic’ Congress as well. As a book on the cold war has revealed, the Soviets were miffed that the Congress not only accepted all the filthy lucre, but did not even return the suitcases! If true, the charge showed that the party did not let ideology come in the way of friendly assistance.
