When, on the evening of May 14, a friend telephoned and informed me about the sad demise of Dr Subrahmanyam Chandrasekharan (Chandru to most of his intimate friends), I thought he had also fallen victim to the dreaded Covid, which had been claiming hundreds of lives every day. When I established contact with family members they told me he died of cardiac arrest. The only consolation being, instead of the authorities cremating the dead body, the family members could perform all religious rites according to family traditions.
As I was reflecting on the irreparable loss caused by Chandru’s death, the famous lines of John Donne came to my mind: “Death, be not proud, though some called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so … one short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more, Death, thou shall die”.
Chandru retired as Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat (RAW). He was in charge of India’s Sri Lanka operations for many years. He served the country with great distinction. A man of immense wit and wisdom, he made benign inputs into the making of India’s neighbourhood policy. After his retirement, he launched the South Asia Analysis Group in 1998, the web-based strategic think tank, and made it one of the foremost sources of information of the region under his dynamic leadership.
I count among my good friends many retired senior officials from RAW. I came to know most of them only after their retirement, when they came down to Chennai or Bengaluru from New Delhi and joined think tanks with which I was closely associated. They include Shri B Raman, R Swaminathan, S Gopal and D S Rajan. My frequent conversations and close interaction enabled me to have a better appreciation of India’s intelligence agencies and how they worked to promote India’s vital interests.
My first meeting with Chandru took place under strange circumstances. I had organized a national seminar on “Sri Lankan Crisis and India’s Response” at the Madras University in March 1991. Among those who participated in the Seminar were K P S Menon, former Foreign Secretary; Ambassador Thomas Abraham, who was Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka from 1978 to 1982; the TULF triumvirate (Amirtalingam, Sivasitambaram, and Sambanthan); S Sivanayagam, Chief of Tamil Information Centre; leading public figures and faculty, and students of Madras University. V D Chopra, editor of Patriot, who was in charge of Patriot Publishers agreed to publish the proceedings in a book form. When the manuscript was about to go to press, he informed me that a senior government official, involved closely with India’s Sri Lanka policy, has also agreed to contribute an essay. The book was published with a thought-provoking foreword by Ambassador M K Rasgotra, who was foreign secretary when New Delhi decided to pursue the mediatory-militant supportive policy.
A few weeks later a gentleman came to my room and introduced himself as Chandrasekharan. He told me that he had given an essay to Chopra to be included in my edited volume. Chandru, at that time, was a PhD scholar in the Department of Geography. He wanted to get acquainted with me. He had read my articles in newspapers and magazines.
What impressed me most about Chandru was that he was attired in simple clothes. He did not put on any airs generally associated with top echelons of Indian bureaucracy. And, above all, he shared valuable information because he was convinced that I would not speak or write about confidential matters. I began to write regularly for SAAG from its very inception. Our friendship got strengthened day by day. I was very happy when Chandru informed me that he was shifting residence to Chennai. Though the family moved to Chennai a few weeks ago, I could not meet them because of Covid.
My latest English book published last year, co-authored with Dr Ashik Bonofer and titled Haksar on India’s Sri Lanka Policy, is a “book on a book”, as Jairam Ramesh aptly put it in the launch function. It is based on the letters written by P N Haksar to Ambassador Thomas Abraham that are very critical of India’s Sri Lanka Policy. These are included in Jairam Ramesh’s scintillating book Intertwined Lives: P N Haksar and Indira Gandhi. To make the book interesting, I had provided background information on the issues raised by Haksar.
Since RAW was portrayed, on both sides of the Palk Strait, as the villain in the Sri Lankan tragedy, I showed the manuscript to Chandru. He provided me with vital information that enabled me to place the point of view of RAW too in the Sri Lankan tragedy. In that process, I could expose many falsehoods and lies propagated by the drummer boys of Prabhakaran and Anton Balsingham in the book War and Peace: Armed Struggle and Peace Efforts of Liberation Tigers. Chandru also wrote a critical review of the book in SAAG.
Two months ago, Chandru telephoned me and said, “Come home once normalcy returns. I shall give you a lot of materials on Sri Lanka that have not been used before.” I was very happy to hear those words. But God willed otherwise. Chandru was snatched away by the cruel hands of fate.
As I was writing this essay on my close association with Chandru, I realised I hardly knew anything about his family. Our conversation veered only around Sri Lanka. He has left a deep void in my life. The famous lines of Robert G Ingersoll, those lines that came to me with added poignancy on the morrow of my father’s death, are worth quoting: “The record of a generous life runs like a vine around the memory of our dead and every sweet, unselfish act is now a perfumed flower. Neither written word nor speech can express our love. There was no gentler, stronger, manlier man.”
V Suryanarayan
(Founding Director (Retd), Centre for South & Southeast Asian Studies, University of Madras)
(suryageeth@gmail.com)