The front-page article, "When KGB got cosy with BJP" (The Statesman, October 3), by Bhibhuti Bhusan Nandy, a retired RAW official, has kicked up dust that the media is coughing over. It accuses two anonymous but living leaders formerly of the Jana Sangh and now with the BJP of having received KGB largesse. Octogenarian Balraj Madhok, living in well-deserved obscurity, contacted by various media channels, obviously could not resist the temptation of limelight in the twilight of his life. He has identified those leaders as Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Nanaji Deshmukh - his old rivals in the erstwhile Jana Sangh, to whom he lost in the early 1970s in intra-party feud.

While one can dismiss Mr Madhok's rantings as that of a bad loser, Mr Nandy's accusations against the Jana Sangh leaders have no corroborative evidence. Now the KGB was not a bunch of vacuous idealists who would give penny without extracting a pennyworth. If it bankrolled the Congress ministers and the CPI leaders, it also implemented a pro-Russian Communist agenda in India. Mr Nandy correctly points out, "The KGB was not merely an espionage outfit, but the most powerful arm of the CPSU for implementing the policies of the state at home and abroad. And it was indeed a superb performance of KGB in India, a model of infiltration of a Third World Government and society."

Is there any evidence that the Jana Sangh, including its two leaders, did anything that was subservient to Russian agenda or anybody's agenda and against nation's interests? None. It's not impossible that during the Cold War, KGB may have made overtures towards some Jana Sangh leaders. Jana Sangh's electoral fortunes were on the rise in those days and it was logical for the foreign correspondents and diplomats to take interest in interacting with its leaders. It would have been ridiculous for a Jana Sanghi to run away from any foreigner fearing he was a KGB agent. The then Indian establishment had friendly ties with all East European countries and incestuous relations with the Soviet Union. New Delhi was swarming with KGB spies under the guise of writers, dramatists, ballet dancers, journalists, chess players, engineers, etc.

Mr Nandy's submissions reinforce rather than negate the nexus between the Congress and KGB on one hand, and KGB and the CPI on the other. He writes, "If IB archives were ever thrown open, the real magnitude of the KGB expenditure on agent-building and agent-running in India would be known." Who's afraid of the KGBwolves? The BJP has dared the UPA Government to bring out a White Paper on this subject. This White Paper should reveal not only the names of all persons who received money from KGB, but also from CIA, ISI, MI6, or any other foreign intelligence agency. It is only the Congress that is running away from having such a date with reality. Why?

Mr Nandy further writes that the KGB operatives met those two Jana Sanghis at two different places. One "masquerading as a journalist in Delhi regularly met one of them at the latter's house, always in small hours of the morning to avoid Intelligence Bureau (IB) surveillance." We have to conclude that the agent failed to avoid the notice of the IB because that was how Mr Nandy came to know of him. It seems he ruined himself by extra caution. He could have evaded notice by posing as a normal visitor during normal hours rather than making himself out of place. In fact, the proposition of a spy meeting his contact at these unearthly hours appears to be far-fetched and ludicrous.

Who was the principle opponent of Mrs Indira Gandhi's regime if not the Jana Sangh? Thus, the KGB was working to undermine and not sponsor Jana Sangh. It cultivated the Congress because it had the power and the CPI because it had the Leninist brain and worked in tandem with the Soviet imperialist designs. There was no reason to cultivate the Jana Sangh which had neither. Mr Vajpayee was the Foreign Minister in the short-lived Janata Party Government under Morarji Desai. But why did Mitrokhin not enunciate this when his discreet list spans from Nehruvian to Rajiv Gandhi's times? The only apparent reason is that he was not there at all. As for Nanaji Deshmukh, he refused to be a Minister although Morarji had offered him Cabinet rank. Nanaji was also known for his proximity to late Ramnath Goenka, whose Indian Express ran a campaign against Mrs Gandhi's tyranny and Rajiv Gandhi's deceptions, and paid a heavy price for its fearless brand of journalism.

The Jana Sangh always advocated a policy of equidistance from the USSR and the US. The Leftists had always been slandering the Vajpayee Government as an agent of America. Mr Vajpayee kicked off his Prime Ministership in 1998 with Pokhran tests. Did the US want us to go nuclear? Did it not apply pressure on every Prime Minister who aimed at India going nuclear? So did not Mr Vajpayee make himself unpopular with the US? He was driven by national interests rather than the influence of the CIA or KGB. One could catalogue Mr Vajpayee's successes and his failures. But it is ridiculous to call him a KGB or CIA agent. I am not saying this from an emotional point of view. It is the privilege of Congressmen like Mr Arjun Singh who said, "This is beyond imagination that a leader like Indira Gandhi would be influenced by such things. It is a malicious propaganda."

In fact, nowhere does Mr Nandy contradict Mitrokhin or challenge his validity. Attention also should be paid to Mitrokhin's affirmation that during 1975, a total of 10.6 million roubles (more than £10 million in then prevalent exchange rates) were spent by KGB on influence operations to support Mrs Gandhi and undermine her political opponents. KGB did not foresee the end of Emergency and the rise of Janata Government.

What Mr Nandy says is far from music to Congress's ears. It charges rather than exonerates the Congress and the Communists. I hope they would like to listen what another intelligence personnel of India had to say KGB's axis of evil with Congress. Malay Krishna Dhar, former IB director, in his book, Open Secrets: India's Intelligence Unveiled (Manas Publications, 2005) said that IB succeeded in "identifying four Union Ministers in Indira Gandhi's Cabinet and over two dozen MPs who were on KGB payroll".

Those who are dismissing Vasili Mitrokhin as a peddler of fiction might also want to listen Mr Oleg Kalugin, the erstwhile USSR's youngest general in foreign intelligence, who later became its chief, and is still alive. It was Mr Kalugnin who, when contacted by BBC, summed up India in the most demeaning phrase: "It seemed like the whole country was for sale."

He also said, "We had scores of sources through the Indian Government - in intelligence, counter-intelligence, the Defence and Foreign Ministries, and the police." He sums up that India became KGB's model for infiltration in Third World. It's not coincidental that that KGB residency in New Delhi was the largest outside Soviet Bloc. One of the KGB heads of political intelligence in Delhi, Mr Vyacheslav Trubnikov, went on to head Russian foreign intelligence, became a confidant of President Vladimir Putin and was appointed Russian Ambassador to Delhi last year.

Allegations of involvement of Mr Vajpayaee and Mr Deshmukh - and even more of the Jana Sangh - seem highly unconvincing. However, we would welcome the UPA to constitute an inquiry commission under any retired Chief Justice of India to bring out all the names associated with KGB scandal.

Courtesy: The Pioneer, October 13, 2005