Memoirs that Record History

Mohan Guruswamy

Amemoir is described as "a collection of memories that an individual writes about moments or events, both public or private, that took place in the subject's life". Such memoirs can be that of a lifetime or recollected specifics of a specific event or episode of importance. A biography or autobiography tells the story "of a life", while a memoir often tells "a story or stories from a life". David Ben Gurion, Israel's founding father said : "Anyone who believes you cannot change history has never tried to write his memoirs".

One of the best memoirs this writer has read is Robert Kennedy's insider view of the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 when the USA and USSR came eyeball to eyeball with their nuclear arms unsheathed. In this unique account, he describes each of the participants during the sometimes hour-to-hour negotiations, with particular attention to the actions and views of his brother, President John F Kennedy. Do Indians have any memoirs like this about India's recent confrontations with Pakistan at Kargil and 26/11? Sadly it's a big NO.

Its ironical that in a country with a long history and an all pervasive imprint of the government on the everyday lives of people, so little is recorded and hence known about how the state actually functions. Whatever people know about their past is mostly derived from the recordings of foreign travellers like Xuanzhang, Faxian, Ibn Batuta or Fernao Nunez or by the intellectual curiosity and perspicacity of British administrators, archeologists and scholars who recreated India's history for Indians and the world at large. It is not surprising that India's histories and mythologies intermingle and what people would like to believe is considered to be their history.

Indian public servants are mostly known for their loquaciousness after they demit office but very few actually pen their thoughts. Writing seems to come to them with some difficulty as it requires clarity of mind, an ability to articulate, accuracy and honesty, and above all leaves a trail. What people mostly get from them in seminar rooms all over Delhi and elsewhere are oral retellings and their vital role or advantage positions when historical events were unfolding. Like all oral history these get embellished with every retelling and retelling.

India has made lifetime course choices and lived through tumultuous times, but very little is known about how choices, such as central planning, sates re-organisation, structure of government and even matters like those pertaining to external relations with China and Pakistan, the Cold War were made. People never hear about the processes and the exchanges involved. People ascribe the Five Year Plans to Jawaharlal Nehru and his interest in Marxism. But, there must have been discussions and internal processes, but of these Indians know very little. What they mostly know about two major foreign bugbears, China and Pakistan, is more derived from foreign writers and Indian military narrators.

There is no political and bureaucratic insider versions to give a more all round perspective. Military men are apt to write more often, but more often than not their writings tend to exculpations or embellishments of their roles in recent events. Thus there are many such books not only on the l962, 1965 and 1971 wars but also on more recent conflicts like the Siachen and Kargil wars. But even they steer clear of the less glorious wars in Nagaland, Mizoram, Jammu and Kashmir and Srilanka. This is unfortunate because for the best accout of the  Kargil war people have to rely on a foreigner’s account : "Airpower at 18000" : The Indian Air Force in the Kargil War" by Ben Lambeth of Rand Corporation published as a monograph by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC.

So, it is very exciting to read Shivshankar Menon's "Choices : Inside the Making of India's Foreign Policy". He was indeed, not just inside India's foreign policy making structure for a good part of his distinguished career in the Indian Foreign Service, he was at the heart of it for almost a decade as the Foreign Secretary and the National Security Advisor. The fritter of excitement didn't last long for the book is not so much of an account of policy making, but a set of brilliant and masterful essays on the six major foreign policy issues of his tenure. The origins and even some of the conclusions of these issues are well known. These essays are large sweeps of historical issues from a high perch, but Menon gives away little.

What for instance happened in the PMO when the Pakistani terrorists struck Bombay on November 26, 2008 in a daring and brazen attack which took the lives of 166 people in a few frenzied hours, and then held on to India's most famous luxury hotel, the Taj Mahal, for three long days as the world watched the helplessness and even ineptness of India's security forces in hunting down the last holdouts. 26/11 became India's 9/11.

But was this ever discussed in a formal way and what were the military's views on this? Nobody gets any sense of what exactly transpired, maybe out of his sense of loyalty to Manmohan Singh or because of the restrictions placed by the Official Secrets Act of 1923 and the oath of secrecy. Unlike one other who served in the Singh PMO, Menon is a gentleman and by nature extremely reticent. Both very admirable qualities and for which he is held in high esteem. Understandably the other fellow's books have sold many times more.

The only account people have of this, and that too a very partial account, is from a report of the Indian Express, which doesn't show the Indian security establishment in good light. This report states that when retaliatory options were considered, the Army asked for three weeks time for a strike, the IAF said it didn't have any coordinates for surgical strike targets from RAW and the silent service kept silent as the terrorists slipped in through their exercise area. The PM seemed only to want an assurance that it will not escalate into a Pakistani nuclear attack. Since no assurances were forthcoming to do nothing was the preferred option. How far this is true is anybody's guess? But Menon could have given readers details of the options discussed as he was there. But he doesn't state who played with what bat?

Some years ago appeared the memoirs of Justice Pingle Jaganmohan Reddy ""Down Memory Lane". It was a badly printed book at the Secunderabad Club Library but a superb travel account down time. It described in detail the Hyderabad he grew up in and the Hyderabad state where he began his career. The judge not only described people and events of the time as he saw them, but also filled the reader with local colour and flavours. This is the kind of book every important person who holds high office must write. Almost every page was a picture painted with a fine brush. Reading it one almost lived those times. It was not self serving nor was there any self glorification. Less distinguished persons who have held high office have also written but more out of vanity than to leave a record of the times and their perceptions of them.

mohanguru@gmail.com

Frontier
Vol. 50, No.31, Feb 4 - 10, 2017