RAW WOUND

The leaking of the "interim report" of Justice M.C. Jain, who constituted the one-man commission to investigate the death of Rajiv Gandhi, has suddenly changed the course of South Asian politics. Even though it is by all accounts a document of mediocre investigative methodology, Jain´s opus brought about the fall of the Gujral government and splattered New Delhi´s relationship with Colombo and Kathmandu..The leaking of the "interim report" of Justice M.C. Jain, who constituted the one-man commission to investigate the death of Rajiv Gandhi, has suddenly changed the course of South Asian politics. Even though it is by all accounts a document of mediocre investigative methodology, Jain´s opus brought about the fall of the Gujral government and splattered New Delhi´s relationship with Colombo and Kathmandu..The Jain report recklessly revealed privileged information that would otherwise be the most highly guarded of state secrets. Whether in providing details of VVIP security procedures or releasing affidavits of former prime ministers and police department alike, what Jain delivered was a journalist´s bonanza and a diplomat´s nightmare..In investigating an assassination of unparalleled political import regionally, there was a lackadaisical attitude towards investigative procedures and a loose pen that seemed to want to pass comment on anything that crossed its path. When Jain is not casting aspersions on the entire Tamil population and its "anti-national character", he is repeating rambling paeans to Rajiv Gandhi, or making available piles of reports on the workings of the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). One wonders at the state of affairs in the Indian judiciary, of which retired Justice Jain must be a quality product for having been given the job back in 1991 by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao..As far as India´s neighbours are concerned, Jain´s volubility extended to making reference to an R&AW letter citing "unverified information" that Queen Aishwarya of Nepal had asked a courtier general of King Birendra "to arrange for the assassination of Shri Rajiv Gandhi…(for which) Rs 10 crore would be made available." Also included in the report are said to be the drunken utterances of a Nepali policeman confirming the matter..In Kathmandu, the report brought unwarranted titillation to some who had occasion once again to relive the dying days of the Panchayat system eight years ago when Queen Aishwarya had garnered a very poor image. A good part of the polity, however, immediately erupted in reaction against what was seen as a deliberate attempt to tar the royal family..The Nepali foreign ministry was on the mark when it lambasted "the malicious and irresponsible act of outright misinformation on the part of an agency of the Government of India" (i.e., R&AW). The reaction from Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa´s office, however, missed the point, for it condemned not the very presence and snooping by R&AW but lashed out at India Today, which had carried a piece criticising the report for "the malicious act of publishing such a baseless, fictitious and misleading news report…" This and other remonstrations against the magazine were quite misplaced, for the article in question was one long criticism of the ham-handedness involved in the writing of the report..The Indian government´s reaction was a masterful example of word wizardry: "Government has seen an article in a leading Indian weekly on the (Jain Report) which contains references to reports casting aspersions of a very serious nature on Their Majesties the King and the Queen of Nepal. These reports are groundless and misguided. Government regrets that such aspersions have been made and dissociates itself from these reports.".The quick and contrite damage-control exercise doused the flames of passion immediately and even King Birendra seemed mollified, for after first refusing permission he allowed the Nepali Army Chief to travel to an official function in Dehra Dun at the invitation of his Indian counterpart..Onward to Colombo, where there was a certain amount of barely concealed glee that New Delhi finally had its comeuppance for mischief done, even if more than a decade late. For Jain, in his zeal to disclose anything and everything, had confirmed the well-known ´secret´ that Indira Gandhi had started the support for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, and that Rajiv Gandhi too had been party to it when his turn came. Affidavits from former Prime Minister V.P. Singh confirmed that "the first batch of training of militants was done in 1983 under the Congress government…Then in 1984 weapons were given to all the militants." The judge also included communication from the Tamil Nadu police naming the six camps run by the LTTE in five districts of the Indian state..There is much more on Sri Lanka and quite a few ad hominem attacks on Tamil politicians and parties of India, but what is interesting in sharp contrast to the bedlam that briefly engulfed Nepal is that Colombo´s reaction to the Jain report was muted. No notes verbale were delivered to the Indian High Commissioner´s portico in Colombo. For all the import of what has been revealed – far more serious than the unsubstantiated aspersions on the Nepali queen – the Lankan press did not seem to go to town on the matter..In all this, one agency whose ´cover´ is blown is the Research and Analysis Wing, New Delhi´s spook agency that is active within India and in neighbouring countries. Justice Jain takes great pains in detailing the R&AW´s activism in Sri Lanka..In Nepal, the open disclosure of R&AW activity in the country was glanced over by Nepali commentators, who seem to take it for granted that the agency operates in Nepal. It required Ashok K. Mehta, a former soldier in the Indian Army who knows Nepal well, to write in The Indian Express that, "The Jain Commission report is quite preposterous…Anyone with the foggiest idea of how R&AW operatives work, especially the low grade ones in Nepal, would have laughed at this report…"