It is shocking that Mrs. Gandhi should have lent credence to the charge that an unnamed cabinet colleague in 1971 was in touch with the CIA and that he had informed it of a possible Indian attack on Pakistan. She can claim that she has done no more than invite attention to what Mr. Kissinger told her and what an American then in India has written. But that cannot absolve her of responsibility in the matter. Several points are pertinent in this connection. Indirectly, the former Prime Minister has confirmed that she was planning to attack Pakistan and that if President Yahya Khan had not obliged her by invading this country on December 4, she would have gone ahead with her plan. And if this is so, it becomes difficult to repudiate Mr. Henry Kissinger’s view that if Mrs. Gandhi had not been restrained by the US through on the one hand the display of its power (a task force was sent into the Bay of Bengal) and through pressure on the Soviet Union on the other, she would not have been content with the liberation of Bangladesh and would have gone ahead to press the attack in West Pakistan as well. As a former Prime Minister in charge of the country’s affairs during that critical year, Mrs. Gandhi should not have provided grist to the propaganda mills of its and her opponents abroad.
Even more pertinent in the present context is the fact that what Mr. Thomas Power is said to have written in his book “Men Who Keep Secrets” is not new. The well-known American columnist, Mr. Jack Anderson, had got hold of the details of discussions in the US national security council in 1971 and published them. And these contained the US claim that it had its source of information in the Indian cabinet. Mrs. Gandhi was Prime Minister for well over five years after that and as such had ample time and opportunity to have the claim investigated and disposed of one way or the other. If she did get it probed and found it accurate, she should have made it public and taken action against the individual in question. If she either found the claim wrong or chose to ignore it, she should not have raked it up now. The people have a right to expect a high standard of public morality from her, especially when she herself has been a victim of a campaign of vilification for two and a half years. But while Mrs. Gandhi has been less than responsible, the caretaker government is not behaving any better. The minister of external affairs, Mr. SN Mishra, has used the official machinery to claim that the government will “mobilize its investigation resources” to find out the truth. If he was serious and felt that he had the necessary time and resources, he could have gone about the task quietly. Apparently he, too, wants to extract electoral advantage out of the episode. For he must know that such vague charges are not easy to confirm or repudiate. He must also know that such charges can only muddy the waters of Indian politics which, as it is, are none too clear.
The Times of India, 14 November 1979