Chapter 116: To Integrate and Evolve

United States Embassy, Grosvenor Square

The same evening

Lewis Douglas, the American Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, was a tall, courtly Arizonan with a stiff leg and a courteous manner that did not conceal a keen intelligence. He received Ram in his private study, a book-lined room overlooking the square, and poured two small glasses of bourbon from a decanter on the sideboard.

"Prime Minister, I will be frank. The Secretary of State is deeply uncomfortable with your proposal."

"I expected as much," Ram said, accepting the glass.

"Mr. Acheson’s concern is that a seizure of Burmah Oil, even a negotiated one, will destabilise Britain’s financial position at the worst possible moment. The Treasury is already stretched. The British Cabinet is divided about devaluation. And the alliance..." Douglas lowered himself carefully into a chair. "I think you understand, Prime Minister. Washington needs a strong Britain in the coming years. The Soviet position in Berlin is... uncertain."

"I understand perfectly, Mr. Ambassador. I also understand that Washington wants Indian support as a bulwark against the communist threat in Asia."

"I propose to make the two compatible." Ram took out a folded paper from his breast pocket. "This is a memorandum of understanding between the Government of India and the Standard-Vacuum Oil Company of New York. I signed it in principle last month, subject to resolution of the Burmah question. It provides for construction of a large crude-oil refinery at Visakhapatnam, with a capacity of three million tons per year. American equipment, American engineers, American financing through the Export-Import Bank."

Douglas read the paper slowly. His eyebrows rose as he reached the second page.

"This is a substantial undertaking."

"The largest American industrial investment in South Asia. It would employ some four thousand Indian workers, train a generation of petroleum engineers, and purchase over forty million dollars of American machinery. It would also, as the memorandum makes clear, require a restructuring of India’s petroleum distribution. Burmah-Shell’s monopoly would end."

"Burmah-Shell is half-owned by Royal Dutch Shell."

"Which is why only Burmah’s half would be affected. Shell would keep its stake. But the Burmah half would pass to the Indian Government, and the American firms would gain access to a market of three hundred and fifty million consumers."

Douglas rubbed his jaw. "I see. You are offering the American oil lobby a reason to support you."

"I am offering access to a market, and the American Government a reliable friend in Asia." Ram’s voice was calm. "Mr. Ambassador, I am not asking Washington to harm Britain. I am asking Washington to recognise that the two aims you hold, a strong Britain and a friendly India, are not in conflict. The Burmah transaction, structured properly, would reduce British debt service obligations, a thing the Treasury needs. It would not weaken the British strategic position in Iran, because the AIOC stake would be held by a government that has no ambition to disturb the concession. And it would open Indian markets to American firms, a thing Congress will like."

"The British Foreign Office will see it differently."

"The British Foreign Office has been seeing things differently for two years, Mr. Ambassador. It has not prevented a single one of them."

Douglas laughed, a short, genuine laugh. Douglas stood, limped to the telephone on his desk, and lifted the receiver. "Operator, I need a transatlantic line to the Secretary of State. Priority. I will wait." He glanced back at Ram. "It will take twenty minutes. The Secretary will want to consult the President."

"I am in no hurry."

"You keep saying that, and I keep finding it hard to believe."

Forty minutes later, the telephone rang. Douglas listened for a long time, saying only "Yes, Mr. Secretary" and "I understand" and, at one point, "He is sitting across from me." At last, he put down the receiver and turned to Ram.

"The Secretary says that the United States will not object to a bilateral settlement between Britain and India, provided it is concluded within the existing framework of the sterling area agreements, does not impair the British position in Iran, and includes firm guarantees for American commercial participation in the Visakhapatnam project." He paused. "He also said, and I quote, ’Tell Mr. Gupta that the President remembers who passed him the Chinese dossier.’"

Ram bowed his head slightly. "Please convey my gratitude."

10 Downing Street

Late March 1949

Clement Attlee received them in the Cabinet Room. He was a small, neat man in a grey suit with a clipped moustache, and his understatement was such that strangers often mistook it for weakness. He sat in the middle of the long table with a pipe in his hand. Cripps, pale and tense, sat at his right. Bevin sat at his left, scowling, with Eady beside him and Strathalmond at the far end.

Ram entered with Shroff and Deshmukh. After the formalities, Attlee gestured them to the opposite chairs.

"Prime Minister Gupta. Mr. Bevin tells me you are a man of formidable obstinacy."

"I hope that is a compliment, Prime Minister."

"I am not certain it is." A thin smile crossed Attlee’s face. "The Treasury says your proposal is less damaging than the alternatives. The Foreign Office says it is strategically unwelcome. I am here to adjudicate. Ernest, state your objection again, briefly."

Bevin shifted heavily. "It is simple. The Persian Gulf is our most vital strategic asset outside Europe. We cannot hand a seat at the Abadan table to a government that is, at best, unreliable."

"Continue, Ernest."

"My objection is not to the Prime Minister’s intentions. It is to his power. A man who can force a defaulting empire to cede territory, break the sterling link, and now buy its crown jewels does not have ambitions that stop at Burmah Oil."

"A candid statement," Ram said. "May I answer it candidly?"

"Please."

"India’s ambition is to be secure, solvent, and sovereign. On the seat, I will not give way. It belongs to the shares I am buying, by the company’s own articles, and a government that rewrites such rights according to the buyer’s nationality will find its own contracts abroad hard to defend. But I have offered Lord Strathalmond two undertakings: no increase of the stake without British consent, a first refusal for His Majesty’s Government on any sale, and no pledge of the shares. I accept them in the treaty. They are real constraints."

Attlee looked at Bevin. "That answers a good deal."

"On paper," Bevin huffed.

"Paper is what treaties are made of, Ernest." Attlee set down his pipe. "Stafford, the Treasury’s view?"

Cripps took his time. "The Treasury accepts, with amendments. First, the valuation of Burmah. Wilfrid has argued a hundred and sixty; the Indian side says a hundred and five."

"A hundred and five is correct," Ram said, "for the plain reason that the fields were destroyed by your army. But I am willing to be generous in the manner of settlement, if the Treasury is willing to be reasonable on the price."

"What do you mean?" Eady asked.

"I mean the war-damage claim. Thirty million pounds, unpaid, held by the company I am buying. I will waive it. I will not press it before Parliament or the courts, now or ever. It is a liability the Treasury would not wish to be reminded of, and I do not propose to remind you."

Cripps and Eady exchanged a look. The waiver was worth more than thirty million pounds to the Treasury, and both men knew it.

"I accept the valuation at a hundred and five," Cripps said slowly. "In return for the waiver."

"Then there is a gap, Sir Stafford," Shroff said, "between the credit of four hundred and forty-four million and the price of three hundred and eighty-nine. Fifty-five million pounds. India will take it in further holdings." He slid a sheet across the table.

"Ferranti, eight million. Plessey, seven. Lucas, ten. Tube Investments, nine. British Aluminium, six. Dunlop, eight. Decca, four. Alfred Herbert, three. In each case, parity with the government holding."

"These are not strategic," Bevin said at once.

"They are machine tools, components, and electronics," Shroff replied. "They are the things that make a factory work, Mr. Bevin. We could use them."

"They are the very things we could use."

"Then you will be pleased to hold the other seventy-five per cent."

Attlee stifled something that might have been a cough. Eady made a note.

"I would rather lose a hundred and five million of Burmah than a single one of these," Cripps said under his breath, and Eady, beside him, nearly smiled.

"The principal reduction," Cripps went on, in his ordinary voice, "I will set out as the Treasury understands it. Three hundred million pounds, cancelled on signature. There is no reason to spread it over time, since the Government of India is not asking for it, and I am not inclined to refuse a debtor’s good fortune."

"On signature," Shroff said. "Agreed."

"Then I will make one more request, and I will make it plainly. The ten-year undertakings. I want a joint review at the end of a decade."

"A review of the undertakings," Ram said, "and not of the seat. The seat is not reviewable."

Cripps paused. "Agreed."

"And the matter of the escalation clause?" Eady asked. "The second option."

"It lapses, Sir Wilfrid, as it was meant to. It served its purpose."

"Which was?"

"To make the first option attractive."

Eady laughed aloud, a short, surprised bark, and then looked embarrassed.

Attlee rose and held out his hand across the table. "Prime Minister Gupta, the Cabinet meets tomorrow. I shall recommend acceptance. I have spent my life studying how empires end, and most end badly. If ours has ended gracefully in India, a good part of the credit goes to the man before me. I did not expect to say that, and I hope you will not repeat it."

"I will keep it between us, Prime Minister."

"A wise precaution."

Delhi

March 30, 1949

Sardar Patel had never liked committee rooms. He disliked their long tables and their polished pens and the way men assembled in them to discuss ideas that ought to have been executed years before. But the Prime Minister’s study, in Ram’s absence, had become Patel’s study, and he found he disliked it less when it was full of people willing to speak plainly.

He sat in Ram’s leather chair, wrapped in his shawl, with the inhaler on the blotter in front of him. Across the desk stood two men who had requested the meeting, both with the slightly tense air of subordinates who have been planning a presentation for weeks.

The first was Guru Dutt Sodhi, a tall, handsome man in a dark suit with the bearing of a former athlete. He was a professor of mathematics at Government College, Lahore, who had fled to Delhi after Partition, and the Indian member of the International Olympic Committee. The second was Rameshwar Nath Kao, whom Mullick had brought. He was a slender man in his late thirties with a neat moustache and an expression of such calm inattention that it took a moment to notice how closely he was watching everything.

Dr. Radhakrishnan sat to one side with a notebook on his knee. Mullick stood by the door.

"Gentlemen," Patel said. "The Prime Minister is in London. I am the one who will decide what goes on his desk, and what goes in the waste basket. Professor Sodhi, you first."

Sodhi stepped forward with a folder. "Home Minister, thank you. I will be brief. I propose three linked measures. First, a National Games, to be held in Delhi in November of this year, and every two years thereafter. Second, the hosting of the first Asian Games in the spring of 1950, also in Delhi. Third, the construction of a national stadium complex to accommodate both."

"Games," Patel said. He said the word the way another man might say "knitting."

"Games, Sardar-sahib. I know the cabinet is occupied with war and finance. But I would suggest that this is as much about the Republic’s coherence as about sport."

"Explain."

Sodhi opened the folder. "Consider the territories we have absorbed in the past eighteen months. Burma. Ceylon. Mauritius, the Seychelles, the Maldives, Socotra, Masirah. Our population has expanded by many millions, but most of those millions have never seen Delhi, never met a Punjabi or a Tamil, never had any reason to think of themselves as part of a single country. The administrative union exists. The emotional union does not."

"That is the work of the schools," Patel said. "The Prime Minister’s Sanskrit programme."

"The schools will take a generation, Sardar-sahib. The Games will take a fortnight." Sodhi smiled. "Imagine a Shan boxer from the Burmese hills fighting a Malayali boxer from Travancore in front of fifty thousand people in a stadium in Delhi. Imagine a Sinhalese runner and a Bengali runner sharing a podium. Imagine a young Maldivian swimmer winning a medal and discovering that all of India is cheering for him. These are not trivial things. They make strangers into countrymen."

Dr. Radhakrishnan nodded slowly. "It is an old principle, Home Minister. The Greeks understood it. The Olympic truce bound city-states that were otherwise at war."

"The Greeks also fell to the Romans," Patel said, but his tone had softened. "Go on, Professor."

"The Asian Games would extend the principle across the continent. India would invite every nation in Asia, Japan, China, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Iran, Siam. We would be the first host. We would be, in effect, announcing our leadership of the continent in a language everyone understands."

"And the cost?"

Sodhi hesitated. "A considerable sum, Home Minister. Perhaps twenty million rupees for the stadium and athletes’ village, plus training expenditure."

"Twenty million." Patel made a sound halfway between a grunt and a laugh. "The Finance Minister would faint."

"Shroff-sahib is in London, Sardar-sahib," Radhakrishnan observed dryly. "He cannot faint."

Patel glanced at him. For a moment the corner of his mouth twitched. "Doctor, you support this?"

"I do. Strongly. The Prime Minister has already authorised the Sports Authority of India. He spoke in terms of ’building physical stamina, discipline, and competitive aggression into the national youth.’ The Games would give that aim a visible form. And the Olympics in London showed us what the people feel when an Indian flag is raised in a foreign stadium. I was in Calcutta that night. Men were weeping in the streets."

"I remember," Patel said. He looked down at the proposal. "I remember the hockey final. Even I listened to it on the wireless." He did not smile, but his eyes warmed. "Very well. The Games may proceed to the Cabinet. I will recommend the National Games in November and the Asian Games in the spring of 1950, subject to the Finance Minister’s approval of the budget. Professor Sodhi, you will draft the full programme and present it to the Cabinet Secretary by the end of the month."

"Thank you, Sardar-sahib."

Sodhi bowed and stepped back, visibly pleased. Patel turned his heavy-lidded gaze to the other gentleman present, someone from the Home Ministry.

"Mr. Kao. The Director of the Intelligence Bureau tells me you have a proposal that makes him nervous."

Mullick shifted by the door. "Home Minister, I did not say nervous."

"You did not have to." Patel leaned back. "Mr. Kao. Speak."

Kao did not move from his place by the bookshelf. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and level.

"Home Minister, India has no foreign intelligence service. The Intelligence Bureau looks inward. It watches Communists, separatists, and foreign missionaries on Indian soil. It does not watch Karachi, Colombo, Kabul, Peking, or Moscow. We are, in effect, blind beyond our own borders."

"We have the Samvardhan network," Patel said.

"The Samvardhan network is extraordinary, Home Minister, but it was built for a particular purpose. It was a covert instrument of the Prime Minister’s personal strategy, funded through merchant guilds, staffed by volunteers. It has no legal basis, no formal chain of command, no budget line in the Ministry of Finance. With the end of the war and the absorption of Burma, much of it has been folded into the Bureau. But what remains is a patchwork, not a service."

"You are saying we need to formalise it."

"I am saying we need something new." Kao took a single typed page from his coat pocket. "A dedicated external intelligence agency. A civilian service, reporting directly to the Prime Minister, with its own budget, its own officers, and its own legal charter. I have drafted a name: the Research and Analysis Wing. It would recruit from the Indian Police, the Foreign Service, the Army, and the universities. It would operate abroad under diplomatic and commercial cover. It would conduct espionage, collect signals intelligence, run agents, and analyse foreign political and military developments."

"Research and Analysis," Patel repeated.

"A deliberately dull name, Home Minister. It will be hard to explain what it does, which is the point."

Patel almost laughed. "Mr. Mullick. You said this man has patience. I did not know he also had a sense of humour."

"I have seen it only twice, Sardar-sahib," Mullick said gravely.

Patel took the page from Kao and studied it. His brow furrowed as he read.

"Why should you be the person to create and lead this agency?"

Kao paused. "Because I have studied what Pakistan has done in the last six weeks, Sardar-sahib. They purged every informant we had. They switched to one-time-pad cyphers. They fed the British a false story about Kashmir. That is not the behaviour of a disorganised state. It is the behaviour of a state with a professional counter-intelligence service, and I suspect they have had help from the British officers they pretended to dismiss. If we wish to see what they are doing, we need a service that cannot be crippled by a single purge. We need it to be distributed, patient, and legally invisible."

"And what would you do about Pakistan first?"

"Recruit from within, Home Minister. Not Pakistan’s government. Its refugees. There are a million Muslims who stayed behind after the population transfer because they could not move, a million Hindus and Sikhs who fled west Punjab and still have relatives there, millions of people-to-people ties, connection. Letters cross the border. Traders cross. Relatives visit. Each of those is a thread. A service that can weave them together can see what the generals are doing without a single spy in the War Cabinet."

Patel nodded slowly. His face, in the lamplight, had a tired, shrewd stillness.

"You will write the legal charter," he said. "Mullick will assist you. You will have three months to draft the structure, recruit the first fifty officers, and present a budget. The Prime Minister will return in a few days, and I will place this on his desk. But I will tell you now, Mr. Kao, what I think he will say."

"What is that, Home Minister?"

"That you should have started a year ago."

For the first time, Kao smiled, faintly, almost shyly. "I shall try to make up the time."

"See that you do." Patel lifted the inhaler, breathed in, and set it down again. His eyes moved from Kao to Sodhi, then to Radhakrishnan and Mullick. "Gentlemen, you are dismissed. And remember this, since I may not be here to say it later. A nation is held together by two things. The first is what it can see. The second is what it can hide. You have brought me one of each today. I intend to see that both are built."

When they had gone, Patel sat alone in the dimness of the study. The heater clanked quietly. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead, though the room was cold.

Outside, a train whistle sounded from the distant railyards, a long, lonely note that trailed off into the night. Patel listened until it faded, then drew the shawl more tightly around his shoulders and reached for the next file in the pile.

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