Was Nehru by his activity proved to be a foolish or an intelligent PM of India?

October 17, 2024

PM Nehru was intelligent, cunning and self-centred.

MI5 is the internal security force of UK - equivalent to India's CBI or USA's FBI. Until 1971 it was MI5 operated in India because PM Nehru didn’t find the need to have a local anti-corruption and investigation agency. Nehru was happy that MI5 is taking care of India’s intelligence need who Indian government was not paying any salary. So, it was good cost cutting initiative.

This is the reason India had its own external intelligence gathering agency RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) came up in 1968 only after the 1962 and 1965 wars which the British supported IB failed to anticipate. The British Viceroy Lord Mountbatten was not changed at the time of Independence and PM Nehru was taking his advice regarding 1948 Kashmir war. In both 1948 and 1962 eneded in a disaster for India. First Indian Chief of the Army Staff to replace a British citizen was in 1949. PM Nehru was keen to have British Chief of the Army Staff instead of Field Marshal KM Cariappa but his juniors Gen. Nathu Singh Rathore put his foot down to have Indian Chief of the Army Staff in a meeting with PM Nehru. Similarly first Indian Chief of the Air Staff was in 1951 and first Indian Chief of the Naval Staff was in 1958 (11 years after independence). No wonder the IB reported to MI5 till 1971.

What could be the reason for this lack of foresight by PM Nehru to have full British control over the intelligence system? Does PM Nehru had more thrust on the British people than Indians? A British MI5 agent daily visited IB head office to get daily access on critical intelligence files and passed them to the British government if deemed necessary till 1971. This system ended only when USSR leaders objected to share certain critical data to India and clearly informed PM Indira Gandhi about their inability to share intelligence with IB as all data gets leaked to UK. After this Indira Gandhi stopped MI5 reach inside IB. The Intelligence Bureau has a lot of successes to its credit, but operations conducted by the IB are rarely declassified. Due to the extreme secrecy surrounding the agency, there is little concrete information available about it or its activities. The IB was trained by the Soviet spy agency KGB from the 1950s onward until the collapse of the USSR in early 1990s.

PM Nehru also purchased majority defence equipment’s from Britain in 1940s and 1950s. The army jeeps (which led to jeep scam), IAF jets like Hawker, Canberra, Gnat, aircraft carrier Vikrant-I helped British arms industry with good orders. Clearly PM Nehru was pro-British.

All these transactions indicate that congress party or PM Nehru had a secret deal with UK at the time of independence. The IB spied on Subhash Chandra Bose family for 20 years after independence indicate that PM Nehru had a deep sense of insecurity with the idea that Subhash Chandra Bose who allegedly died in a plane crash (without solid proof) may come to India and challenge PM Nehru. Does this mean British supported IB to spy on other political opponents of PM Nehru or congress till 1971? India had few high profile tragic unnatural deaths of politicians like Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, Deen Dayal Upadhaya and Lal Bahadur Shastry during this tenure. These cases still remain mistery.

Since 2014, the IB has undergone many reforms and changes. One of the biggest reforms was the cessation of internal political espionage. The agency has also boosted its infrastructure and recruited more agents. It has been successful in stopping the earlier pattern of frequent terror attacks in India. The agency has also been successful now in counterintelligence.