Vir Sanghvi has faulted R&AW for choosing the path of covert hits on Khalistani terrorists, while failing against terrorists like Dawood Ibrahim.
In her 1973 short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Ursula K. Le Guin tells of the city of Omelas, where it is happiness all around. However, the city’s constant state of bliss requires that a single unfortunate child be kept in perpetual darkness and misery. Once citizens are old enough to know the truth, most, though initially shocked and disgusted, ultimately acquiesce to this one injustice that secures the happiness of the rest of the city. However, some citizens walk away from the city after seeing the child.
In their write-ups, in The Print in October, on the controversy and the diplomatic fracas between Canada and the US on one side and India on the other, alleging India’s role in attempts and assassinations of Khalistani terrorists on their soil, Praveen Swami and Vir Sanghvi have castigated R&AW for the botched covert operations. Mr Sanghvi has faulted R&AW for choosing the path of covert hits on Khalistani terrorists, while failing against terrorists like Dawood Ibrahim. Mr Swami has laid the problem at the door of IPS leadership, suggesting that they are unsuited to the covert life.
There is no doubt that covert operations are diametrically opposite to the fish bowl life of district administration where the IPS officers’ every move is under watch by the media and the society at large. However, what needs to be appreciated is that a significant amount of policing does require covert work. While this requirement may be higher in anti-insurgency operations or counterterrorism, even work against crime, especially organised crime, requires a lot of covert work. Collection of intelligence- political, criminal and extremist – is bread and butter for the much-maligned IPS. By its very nature, successes in covert operations cannot be claimed. Failures, on the other hand, are always highlighted. Be that as it may, to suggest that IPS is not suited to head agencies like R&AW and IB, is not very dissimilar to cadre officers insinuating similar IPS incompetence in the CAPFs.
That brings us to the advisability of such covert operations. In democracies, the battle with crime is fought under Due Process to safeguard the citizens from a powerful State. But there will be situations where terrorism or insurgencies cannot be handled under the procedural limitations of Due Process. Democracies take the ‘road of hypocrites’ where the law enforcement agencies operate beyond the pale of law and the State pretends that no Executive sanction exists for the same. Phrases like ‘credible deniability’ or ‘cover operations’ are just euphemisms for this necessary hypocrisy. The moral high road to walk away from Omelas can’t be taken by those actually dealing with this work, whether in R&AW and IB or in the district and state police.
It is also necessary to remember that a sustained and holistic approach in dealing with this threat to national security will necessarily have to combine tactical as well as strategic elements. In the immortal words of Sri Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’: क्षमा शोभती उसभुजंग को जिसके पास गरल हो- उसको क्या जो दंतहीन, विषरहित, विनीत, सरल हो।