|
|||||
|
ONE vivid memory of my boyhood days is the many visits to Chennai of India's first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. He was a magnetic personality who drew enormous crowds wherever he went. He was simply adored and worshipped by the common man. Whenever he was on tour - and he did travel extensively - the crowd tried to get as close to him as possible, just to get a glimpse of the great man. Panditji invariably turned up impeccably, with a rose fastened to his lapel. No mortal would give up the opportunity to see him even if it was for a fleeting moment. It was really a sight for the gods!
I distinctly remember being among the thousands who gathered along Mount Road and the Marina on two separate occasions in the mid-1950s. We literally ran alongside the speeding motorcade in sheer frenzy to catch up with the Colossus. We were undeterred by the policemen with swinging lathis, and gave up the chase only when we found ourselves unequal to the automobile that ferried Panditji. Looking back, I feel it was a lot of fun and there was no malice towards even the rudest policeman who kept us at bay. Reflecting on this, five decades later, I am amazed at the sea change that has come about the task of protecting our VIPs.
Panditji had his detractors who disagreed with him violently on many national issues. Rarely did this difference of views border on hatred. Except for one attempt at Nagpur in March 1955 when a madcap of a rickshaw-puller carrying a knife tried to harm him, there was no major incident involving his personal safety. Nevertheless, the police were greatly concerned about his security and did everything to restrain him from taking chances. And chances he did take, with gay abandon, much to the consternation of the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) of the State he was visiting and his own Personal Security Officer (PSO) K.F. Rustamji. The latter discharged his onerous task with great aplomb for nearly six years from 1952 to 1958 and thereafter left with a heavy heart to join duty as IGP in the Madhya Pradesh Police, his parent cadre. In one earlier circumstance, his return to his parent cadre had been vetoed by Panditji himself.
Rustamji had his own highs and lows in dealing with his distinguished protectee. There were numerous occasions when Panditji ticked him off, nay humiliated him. To show his displeasure, he some times dropped Rustamji from his entourage on trips abroad. These included a visit to Russia, and Rustamji never forgave Panditji for this deliberate hurt. These slights were more than compensated by the charm and affection with which he treated him generally. Before he was to leave for Madhya Pradesh to take charge as the IGP, Rustamji was not only invited to a farewell lunch along with his wife, but received an autographed photograph on which Panditji wrote: "In memory of many journeys together and with all good wishes." Who can say that this was no ample reward for six years of unremitting toil marked by unbelievable tension and physically exacting legwork?
This and many other equally touching moments were captured faithfully by Rustamji the penman, in the diary that he kept. Posterity will thank him for this thoughtful contribution to Indian history. We are equally thankful to P.V. Rajgopal, again an officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre of the Indian Police Service, who has brought out an edited version of the diary to make it an eminently readable book (I was Nehru's shadow, Wisdom Tree Publishers, New Delhi, 2006; Rs.395) released recently. Imaginative pruning of the diary is the strength of the volume filled with many anecdotes. For all his magnanimity and nobility, Panditji, like a few other great leaders in history, was mercurial. He was petulant towards anyone who tried to curb him. He derived immense strength from the adulation that he received from the humblest of Indians. Anyone who tried to keep the latter away from him was therefore abused and intimidated, a quality that his daughter and his grandson, especially the latter, were to inherit from him.
Pride of the police
The basic principle of VIP security is: be firm. Do not be cowed down by the protectee's tantrums. Do whatever you want to do to ensure his safety, even if he wants to throw you out of the place. Rustamji was too mature to be put off by Panditji's public remonstrance. I could say with some authority that the Special Protection Group (SPG) has now acquired this unmistakable stamp, and is the pride of the Indian Police. It is for this reason that we cannot perfunctorily dismiss the widely held belief that an SPG cover could still have saved Rajiv Gandhi at Sriperumpudur.
Perhaps Panditji's `worst' behaviour was during Pakistani Prime Minister Mohammed Ali's visit to India in August 1953, which attracted unexpected popular response. Security arrangements were utterly inadequate, leading to chaos and bedlam whenever the two Prime Ministers made a joint appearance. It all began with the reception at Palam when Mohammed Ali arrived. Rustamji promptly put this down in his diary:
"Everybody was pushed about... People swarmed all over, knocking down ministers and secretaries and important Congressmen... . JN got angrier and angrier. He flung about - pushing people, running after cameramen, shouting, firing... . Somebody opened the door of a car for him: he banged the door and beat people with a large dishevelled bouquet... I was really sorry that JN had not behaved properly. It did no good to his image ... to see (him) in a mood of savage petulance."
Decades later, as a policeman, I was to witness the same chaos at the Chennai airport on several occasions, when either Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi came visiting Tamil Nadu. The only difference from Panditji's times was that it was not the Prime Minister who did not behave himself or herself. The erring individual this time was mainly the small-time Congressman who wanted to prove to his constituents that he had access to the highest authority in the Party. Police officers were often browbeaten and intimidated into allowing unauthorised persons to get near the Prime Minister.
Things changed dramatically in the days that followed Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984, with the prompt decision to create the SPG. Fortunately, the crack outfit had firm leadership right from the start. Subbu (S. Subramaniam) a long-time colleague of mine in the Intelligence Bureau (I.B.), who came to be called VIP security Mani, was the first SPG chief. A physically formidable personality, he handled VIP security for many years in the I.B. with great authority and distinction. He meshed well with C.G. Dutt, his Joint Director in the I.B., an interesting and amiable officer, whose lengthy teleprinter messages to those in the State Police in advance of a Prime Minister's visit were amazingly detailed and somewhat hilarious because Dutt hardly made a distinction between spoken and written English. In one of his homilies to the Kerala Police, I remember his putting down a classic statement that he would "squeeze Rasalam" in the front seat of the escort car, meaning that there was no need for a separate car for him and that he could always share space with the State Special Branch chief while following the Prime Minister's car.
Subbu could assert himself vis-a-vis the mightiest in the land, including Rajiv Gandhi who was supposed to be his boss. In the process, he made many enemies. Ever since Subbu's time, the SPG has distinguished itself for its professionalism, and is the envy of many foreign outfits. Of course, there have been efforts at times to dilute the SPG by extending its cover to many by including former Prime Ministers and their families. This distortion has been corrected by suitable amendments to the SPG Act twice. The situation now is that proximate security is the SPG's domain, and the rest the responsibility of the State Police. Former Prime Ministers will be protected by the SPG for one year after they demit office. Any extension thereafter will be based on a year-to-year assessment of the threat faced by them. Also, close relatives of a Prime Minister will continue to get SPG cover only for three months after he/she lays down office.
Terrorist factor
We have come a long way since Panditji's days when intrusion to the sanitised area was not all that difficult. Now friends and foes alike of a VVIP can hardly take liberties with the SPG. This is how it should be, if we are to fend off designs by vested interests to cause political instability through assassinations. This is something that gives us confidence in the ability of our security agencies to protect our political leaders from terrorist attacks. And this is the principal change that has come about in the job of VIP protection. In Panditji's time there was hardly a terrorist phenomenon. We have so much of it now that no government can afford to take this task lightly or refuse to invest on the manpower and technology that go with a sophisticated state-of-the-art VIP security scheme.
I do not think the average citizen grudges the expenditure that goes into protecting our VVIPs such as the President and the Prime Minister. It is the insistence of lesser weights on enjoying security cover that gets the goat of many of us.
Unfortunately, any attempt to prune the list of those who receive security on government account comes a cropper because of sheer politics. It is this aspect of our political scene that gives us the label of being tribal in our outlook. It may take ages before we live down this disgraceful image.
Printer friendly
page
|
