THE CRUMBLING EDIFICE:
Experiences and Thoughts of a Police Officer
V P Kapur
Rupa
Pages:466
Price: Rs 795
It has been a long-standing feature of writing history in India that, more often than not, the historian has precious little available by way of corroborative sources. As might be expected, there are usually several versions of an episode.
The best ways of checking what really happened are the private memoirs of the officials who had been in charge at the time. But Indian officials, for whatever reason, prefer not to maintain records or, if they do, to publish them. The result is that over a period of time, versions that are distorted or inaccurate in many critical aspects get accepted.
Few people know, for instance, that the arrest of Indira Gandhi in 1978 was ordered by Charan Singh acting on his own when the home secretary was on a train and, therefore, uncontactable. This was deliberate because the home ministry had been advising him not to arrest Mrs Gandhi.
Nor is it known that the prime minister had failed to hold Charan Singh back. Nor was it known until recently that in the mid-1970s RAW had not been averse to financing Congress politicians.
There are thousands upon thousands of little nuggets like this, which you get to hear from time to time during a dinner or a lunch. If only they came to be known, they would permit us to get a far more accurate picture of what actually happened and why.
But since Indian officials prefer to take their secrets to their graves, this happens only once in a while. Indeed, even when a retired official does bestir himself to write his memoir
