His listeners, seated in thick leather-covered chairs, nodded their approval. Indeed, the tempestuous traumas and sulks of their Chairman that made life so difficult and dangerous for them were unknown about in Britain where a popular ‘Uncle Joe’ was how the public saw him. It had made his long-term planning immeasurably easier.
Overseeing them at the far end of the room was a full-length portrait of Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov, ‘Lenin’, the revolutionary saint of Soviet Communism, his domed forehead thrown back as though in a fresh breeze, his piercing eyes looking towards the glorious future which his stern face confidently proclaimed and which Marxism-Leninism called an historic inevitability.
‘Our fundamental aim,’ the Colonel General continued, ‘is to ensure that all colonies, starting in Asia rather than in Africa, have anti-imperialist comrades running them after ejecting the current imperialist, colonial governments, by stealth or force. Our chief targets are Indo-China, the Dutch East Indies, Malaya and Singapore, and finally Hong Kong. The “tipping point” for the first two will be sooner than for the others. After that the remainder should fall into our hands like ripe plums.’
‘How long do you reckon before all this happens?’ someone asked.
‘Comrade, that is difficult to say. My guess is four to five years without our assistance. Shorter with it.’ That vague answer seemed to satisfy.
The Minister in charge of munitions, cracking the joints of his fingers, tritely observed ‘Surely you don’t envisage any overt aid, do you? I have some stock not used during the war but I feel it will be safer to have it nearer to hand.’
He glanced at Stalin who did not even bother to look at him or to take his pipe out of the sunken crack of a mouth that his walrus moustache half-concealed.
‘No certainly not. I believe that no overt help and no surplus wartime stocks are necessary, certainly not to start with anyway. There are more than enough weapons already in the hands of those natives who fought against the feudalist Japanese.’
The knuckle-cracker looked relieved. Zhdanov continued, ‘before I show you on the map where the places I am talking about are, I want to emphasise why I have also said “no physical presence”. Over the years our Party has managed to get a firm footing among the imperialists’ colonies. As an example from India I mention one Mr Vikas Bugga who is a linchpin for our work there. This quaintly named Indian, a Captain in the Disinformation Department of the First Chief Directorate of the International Department of the Central Committee, is fully trained in aktivnyye meropriyatiya, active measures, run, of course, by the Ministry of State Security, the MGB.’
Stalin butted in. ‘Comrade Zhdanov will not mind if I say that speed is of the essence. I want this done before those yellow monsters, the slit-eyed Chinese, try to get comrades with their way of thinking into power.’
Zhdanov, sensing impatience, blenched visibly and quickly covered some more details before saying, slightly more robustly than before, ‘You will notice that I have not mentioned the two white countries, Australia and New Zealand.’ He went and pointed out on the map the counties so far mentioned before returning to his seat. He looked firmly at each member in turn and continued: ‘Let me explain. Recently I have had the General Secretary of the Australian Communist Party, Comrade Lawrence Sharkey, “Lance” to his friends, with me. He has gone back to Australia, where he needs no help from us at the moment, with our Chairman’s orders to brief all potential leaders in the colonial countries concerned that I have mentioned through their trusted intermediaries. The last I heard from him was that he had indeed managed to contact all relevant comrades who need to be involved. Now, with the help of his Indian comrades, Sharkey has arranged to attend an innocent-sounding gathering, a Southeast Asia Youth Conference, to take place in early 1948, probably in February, followed by a full Indian Communist Party Plenum, both in Calcutta. The delegates will be fully briefed on how they should put their anti-imperialist plans into action, each according to circumstances in their own particular country and reinforced by our concept. Comrade Lance Sharkey will be our link and his intimate knowledge of the Orient will be the main means of that concept being successfully promulgated in full and final detail. We can do no better than that. The Calcutta conference will be our “tipping point” to eventual victory.’
He looked around the table, expecting acknowledgement, nor was he disappointed. There was nothing in his project to upset any hardliners. He had everyone’s attention.
‘It is my opinion,’ Zhdanov continued, ‘as soon as the Indians have punched the British out of the ring, the time will be ripe for a knock-out blow in the rest of their Asian colonies to push them through the ropes. The virulent anti-British propaganda employed by the Indian Congress Party has been immeasurably helped, in fact, from this very room, as indeed has the basis of all anti-colonial rhetoric.’ And he allowed himself the ghost of a smile of satisfaction. ‘So you can see that Comrade Lance Sharkey’s efforts will merely be pushing at an open door. Not only that, I have persuaded him,’ he added proudly, ‘on his way back to Australia to have a full meeting with Singapore’s and Malaya’s comrades about starting the armed struggle soon so that matters can come to an early and successful conclusion before any more British troops can get there after leaving India, probably in early 1948.’
‘Excuse me, Comrade,’ broke in the Foreign Minister, an elderly man whose face was all angles and planes. ‘Surely British troops will have gone back to the United Kingdom when India has self-rule and not to Malaya where, my understanding is, there are only two British Army infantry battalions and one gunner regiment at most.’ He paused, shrugged and made a grimace of superiority. ‘Nothing local guerrillas can’t cope with, and the colonial Malay Regiment is no threat either.’ He brushed a lank forelock from his forehead with a smile as warm as a skull.
The Director of the Joint Planning Staff, who worked at 19 Frunze Street, broke in. ‘We have nothing on our books or in our files as a counter to any threat posed in that context.’
‘Comrade,’ continued Zdhanov, with a nod at the Director, ‘I agree with you but I have had it from my chief source in India, Mr Bugga, that great efforts are being made to get some of those excellent fighters, the Gurkhas, from the Indian Army transferred into the British Army. Most are due to go to Malaya, some to Hong Kong. Comrade Sharkey’s visit will not be before the British Army Gurkhas are deployed there but my sources have other plans to delay Gurkha deployment.’
‘So, it will be so much easier if Gurkhas don’t go to Malaya’ another member commented.
‘So much the easier, I agree, but go they will. I am planning that one of my Indian agents will try and postpone their leaving India by one year so that our Malayan comrades can get a firm, unshakeable foothold that a late Gurkha arrival won’t be able to dislodge. In any event I have already made another plan to scupper any permanent lodgement there. I plan to use an asset, cultivated by our man Vikas Bugga in Darjeeling,’ he rose again and pointed it out on the map. ‘He is our link both with comrades there and the delicious tea that the British started setting up commercially in 1852.’ He felt he had to show the others the extent of his research. ‘Our man there has his own network of young anti-British, Darjeeling-based Gurkhas he can use.’
‘I thought the Gurkhas came from Nepal, not India,’ someone objected.
‘Correct, Comrade, they do but there are some Indian-domiciled men from Nepal who have been working in the Indian tea gardens for fifty or sixty years. I understand that they have lost their innate Himalayan robustness by living in British India but they are the better educated for living there. I really do have the right person to ensure that our project goes as we wish it to. Also, I have recently found out that, when was it now?’ a pause while he thought, ‘yes, in 1904, some Gurkhas from those tea gardens went to Malaya to work on the rubber plantations there. I have heard there are three such British-run places with Gurkha labour. Comrade Sharkey has enough knowledge to ensure they must be used as an essential link in our task of influencing the British Army Gurkhas favourably to our cause after their arrival.’
‘Just one more point,’ said someone else. ‘Surely, with our potential in India, we could arrange for a cessation of any British Gurkhas by “leaning on” the Indian prime minister who will, in turn, “lean on” the government in Nepal. It will not have escaped anyone’s attention that India has its fingers on Nepal’s jugular, Nepal being land-locked.’
He laughed and the assembled company clapped in appreciation, both of the concept and the amount of planning detail that had so obviously been achieved to put it into action. The participants had to pretend that their approval was needed although everyone knew such was only a formality. Indeed, Zhdanov would never have started on the project in the first place had it not initially received the Secretary General’s ‘blessing’.
The Head of the MGB, which had its main office at 2 Bolshaya Lubuanka Street, said, ‘What is needed is a secret office for intelligence-gathering, gazvedka, which was, as we all know, a critical part of operational doctrine during the Great Patriotic War.’ Well into his stride he continued ‘Vnezapnost’ – surprise – ‘and maskirovka’ – deception, concealment – ‘must be our permanent watchwords. It was those two aspects that immeasurably helped our victory against the Germans.’
He looked around: there was no dissent. ‘I can’t say where but somewhere in Asia where it can act as a point both for the collection of and dissemination of information essential to helping our cause and so hindering the colonialists. Is Darjeeling suitable for this?’
At that Zhdanov felt he had lost some ground in his presentation so, to make up, said, ‘I have ordered some Darjeeling tea to be made ready if you would like to use that as a token toast to our potential victory.’
Stalin raised his hand in pleasure. ‘I agree. Tell the Duty Officer to have it brought in. We will drink it as it has been drunk in our Rodina for as long as we can remember.’
Two white-coated orderlies brought it in on silver trays. ‘With no Germans in the queue there’ll be plenty more of it later even if we run out of it soon.’ Seldom had the Secretary General been seen in such a good mood.
Tea was poured out into cups with a small amount of white-cherry preserves. They drank it in the traditional way, first putting some of the sweetened cherries into their mouth, then letting the tea wash around them. It made conversation awkward, but it was Russian in style and taste. As they sipped, Zhdanov started to give more details but was interrupted by Stalin, ‘Let me sum up for Comrade Zhdanov. Before now the sun never set on the British Empire with their colonies coloured red on maps. The colour will still be the same but the red will be the red of our flag and of the sun that will never set on any of our devoted comrades, only on our bourgeois and beatable enemies.’ Zhdanov was the hero of the hour.
It was after dark when the meeting broke up. The inside perimeter of the Kremlin walls was lit with harsh, blue-white light floods. MGB troops and soldiers of the Taman Guards Division, ceremonial troops with minimal weapon training stationed at Alabino outside Moscow, appeared and disappeared in splashes of floodlights as they patrolled the area. As the black Chaika limousines, with their distinctive Central Committee number plates beginning with the letters MOC, carrying their senior Comrades, rolled out of the front entrance, they were smartly saluted. They sped down the centre lane reserved for the vlasti, the elite, the fat cats in what had become of Marx’s dreamed of classless society; a society rigidly structured with layer upon layer of ossified, hypocritical inefficiency and class-ridden as only a vast bureaucratic hierarchy can be. But as long as the way these people ran affairs, Rodina would be safe for ever, surely? – but, like so many other plans made by the Soviet Union, there was less in this one than met the eye, with appearances having more weight than reality and perceptions seen as more important than facts.
***
Friday August 1947, Darjeeling, Bengal, India: The British and Indian communities celebrated Indian Independence Day in their own fashion and inclinations, the British ineffably sadly and the Indians gloatingly gladly. The only Englishman to be glad was a Captain Alan Hinlea, a Gunner officer on leave there. He and his father in England were both devout card-carrying Communists and son Hinlea was so thunderstruck by Britain’s leaving so many in India dirt-poor that he just knew that India would redress affairs now it was independent. He had happened to hear someone, a young Nepali, addressing a crowd saying that it was wrong to have Gurkha soldiers in the British Army in Hong Kong and Malaya. It should be stopped if it had started and prevented if it had yet to start. It so cleared Hinlea’s mind that he followed the Nepali when he left, to try and find out more of his ideas.
He saw him stopped by a hirsute Indian outside a teashop and addressed as Padamsing Rai and the Gurkha answering, calling the other man Mr Bugga. They went into a tea shop and Hinlea followed. Upstairs he sat at a table in hearing distance of the other two men who ordered a pot of tea and some honey sandwiches. When he overheard the conversation turn to Padamsing Rai being ordered by the Party to join the British Gurkhas in Malaya in his role of influencing them against the British Army to such an extent that they’d be disbanded, Hinlea could hold his patience no longer and joined them, showing them his Communist membership card that he always carried.
He learnt that before joining up Padamsing was due to attend a South East Asian Youth Conference in Calcutta. ‘I have an idea, please listen,’ He broke in excitedly, ‘Let’s work together. I hear 12 Gurkha Rifles is to be made into Gunners. I am a Gunner. I’ll volunteer so you also try to join that regiment. Together we’ll manage to disrupt matters so efficiently, we’ll both be Politburo heroes.’
And in the fullness of time that is what did happen.[2]
***
Friday 28 November 1947. Red Fort, Delhi: The senior British Army officer left in India was a Brigadier, known as Commander, British Gurkhas India. A tall, handsome man, honoured with several bravery awards, a natural leader, tense, responsive and one hundred per cent dedicated, he had served with the Gurkhas his whole career. Now his task was to liaise with the Indian authorities, pricklier by far than any hedgehog ever knew how to be, to arrange for the five remaining Gurkha battalions and four regimental centres, with some still in West Pakistan, to leave India for pastures new. Three battalions detailed for Crown service were already in Rangoon. The difficulties were almost insurmountable, with problems unending. Scheme QUIM, Quit India Immediately, had 31 December 1947 as a deadline for all British military personnel to have left, a seemingly impossible date to meet. Relevant queries, all of the highest priority, were ridiculously slow in being answered, if answered at all. Payment, correct and timely, for everything was now the norm: for clothes worn, stores to be taken, food eaten, fuel for vehicles, fodder for mules, handing over barracks lived in, in one case for more than a hundred years, and paying for any damages – cracked windows seemed unnecessarily expensive! – transport to railway stations, then for trains, then finally for shipping all had to be paid in full before any movement was authorised. The Brigadier had a minuscule staff of Indians, not Gurkhas, and was completely overburdened.
His small office was on the third floor of one of the buildings near the entrance of the Red Fort complex.
Came a knock on the door.
‘Come in,’ he called out, wearily and warily.
His Indian clerk entered. ‘Sahib, a visitor has come to see you. Here he is.’
