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Cambridge don
“believes” there was a plot
LONDON: Indian government propaganda machinery’s success at working
overtime to give a bad name to the Sikhs brought in some dividends
with a Cambridge historian claiming that a plan by Khalistani and
Kashmiri militants to assassinate then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi
during a visit to the UK in 1985 was foiled by Britain’s internal
intelligence agency MI5.
“Good intelligence, combined with the arrests of Sikh and Kashmiri
extremists, was believed to have frustrated plots to attack Rajiv
Gandhi during his state visit,” Cambridge historian Prof Christopher
Andrew has said in his book “The Defence of the Realm”. But most of
the deductions
in
the book seemed to be based on official propaganda put out by
New Delhi.
It is well known that the police and intelligence agencies in India
bltatantly manufacture evidence, plant stories and back
pseudo-research that gives Sikhs a bad name.
“Sikh extremism, which suddenly emerged in the UK as a major threat
during the summer and autumn of 1984, was put at the top of the list
of current terrorist threats in mainland Britain in the 1985-86
annual report by MI5 Director General Tony Duff,” the book says.
The author claims that the plan to assassinate “was believed to
have” been busted, not making clear what is the role of the facts
versus belief in a case where he should have come up with hard
evidence.
14
October 2009
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