ROLE OF JAMES FINLAY IN TOPPLING EMS

The Role of the U K Based Tea Giant Revealed

The liberation struggle, spearheaded by the Christian Church and financed by the CIA was not the sole reason for prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to dismiss the EMS Namboodiripad-led first Communist government in Kerala in 1959. A foreign plantation lobby also played a crucial role in the decision, reveals K Ravi Raman's book, Global Capital and Peripheral Labour: The History and Political Economy of Plantation Workers in India.

Published by Routledge in 2009, the book is based on the archives in London. Ravi Raman, a labour expert and a member of the Kerala State Planning Board member, quotes from the Memoir of Walter Smith Sutherland MacKay (1976), a chronicle prepared by the then general manager of Kanan Devan, which was a subsidiary of UK-based plantation giant James Finlay. The Memoir is a collection of opinion pieces and memoirs of Col W.S.S. MacKay about his time in Travancore, from 1924 to 1957, written for the Overseas Development Ministry of Britain.

High Range Club in 1910, the year of its foundation

Over the years many diabolical stories about the CIA's role in Kerala’s “Liberation Struggle” have been proved beyond doubt, by various sources. The first insider story came from From Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Ambassador to India during 1973-1975, in 1978. In his book, A Dangerous  Place, Moynihan said the CIA had paid money to the Congress party twice and once through its president Indira Gandhi to fight the EMS ministry. 

Though Ms Gandhi rubbished it as a malicious lie, in an oral interview in 1991 and again in 2003, Ellsworth F Bunker, U S Ambassador to India from 1956-1961, who was in charge of the covert operations in Kerala during 1957-1959, revealed that money was indeed paid to the Congress. He expressed no regrets about the operation because the embassy had hard evidence that the Soviets were funding the Kerala communists, "as they have done everywhere, all over the world... But as we have done elsewhere in the world." (1)

However, Bunker exonerated Ms Gandhi and named S K Patil, a prominent Maharashtra Congress leader, as the intermediary. But S Gopal has confirmed Ms Gandhi's role in his biography of Nehru. Subsequently, David Burgess, who was Charge de Affairs at the U S embassy in New Delhi, corroborated the revelations.

A 1996 book, Beating the Unbeatable Foe: One Man's Victory Over Communism, Leviathan and the Last Enemy, by Australian evangelist Fred Schwarz, admitted that he had led the Christian anti-Communism crusade. He had paid money to the Kerala politician George Thomas to start a newspaper Keraladhwani, to campaign against the Communist ministry. Thomas had a PhD in Political Science, from the University of Washington, where he had taught too when he met Schwarz and sought help to fight Communism in Kerala. After the fall of the EMS government, Thomas wrote to Schwarz, proudly acknowledging his contribution. Thomas later became a legislator and published the Keralabhooshanam Daily. He ran into income tax troubles when he diverted the donations from the Indian Gospel Mission in the US, for other activities.

The declassified CIA documents also contain a plethora of information related to its activities in Kerala. They reveal that a daily brief to the U S President Lyndon B Johnson even mentioned the marital discord between T V Thomas and K R Gowri, two ministers in the EMS government. Allen Wells Dulles, CIA director from 1952-1961, was monitoring all reports from Kerala. Allen was the brother of John Forster Dulles, U S Secretary of State during President Eisenhower.

When the EMS ministry took over, the CIA report noted: "If commies play cards right, gains could be more than local. Economic improvement in Kerala could have a nationwide appeal. The local policy of moderation would tend to make commies more acceptable elsewhere in India."

The report observed that communists had been working hard to gain popularity. "They have cut their own pay, stayed eviction of peasants attacked corruption, solicited private capital." The report lamented that "in the interim, we face embarrassing problems regarding US-sponsored activities in Kerala.

High Range Travancore tea estate rolling room, 1910

Two years into power, there were administrative lapses, and the communists found themselves amid law and order issues. There was widespread anarchy, nepotism and the rule of law by communist cells. 

Even though one of the first decisions of EMS as home minister was to ask the police to be people-friendly and not intervene in labour disputes, things went sour. Throughout his first term as CM, a series of police actions were criticized.

On 18 November 1957, striking cashew industry workers were lathi-charged. On 26 July 1958, police firing killed two striking cashew workers belonging to the ruling CPM ally Revolutionary Socialist Party in Chandanathope, near Kollam district. On 20 October of the same year, police killed two striking tea estate workers, Pappammal and Rawther, associated with the party in Munnar. 

Two fishermen, Yacob and Yaggappan, died at Pulluvilla, in Thiruvananthapuram in the police firing, on June 12, 1959. 

At Vettucaud in the coastal belt of Thiruvananthapuram, three persons, J. Marian, John Netto and P. John Fernandez were killed in the firing on 15 June 1959. The same day, a police firing killed three, including Flory Pereira, a pregnant woman, at Cheriyathura, in Thiruvananthapuram. 

The rest is history with the resultant protest snowballing into the liberation struggle that brought down the EMS Ministry. Finally, the communist government was dismissed by the central government on 31 July 1959.

But the MacKay papers reveal a British effort to topple the Communist ministry in Kerala. Walter Smith Sutherland Mackay, was employed by James Finlay & Co. in the management of tea estates in the High Range of Travancore of which Finlay was the Managing Agent. Born in 1904, and related to Charles Mackay, the Scottish poet, he was Assistant Manager during 1924-32, Manager from 1932-46, and Assistant General Manager from 1946-57.

MacKay records the evidence thus: “It was here that EMS met his waterloo!”  According to him, William Roy, visiting agent of James Finlay, had met then Prime Minister Nehru, along with George Sutter, acting general manager.“The Union Government has been convinced that the Namboodiripad government in Kerala should be dismissed,” says MacKay. 

(Incidentally, MacKay has also written a paper, Trout of Travancore, in 1945, in the Bombay Natural History Journal. It talks about the Rajamalai hatchery and his efforts to rear the fish in the High Range waters.)

At that time, the Scottish company James Finlay had around 1.27 lakh acres of land in Kerala alone.

There have been varied accounts of what led to Nehru’s decision to dismiss the first democratically-elected Communist government in the country. The role played by the CIA has been widely discussed. Ravi Raman’s book, however, has thrown open the role of another player behind the dissolution of the government.

Ravi Raman's work points out that the EMS government’s move towards the nationalisation of foreign-owned plantations coupled with militant trade unionism had provoked the plantation giant.

Going by Raman's book, global capital played a vital role as the plantation lobby had already set the ground that later led to the decision. The James Finlay-owned plantation in India was the largest integrated plantation in the world at the time. The book quotes MacKay as saying, "the planters were a state within a state". 

“So far, it hasn’t come out who lobbied Jawaharlal Nehru initially on dismissing the government. This work sheds light on that. The intervention of A K Gopalan (the Communist opposition leader in the Indian Parliament) for the nationalisation of foreign-owned plantations and the Communist Party (CPI) manifesto had already provoked the plantation major. The emphasis on caste and communal alliance with Congress toppling the government is an incomplete narrative. We cannot forget the role played by global capitalist forces in the decision,” Raman says.

Finlay in India

It was Kirkman Finlay (1773-1842), a leading merchant in Glasgow, Scotland, and a member of Parliament, who as the head (1790) of James Finlay & Co, first made efforts to capture lucrative Asian markets, and ventured into India. He successfully challenged the British East India Company, first in the cotton trade with India.

Thirty years after Kirkman’s death, the Company took its first steps into the rapidly growing Indian tea business thanks to the vision of Sir John Muir, Baronet of Deanston, Scotland. Muir was made a junior partner in 1861 before becoming the sole proprietary partner in 1883. He was instrumental in opening a branch in Calcutta in 1870. Styled as Finlay Muir & Co., the branch soon added agencies for a range of British companies either exporting to or with businesses in, India. 1872 saw Finlay Muir’s first recorded involvement with Indian tea when 80 chests were shipped to New York. In the following year, the branch became agents for the Nonoi and Sootea tea farms. By 1881 the Company had amassed 16 agencies including the Chubwa Company, one of whose farms was, and still is, the oldest in India.

At this time most tea farms were owned and or managed by a band of hardy pioneers. In the case of Sootea, one of its proprietors lived in the jungle for three years after being outlawed by the Government and before leaving India with a train of ten children and two ayahs!

John Muir saw the opportunity to cultivate tea on a large scale and had the finance necessary to put his ideas into practice. Working with several talented agriculturists and traders including P R Buchanan and Thomas McMeekin, whose businesses were eventually to become part of the Group, John Muir floated two large tea companies on the Glasgow Stock Exchange in 1882, The North Sylhet and The South Sylhet tea companies. In addition to developing tea in Sylhet, in what is now Bangladesh, over the next 15 years, these companies acquired interests in other farms in Assam, the Dooars, Darjeeling, North Travancore and Ceylon.

In 1896 and 1897 Muir rationalised the Company’s now significant tea interests by grouping them into what were effectively four holdings companies with shares being offered to the public as part of a stock exchange listing.

In addition to having significant shareholdings, Finlays controlled and managed these, and other tea interests, both in India and the UK, by way of agency and secretarial agreements. One company, The Anglo-American Direct Tea Trading Co., Limited had as one of its objects, “bringing the consumer into direct contact with the producer”.

Sir John Muir

Finlay Muir began buying and trading tea in 1874 and over the years this became, as it still is, a staple part of the Group’s business. Carried out from a worldwide network of offices, this allowed Finlays to become one of the largest traders of tea in the World. By the end of the 19th century, the British Empire was the world’s biggest producer of tea. India was responsible for 200 Million lbs, 85% of which went to the UK, far outstripping exports from China; over 500,000 acres of tea had been planted in just over 40 years.

When Muir died in 1903 he had been ennobled as Sir John Muir and had built Finlays into one of the pre-eminent tea businesses in the world. By his final years, Finlay Muir & Co had 90,000 employees worldwide, one of the largest companies ever. Approximately 70,000 were in the Indian subcontinent. 1949 Finlays was the largest tea plantation business in the world managing over 100,000 acres in India alone. 

Muir suffered two strokes, one in 1901 in Glasgow and another at Deanston House where he died on 6 August 1903. He left an estate of £862,802 but with much of his wealth invested as capital in James Finlay & Co and various offshoots, it is thought that his true worth was considerably greater.

The History of Munnar Tea Plantation

The first European to visit the Munnar hills was the Duke of Wellington in 1790. The Planting Opinion of 1896 records that the Duke, then Col. Arthur Wellesley, was dispatched by General William Meadows to cut off the retreat of Tipu Sultan at Kumily gap. Tipu’s intelligence, however, forewarned him of this move and Wellesley was ordered to retract.

It was nearly 30 years later that Lieutenants Ward and Connor of the Madras Army were assigned to the Great Trigonometrical Survey, located the mountain peaks of the High Range, and in particular, the Anaimudi and the Chokanad.

In 1878, Henry Gribble Turner and his half-brother A.W. Turner (Thambi Turner), both ICS officers, came on vacation from Madras and reached the mountains by the Bodimettu pass. Guided by the Muthuva tribal head Kanan Thevan, Turners eventually reached the summit of the Anaimudi and saw the grandeur of these hills. The commercial advantage of the hills struck them, and before the expedition ended, they obtained a ‘Concession’ of approximately 588 square km from the Poonjar Raja of Anjanad.

On behalf of them, John Daniel Munro, the Scottish designated Superintendent of the Cardamom Hills, related to the former Resident of Travancore-Cochin, John Munro, made an application to the Poonjar chief for the grant of the property called Kanan Thevan Anchanatu Mala on payment of Rs 5000 and obtained from the Raja the first Pooniat Concession Deed.

Smallholders then began to purchase plots of these lands and planted a variety of crops ranging from cinchona to coffee and sisal to tea, and these planters formed the North Travancore Land Planting and Agricultural Society Limited in 1879. The first tea is planted in Parvathi Estate, a part of today’s Sevenmallay Estate, by A. H. Sharp in 1880.

In 1895, Sir John Muir bought over the deeds of the Concession for further development. 

The Kanan Devan Hills Produce Company was formed in 1896 in the Kanan Devan Concession territory. In 1900 the Concession area became vested with the Company, in which Finlay Muir held a large interest, and the area started to develop rapidly along more commercial lines, the main crop becoming tea. Estates outside the Concession territory but within the High Range were owned by the Anglo-American Direct Tea Trading Company, a subsidiary of Finlay Muir & Co. Ltd.

The Kanan Devan Hills Produce Company constructed the first Hydro-electric Power House in  India, at Pullivasal in 1900. In the same year, the Korangani – Top Station ropeway was also established to transport goods from the plains to the Hills and tea to the plains in turn.

By 1915, about 16 fully equipped factories were functioning on the estates. Transport of leaf from the field to the factory was by bullock cart. The Kundaly Valley Ropeway for the transportation of tea and goods was completed 1n 1926 aforRs 7.61 lakhs. The Company started a Veterinary Department in the same year to improve the condition of the cattle in the High Range.

Presently all the archives of the James Finlay Company are with the University of Glasgow, and it contains the personal accounts of the employees which help us visualize the tea estates’ social environment rather than just numerical financial figures.*

Croly Boyd, a Finlay employee in the 1920s, shares his account of the 1924 Kerala floods (2) that caused major loss of life and damage to the high-range tea estates. The devastating aftermath has been documented in a photo album (3) which shows the impact of 3.8 metres of rain over ten days. At first, the storm was mistaken for normal monsoon weather. Boyd and his family were trying to reach Rajamallay Estate for an extended visit to friends; however, they found the roads blocked by a flooding Periyar river. They reached their bungalow much before many landslides destroyed numerous properties.

Major JRS MacKay with Eravikulam trout and Rajoo Thevan, Head Ghillie

Returning to Munnar on foot, Boyd found the estate's factory flooded under several feet of water. Estate workers were trapped in the factory structures having an anxious wait on the roof, in the hopes it could survive the strong currents engulfing it. Boyd would find the main bridges were down and the estate's light railway completely destroyed. All contact had been lost with the opposite side of the Periyar river. In the aftermath, establishing communication and getting a rope over the river was a priority. This was achieved by Chief Engineer Grant, who attached a string to a golf ball and with difficulty drove it across the raging river.

It took around a year to repair the estate and bring it back into full operation. The huge international expanse of James Finlay’s business interests would lead to several encounters with earthquakes, storms and flooding, some are documented within the photographic collections (4) and mentions of the impact on the business can be found in the companies’ minute papers.

Despite the dangers of storms and the long voyage from Scotland to India, this did not deter adventurous individuals such as engineer Josh Walker. Walker is named among the many other employees who were predominantly engaged for work in estates in India and Ceylon. These staff members exported European culture on a grand scale. Staff and their families formed social clubs the same as you would expect to find within Europe. 

The foundation stone of the Christ Church of Munnar was laid on 11 March 1910 by A. K Muir. It was dedicated on Easter day, 16 April 1911 by Bishop Charles Hope-Gill, the third Anglican Bishop in Travancore and Cochin. In January 1927, the marriage of WSS Mackay and Miss John was conducted with a licence because of the plague scare between 1927-1928.

An unexpected document is the Trout of Travancore by W.S.S. MacKay, (5) an account of the establishment of trout in the rivers of Travancore, India. The book is intended to teach the lessons of the many mistakes made during the process and it contains a variety of photographs. The evidence of their success can be found in the minutes of the annual general meetings of the High Range Association.

Finlay’s was described as “going modern” with the replacement of illuminated electric lanterns with white bowls suspended over desks. Intriguingly, an employee WCM Tring noted in his personal notes “Forty Years After,” (6) that the Provident Fund 1938 was designed to increase Finlay’s productivity. This changed the tradition of retaining elder staff for life in favour of funding their retirement.

Apart from Kanan Devan, Munnar will also be remembered in history as the place where the communist government's police killed Pappammal and Rawther, two members of its backbone, the proletariat.

_________________________

*The James Finlay Employees: International Tea Day by Morphew, 15 December 2015

1. Ellsworth Bunker, Global Trouble Shooter, Vietnam Hawk, by Howard B Schaffer, page 67

2.GB 248 UGD 91/1/9/3/5

3.GB 248 UGD 091/1/12/15/21

4.GB 248 UGD 91/1/12/15

5. GB 248 UGD 91/16/8

6.GB 248 UGD 91/1/9/3/6

References: A brief history of tea – Roy Moxham and Finlays Magazine and the Company’s historic archives in the University of Glasgow.

© Ramachandran 

INDIA AND THE CIA PLOT TO KILL ZHOU ENLAI

The Last Survivor Dies

MC Dikshit, who co-piloted the Air India Flight 300 Constellation Kashmir Princess that fell into the sea after a mid-air bomb blast on April 11, 1955, died in Delhi on December 5 at the age of 105 after a prolonged illness. And with him, the world lost the last of the witnesses to a gruesome CIA conspiracy. The Kashmir Princess, a small four-engine propeller-driven Lockheed, was sent by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to take Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai to Jakarta for the historic Bandung conference.

Sporting a Ho Chi Minh beard, the frail Dikshit lived in East Delhi’s Samachar Apartments and shopped in the local market even during his last days.

Even in his sunset days, Dikshit was reluctant to talk about what happened in 1955. However, his colleague Anant S Karnik told the story in a book.

M C Dikshit

The backdrop to the CIA's assassination plot is provided by several political upheavals like China's annexation of Tibet in 1950, the CIA-sponsored flight of Dalai Lama to India, Nehru's subsequent slogan, Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai or "Indians and Chinese are brothers," and the first Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1954-1955.

But the deputy prime minister Vallabhbhai Patel, who was suspicious of Nehru's bonhomie with China, wrote to him in December 1950:

We have to consider what the new situation now faces us as a result of the disappearance of Tibet, as we know it, and the expansion of China up to our gates. Throughout history, we have seldom been worried about our northeast frontier. The Himalayas has been regarded as an impenetrable barrier against threats from the north. We had friendly Tibet which gave us no trouble. The Chinese were divided. They had their domestic problems and never bothered us about our frontiers." (1)

Patel died soon on December 15th and Nehru continued to dovetail China. India officially recognized Chinese sovereignty over Tibet through the 1954 agreement on Trade and Intercourse between India and the Tibet Region of China. But India had in effect recognized Tibet as part of China in September 1952, when it decided to change the status of its mission in Lhasa to that of a Consulate General. 

The preamble of the 1954 agreement included the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence, known as the Panchsheel Treaty. 

But, at the homefront, China was facing a nuclear threat from the U.S. in the aftermath of the first Taiwan Strait Crisis.

Taiwan Strait Crisis

The First Taiwan Strait Crisis was a brief armed conflict between the Communist People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Nationalist Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. The conflict focused on several groups of islands in the Taiwan Strait that were held by the ROC but were located only a few miles from mainland China. The crisis began when the PRC shelled the ROC-held island of Kinmen (Quemoy). Later, the PRC seized the Yijiangshan Islands from the ROC. The ROC then abandoned the Tachen Islands (Dachen Islands), which were evacuated by the navies of the ROC and the US.

In August 1954, the Nationalists placed 58,000 troops on Kinmen and 15,000 troops on Matsu. The ROC began building defensive structures and the PRC began shelling ROC installations on Kinmen. Zhou Enlai responded with a declaration on 11 August 1954, that Taiwan must be "liberated." He dispatched the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to the area, and it began shelling both Kinmen and the Matsu Islands.

Despite warnings from the U.S. against any attacks on the Republic of China; five days before the signing of the Manila pact, the PLA unleashed a heavy artillery bombardment of Kinmen on September 3, during which two American military advisers were killed. In November, the PLA bombed the Tachen Islands. This renewed Cold War fears of Communist expansion in Asia at a time when the PRC was not recognized by the U.S. Chiang Kai-shek's government was supported by the U.S. because the ROC was part of the U.S. policy of containment of communism.

On 12 September 1954, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended the use of nuclear weapons against mainland China. President Eisenhower resisted the pressure. However, on 2 December 1954, the U.S. and the ROC agreed to the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, which did not apply to islands along the Chinese mainland.

The PLA seized the Yijiangshan Islands on 18 January 1955. Fighting continued in nearby islands off the coast of Zhejiang, as well as around Kinmen and the Matsu Islands in Fujian. On 29 January, the Formosa Resolution was approved by both houses of the U.S. Congress authorizing Eisenhower to use U.S. forces to defend the ROC and its possessions in the Taiwan Strait against armed attack. The U.S. Navy then assisted the Nationalists in evacuating their forces from the Tachen Islands.

In February, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill warned the U.S. against using nuclear weapons, but in March, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles stated publicly that the U.S. was seriously considering a nuclear strike. In response, the NATO foreign ministers warned at a meeting of the alliance against such action. In late March, U.S. Admiral Robert B. Carney said that Eisenhower is planning "to destroy Red China's military potential. The PRC backed down in the face of American nuclear brinksmanship and in light of the lack of willingness by the Soviet Union to threaten nuclear retaliation for an attack on the PRC.

Filled with internal squabbles, China was weak and Nehru was the champion of the newly independent countries in Asia and Africa. The Panchsheel came to form the basis of the Non-Aligned Movement, which was born when leaders from 29 newly independent Asian and African countries met in the Indonesian resort city of Bandung from April 18 to 24, 1955. 

The previous year, 1954, the US had set up a body to help “direct the thinking” of poor countries on the other side of the world.

American political operatives travelled to Asia to pull together a group called the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, described as a political-military alliance of states to "contain communism". In practice, it was a body designed to foster loyalty to the US and create negative feelings towards groups associated with socialism or communism.

But Indonesia’s Sukarno, leader of the world’s fifth most populous country, responded by organizing a group of home-grown Asian voices: the Bandung Conference. Asian leaders who signed up to attend the Indonesian meeting were in favour of a doctrine of neutralism as the logical default position of the developing world.

From the US administration’s point of view, neutralism was unacceptable. The antipathy of CIA deputy director Frank Wisner towards Sukarno and Zhou Enlai was well known. Asia contained more than 50 per cent of the world’s population – it was unthinkable that it should lean toward socialism or communism.

In the allied-US territory of Taiwan, leaders feared that Zhou Enlai’s peace initiatives (including the cultivating of good relationships with British leaders, such as Hong Kong’s Governor Alexander Grantham) meant that it had become conceivable that China would one day join the United Nations. That had to be prevented.

Amidst its fruit orchards, Dutch-built canals, and colonial bungalows, it was Indonesia's Sukarno who played host to an array of leaders, including the mercurial Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, Egypt's firebrand Prime Minister Gamal Abdul Nasser, Sir John Kotelawala of Ceylon, Pakistan's Prime Minister Muhammad Ali Bogra, and Burma's Premier U Nu. 

China's Zhou Enlai was also there, invited at Nehru's insistence.

The explosion inside

In view of the security threat to the Chinese PM Zhou Enlai, Nehru had offered to ferry him and his delegation in the Air India aeroplane, Kashmir Princess, from Hongkong to Jakarta to attend the Bandung conference, from April 18 to 24, 1955. 

The plane took off on the night of April 11, 1955, from Hong Kong's Kai Tuk Airport, but without Zhou Enlai and his senior colleagues. China had gotten wind of the CIA plot. But, Li Hing, in The Truth Behind the Kashmir Princess Incident, records that Zhou had delayed his travel due to health reasons. (2) Xinhua reported in 2005 that Zhou was forced to change his schedule for an appendicitis excision.

Five hours after the takeoff, Kashmir Princess exploded at a height of 18,000 feet. Around 09:25 GMT, while cruising at FL180, a muffled explosion was heard and smoke entered the cabin. 

An instant later, the pilots saw flames streaming from behind the number three engine on the right wing. Smoke began to fill the cockpit. As the captain shut down and feathered the number three engine, he saw too that the fire warning light for the baggage compartment was illuminated.

A fire in the cargo hold, a fire on the wing, and smoke in the cockpit were extraordinary, life-threatening emergencies. As the captain pointed the plane’s nose down toward the sea, he hoped to ditch the plane into the water so that the survivors could escape in life rafts. A distress call was transmitted, declaring the airliner’s position over the Natuna Islands, in Indonesia.

Moments later, the radio went dead as the electrical system in the aeroplane began to fail, along with other critical systems as the fire spread below.

During the descent hydraulic failure occurred, followed by an electrical failure. A ditching was planned, but dense smoke entered the cockpit. The aircraft struck the water's surface with the right wingtip and crashed. Rescuers arriving at the scene discovered that it had broken into three parts on impact.

Kashmir Princess

Sixteen persons, including the crew, were killed as the smoke-filled plane nose-dived into the South China Sea near Natuna island. Three crew members — co-pilot M C Dikshit, flight navigator J C Pathak, and mechanical engineer A S Karnik — survived the crash. They kept themselves afloat on the South China Sea for 12 hours before Indonesian fishermen rescued them the next day. A British warship took them safely to Singapore.

All except three crew members — Dikshit, Pathak and Karnik — were killed. Captain D K Jatar remained in his seat and supervised the rescue operations. Air hostess Gloria Berry kept her calm and distributed seat belts to the passengers risking her own life. Jatar and air hostess Gloria Berry courageously saved the passengers from the falling plane.

Gloria Berry had pleaded with Jatar for him to jump and save his own life, but he knew that this was his plane to man till the end and as the duty of a pilot he did that without hesitation. Gloria remained with him till the end. When the wreckage of the aircraft was recovered during the investigation, Jatar’s body was found slumped on his chair in the cockpit.

Jatar and Gloria were awarded the Ashok Chakra, posthumously. They were the first civilians to be posthumously awarded the Ashoka Chakra.

Three members of the Chinese conference delegation, five Chinese journalists, one member of the Vietnamese delegation, one Polish journalist and one Austrian journalist died in the crash.

Three journalists were from the Xinhua news agency: Shen Jiantu, Huang Zuomei and Li Ping. Shen, who died at the age of 40, was the eldest, while Li was only 26.

The dead included a war hero, Raymond Wong Chok-Mui, who worked for the Chinese and the British against invading Japanese soldiers in the 1940s.

The passengers were a decoy delegation of lesser cadres, according to a research paper, Target Zhou Enlai: The Kashmir Princess Incident of 1955 by Steve Tsang. The flight had been chartered by China.

Back in Delhi, Nehru invited the three survivors to Teen Murti House. But they politely declined any special honours.

The CIA-Taiwan plot

In July 2005, China declassified the records relating to the CIA conspiracy. It revealed that four days before the blast, on April 7, Zhou had changed his plans and decided to accept Burmese leader U Nu’s invitation to fly him from Rangoon to Jakarta. Zhou left China three days after the crash and flew to Rangoon. Nehru and Egypt’s Kamal Abdul Nasser also joined the team, from Rangoon to Bandung. However, the change in the flight was kept a secret with a view to confusing the U.S.

The de-classified Chinese documents revealed that Zhou Enlai had been tipped off about the upcoming bombing of the Kashmir Princess. Rather than cancel the flight and lodge a protest, he had assigned lower-level Chinese cadre officials onto the aeroplane as well as a set of journalists, as their presence would result in wider press coverage.

Three days later, Zhou would emerge in Jakarta, riding a wave of positive press coverage.

The full evaluation of the events determined that an explosion had taken place in the plane’s wheel. That, in turn, had ignited fires in the baggage compartment and on the right wing. The most obvious explanation was a bomb mixed in with the passenger bags.

To the investigators, it made no sense for one of the passengers to have brought a bomb on board in a suicidal bid to down the plane. The fact that originally Zhou Enlai was supposed to have been on board was strong circumstantial evidence pointing to an assassination attempt, but by whom? 

Interviews were conducted with all of the ground crew, fuel truck staff and baggage handlers who might have had access to the plane at its points of origin as well as in Hong Kong, where the flight had made a stop en route to Jakarta. All of the personnel checked out and were proven to be innocent, except for one Hong Kong janitor working for an airport contractor. Quite simply, the man who investigators had originally identified as the lowly janitor, Chow Tse-Ming, was missing.

Zhou with Nehru in Bandung

China’s investigations showed that the plot was masterminded by the CIA but executed by Kuomintang agents in Hong Kong. Chow, 34, a cleaner of Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company (HAECO) at the airport and a drug addict, had planted the explosive — a US-made MK-7 detonator — in the wheels of the aircraft. In the middle of the investigations by the British administration of Hong Kong, Chow was flown to safety in Taipei in an aeroplane owned by a CIA-funded firm.

Chow Tse-Ming was an alias; in fact, two other aliases for the same man were also uncovered. He used the name Chow Tse-ming in Cantonese and Zhou Ju in Mandarin. As well, in the days leading up to the bombing and crash of the plane, Chow had been spending a lot of money around Hong Kong.

Finally, his disappearance from Hong Kong was finally traced to him having departed quietly, hidden in the luggage compartment of a Civil Air Transport (CAT) flight to Taiwan. CAT was a frequent CIA contract air carrier, though it also flew other airline operations and cargo flights around the region. CAT was set up in Delaware to serve US interests in East Asia.

Wreckage of Kashmir Princess in sea

Indonesian investigators reported that amidst the wreckage, they had identified an American-made MK-7 detonator device. The British-run Hong Kong police surmised that it seemed likely that the man was an agent of the Kuomintang’s intelligence operations arm, a theory which the Chinese also felt had validity — undoubtedly, the CIA had supplied MK-7 triggers to Taiwan.

Li Hong writes that deeply grieved by the crash, Zhou Enlai personally oversaw efforts to crack the case, dispatching trusted intelligence officer Xiong Xianghui to Hong Kong as his liaison with other intelligence outfits. (2) In June 1956, British authorities in Hong Kong arrested 44 Chiang Kai-shek spies, who were all expelled from the territory, and thus set free. On August 4, Zhou lodged a formal complaint with British authorities, saying "the British government still bears an inescapable international responsibility.

Zhou Enlai made enormous efforts to expose the destructive US-Taiwan plot. The Chinese Premier, in his talks with Henry Kissinger in 1971, described the incident of Kashmir Princess thus:(3)

When I went to the Bandung Conference in 1955 I almost lost my life. At that time we chartered an Indian plane, the “Kashmir Princess” from Hong Kong. Because Prime Minister U Nu wanted me to go with him, I went to Burma. He asked Nehru and Nasser to go with him and I changed my route at the last minute while the others went via Hong Kong. The saboteurs thought I was on the “Kashmir Princess” and set a time bomb on the plane. Just as the “Kashmir Princess” was about to reach Bandung, it exploded in mid-air and crashed into the sea.

India, together with authorities in Hong Kong, investigated the bombing. We have evidence that the bomb was placed by a Chinese who was brought over to Hong Kong, and I convinced the Indian Commissioner to go directly with our people to Hong Kong and demand from the Hong Kong authorities that they arrest that man. But such news leaks out, and the Indian told his Embassy, and just as we got to Hong Kong, that man flew to Taiwan.

In the years that followed, the Chinese asked the Nixon White House twice about the events of the plane’s bombing and whether the CIA had been involved, expecting that perhaps the attempt had been a joint CIA-KMT operation. In response to the second request, Kissinger quietly noted that the Chinese thought far too highly of the CIA’s actual abilities. Ultimately, the evidence was compelling but not conclusive that the Kuomintang Government of Taiwan had attempted to assassinate Zhou Enlai.

Kao reveals the plot

India deputed R N Kao to investigate the crash of the Kashmir Princess. Kao later became the founding chief of the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW).

Born in the holy city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh in 1918 to a Kashmiri Hindu Pandit family who migrated from Srinagar, Rameshwar Nath Kao joined the Indian Imperial Police, after clearing the civil services examination, in 1940. After completing the Master's degree in English Literature at Allahabad University, Kao, for a while, took up a job in a cigarette company floated by Pandit Jag Mohan Narain Mushran, the then Chief Justice of the Benaras State.  

As a police officer, his first posting was in Kanpur as an Assistant Superintendent of Police. Kao was deputed to the Intelligence Bureau (IB) on the eve of Independence when it was being reorganised under B.N. Mullick. He was put in charge of VIP security, which included the task of looking after the security ring of  Nehru. Sometime in the late 1950s, he was sent to Ghana to help the then government of prime minister Kwame Nkrumah set up an intelligence and security organisation there. But it was the Kashmir Princess investigation that made the reclusive Kao, a hero.

The three survivors, including Dikshit, were crucial to the investigation. The details of Kao's investigation have been recorded in a book, The War That Made R &AW by Anusha Nandakumar and Sandeep Saket.

At the Chinese premier’s office in Beijing, Kao’s one-on-one briefing with Zhou Enlai was held behind closed doors. Even though Kao was determined to be the neutral investigator on the case, Zhou advanced theories of a Taiwanese conspiracy behind the crash and urged Kao to expedite the investigation process and submit his findings.

Xinhua journalists who died in the crash

Over several months, Kao worked doggedly in collaboration with the Chinese, Hong Kong and British police to unravel the threads of the conspiracy. The investigation took him to Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong and China.

His patience and rigour finally paid off in September 1955. A clear picture had started emerging of the events that had occurred on the day of the Kashmir Princess crash. Realising that he had finished his probe, Kao sent an official message to Zhou Enlai with his investigative results. In Beijing, Zhou immediately sent for Kao.

In a detailed briefing, Kao told Zhou how his investigation had led him to Chow Tse-Ming or Chow Chu. A Taiwanese national working as a member of the ground maintenance crew of the Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company, Chow had agreed to place a time bomb—a weapon of choice in those days—in the Kashmir Princess. In return, he was promised a reward of 6,00,000 Hong Kong dollars, by a Taiwanese spy named Wu Yi-chin. He guaranteed Chow's escape to Taiwan, a place from which he could not be extradited, and where he could live out his days as a king on his huge pot of wealth.

Chow had been in Hong Kong since 1950, and gambling debts made him a receptive target. He would be part of the crew performing routine maintenance on Zhou Enlai’s plane, meaning he’d have a window of opportunity to plant an explosive on board.

On April 11, Kashmir Princess arrived in Hong Kong from Bangkok around noon and spent nearly 90 minutes on the ground at Kai Tak. Luggage — 37 pieces — were loaded onto the place, supervised carefully by CTS. During that time, while part of the crew was performing its scheduled maintenance, chow placed a time bomb in the aircraft’s starboard wheel well.

The mastermind behind the plot was Chiang Kaishek, the ousted Chinese leader, who had gone on to become the ruler of Taiwan. Kai-shek was plotting to kill Zhou Enlai, and when it was publicly known that he would be taking a chartered flight from Hong Kong to attend the Bandung Conference, he made his move. The Kashmir Princess crash was the result of this ongoing political rivalry between China and Taiwan.

Captain D K Jatar

Zhou Enlai was impressed with Kao’s investigation, including the dexterity of his mediations between the colonial government in Hong Kong and the communist government in mainland China. Zhou rewarded Kao with his coveted personal seal, an honour reserved for the most deserving public servants in the Chinese republic.

The US confession

From the very beginning, the U.S. had viewed the Bandung conference as a Soviet ploy against it. Three months before the conference, in January, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles set up a working group which included intelligence outfits and diplomats to keep a tab on what was seen as an anti-US line-up.

At the time, the West viewed the Bandung Conference as a gathering of communists and pro-communists that would boost the expansion of communism in Asia. The CIA believed that China planned to use the conference to boost its image as a world power. Although the CIA sent several agents posing as journalists to cover the conference, evidence suggests that some CIA officers might have taken a further role in the action.

In 1975, a U.S. Senate committee heard testimony about CIA activities in East Asia in the 1950s and CIA officers revealed the plot to assassinate an East Asian leader “to disrupt an impending Communist [sic] Conference in 1955.” That leader’s identity would remain unknown until 1977, when William Corson, a retired U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in Asia, published Armies of Ignorance, identifying that leader as Zhou Enlai.

CIA agent John Discoe Smith, working in India, defected to the Soviet Union, on October 24, 1967. He accounted for many of his operations in his memoirs, I Was a CIA Agent in India, including his delivery of a mysterious bag to a KMT agent. He says that in 1955, Jack Curran, a CIA officer attached to the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, asked him to deliver a bag to one Wang Feng at the Maidens Hotel in the Indian capital. Smith claimed that the bag contained the bomb used to sabotage Kashmir Princess. Curran told him to be careful, as the suitcase contained explosive devices—for use in Hong Kong.

The book reveals that Smith had spent 1954 to 1959 in India working as a communications technician and code clerk at the US Embassy in New Delhi. This involved routinely performing tasks for the CIA.

Between June 1954 and January 1957, Zhou paid four visits to India, and in October 1954, Nehru flew to Beijing, where he met not only Zhou but also Mao. It was the first visit by the head of a non-communist government since the creation of the People's Republic of China. According to New York Times, "The six miles between city and airport were walled by unbroken banks of humanity, clapping, cheering and crying the inescapable Chinese slogan, "Long live peace."

So, China raising the question of the annexation of Taiwan time and again, is not without substance. The Kashmir Princess incident reminds us that not too long ago, the fighting between the two sides was not limited to words and worry, but included very real attacks, attempted high-level assassination, spycraft, and murder.

Tail end:

Interestingly, former flight engineer A.S. Karnik, 82, received a cheque for 50,000 rupees ($8,800) in 2005 from the Chinese ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi. Karnik approached the Chinese embassy in September last year after the Indian government failed to pay him the monthly allowance it promised for his bravery in 1972.

Captain D K Jatar, who piloted Kashmir Princess, is a part of Indian aviation history-Air India's maiden international flight was captained by K R Guzdar and D K Jatar. On June 8, 1948, Malabar Princess, a 40- seater Lockheed L-749 Constellation flew over 8407 km from Mumbai to London via Cairo and Geneva. It carried 35 passengers, including JRD Tata.

On arrival in Taiwan, Chow Tse-ming, the man who planted the bomb, was arrested at Taipei airport as an illegal immigrant. Taiwan officials told him that he was going to be sent back to British Hong Kong.

But at the last moment, someone had a word with immigration officers and Chow was allowed to disappear into the Taiwanese population. He lived out his years as a rich man in Taiwan.

The incident suggests that the heinous crime involving the Indian aircraft was being supervised by the larger power, which still guides Taiwan.

__________________

1. Quoted in Bertil Lintner, China's India War, Page 14

2. Selected Essays on the History of Contemporary China, Brill, 2015

3. Office of the Historian, Government of the United States. 162. Memorandum of Conversation. Beijing, October 21, 1971. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XVII, China, 1969-1972. Retrieved from: Office of the Historian, United States Department of State (https://history.state.gov/).

© Ramachandran 

MYSTERY BEHIND THE DEATH OF SHASTRI AND HOMI BHABHA

The shocking details revealed in a book

Robert Crowley, the second-in-command of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations (in charge of covert operations), had revealed that the CIA killed India’s Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and nuclear physicist Homi Jehangir Bhabha. Both were killed in January 1966, within a gap of just 13 days.

Shastri died in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (then the Soviet Union) on 11 January 1966, one day after signing a peace treaty to end the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War.

Bhabha died when Air India Flight 101 named Kanchenjunga, crashed near Mont Blanc on 24 January 1966.

The revelation comes in a 2013 book titled Conversation With The Crow by Gregory Douglas. This was released as an e-book today.

Shastri with Bhabha

On 8 October 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA's Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer's Disease.

Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also known as the “Department of Dirty Tricks”.

Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA.

They began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. Douglas became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some or all of the material in later publications.

In the book, which has been recorded as conversations, Crowley says: “Was, Gregory, let’s use the past tense if you please. The name was Homi Bhabha. That one was dangerous, believe me. He had an unfortunate accident. He was flying to Vienna to stir up more trouble when his 707 had a bomb go off in the cargo hold and they all came down on a high mountain way up in the Alps. No real evidence and the world was much safer.”

To a question by Douglas, was Bhabha alone on the plane? Crowley replied: “No, it was a commercial Air India flight.”

Crowley continued: “Then don’t worry about it. We could have blown it up over Vienna but we decided the high mountains were much better for the bits and pieces to come down on. I think a possible death or two among mountain goats is much preferable than bringing down a huge plane right over a big city.” 

Crowley also claimed: “Well, I call it as I see it. At the time, it was our best shot. And we nailed Shastri as well. Another cow-loving raghead”.

This disparaging remark about Shastri underlines the fact that the US never liked Hindu nationalists; they always batted for pseudo-secularists like Nehru. Shastri was a Sanskrit scholar from Benares Hindu University.

Crowley told Douglas: “Gregory, you say you don’t know about these people. Believe me, they were close to getting a bomb and so what if they nuked their deadly Paki enemies? So what? Too many people in both countries. Breed like rabbits and full of snake-worshipping twits. I don’t for the life of me see what the Brits wanted in India. And then threaten us? They were in the sack with the Russians, I told you. Maybe they could nuke the Panama Canal or Los Angeles. We don’t know that for sure, but it is not impossible.”

When Douglas asked who Shastri was, Crowley said, “A political type who started the program in the first place. Bhabha was a genius and he could get things done, so we aced both of them.”

“And we let certain people there know that there was more where that came from. We should have hit the chinks, too, while we were at it, but they were a tougher target. Did I tell you about the idea to wipe out Asia’s rice crops? We developed a disease that would have wiped rice off the map there and it’s their staple diet. The fu***ng rice growers here got wind of it and raised such a stink we canned the whole thing. The theory was that the disease could spread around and hurt their pocketbooks. If the Mao people invade Alaska, we can tell the rice people it’s all their fault,” Crowley said.

“The only thing the Communists understand is brute force. India was quieter after Bhabha croaked. We could never get to Mao but at one time, the Russians and we were discussing the how and when of the project. Oh yes, sometimes we do business with the other side. Probably more than you realize,” Crowley said.

India's nuclear programme

In August 1947, the partition of British India created the independent Republic of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. Shortly afterwards, a group of Indian scientists led by physicist Homi Bhabha—sometimes called “the Indian Oppenheimer”—convinced Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to invest in the development of nuclear energy. The subsequent 1948 Atomic Energy Act created the Indian Atomic Energy Commission “to provide for the development and control of atomic energy and purposes connected therewith”

In its early stages, the Indian nuclear program was primarily concerned with developing nuclear energy rather than weapons. Nehru, who called the bomb a “symbol of evil,” was adamant that India’s nuclear program pursue only peaceful applications. Nehru nonetheless left the door open to weapons development when he noted, “Of course, if we are compelled as a nation to use it for other purposes, possibly no pious sentiments of any of us will stop the nation from using it that way.” India also opposed the United States Baruch Plan, which proposed the international control of nuclear energy, because it “sought to prohibit national research and development in atomic energy production.”

Serious development did not start until 1954 when construction began on the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) at Trombay. Essentially the Indian equivalent to Los Alamos, BARC served as the primary research facility for India’s nuclear program. This period also saw a massive increase in government spending on atomic research and heightened efforts for international scientific collaboration. In 1955, Canada agreed to provide India with a nuclear reactor based on the National Research Experimental Reactor (NRX) at Chalk River. The United States also agreed to provide heavy water for the reactor under the auspices of the “Atoms for Peace” program. The Canada India Reactor Utility Services—more commonly known by its acronym, CIRUS—went critical in July 1960. Although billed as peaceful, CIRUS produced most of the weapons-grade plutonium used in India’s first nuclear test.

Crowley

Although tension with Pakistan was later a contributing factor to India’s nuclear weapons program, it was actually the conflict with China that first prompted India to build an atomic bomb. In October 1962, a war broke out between the two countries over a disagreement regarding the Himalayan border. India appealed to both the Soviet Union and the United States for assistance, but the two superpowers were at the time distracted by the ongoing Cuban Missile Crisis. The month-long Sino-Indian War ended in victory for China and humiliation for India.

China also tested its first atomic bomb in October 1964, heightening the need for a nuclear deterrent in the eyes of some Indian officials. Homi Bhabha, for example, urged the Indian government to approve an atomic bomb program, arguing in one speech that “atomic weapons give a State possessing them in adequate numbers a deterrent power against attack from a much stronger State.” Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was opposed to the bomb, but Bhabha convinced him that India could use nuclear weapons for peaceful purposes, such as engineering. According to Bhabha, India was not developing nuclear weapons, but “peaceful nuclear explosions” (PNEs). Shastri, for his part, affirmed, “I do not know what may happen later, but our present policy is not to make an atom bomb and it is the right policy”.

During this period, Bhabha frequently appealed to the United States to support Indian PNEs through its Project Plowshare program. In February 1965, Bhabha visited Washington, DC to pitch the idea of nuclear cooperation. He met with Under Secretary of State George Ball, who reported, “Dr Bhabha explained that if India went all out, it could produce a device in 18 months; with a U.S. blueprint it could do the job in six months”. Although the accuracy of this statement was debatable, it was clear that Bhabha badly wanted the bomb. In the end, however, the United States decided against nuclear cooperation with India.

The year 1966 saw significant changes in the Indian nuclear program. In January, Prime Minister Shastri died of a heart attack and Indira Gandhi—the daughter of former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and a strong proponent of nuclear weapons—took his place. Less than two weeks later, Homi Bhabha died in a plane crash. Physicist Raja Ramanna, who worked under Bhabha beginning in 1964, was named the new head of BARC and was the principal designer of India’s first nuclear device.

Thus, 1966 was a decisive year for India and the immediate beneficiary of the murder of Shastri was Indira Gandhi.

While CIA drug running, money-launderings and brutal assassinations are very often strongly rumoured and suspected, it has so far not been possible to actually pin them down but it is more than possible that the publication of the transcribed and detailed Crowley-Douglas conversations will do a great deal towards accomplishing this.

The claims made by Crowley sound believable as Bhabha had announced over the radio in October 1965, just months before his death, that India could build its own nuclear bomb in 18 months. However, the CIA did not succeed in stopping India from becoming a nuclear power as India went on to test its first atomic bomb code-named "smiling Buddha" at Rajasthan's Pokharan on 18 May 1974.

Crowley co-authored The New KGB: Engine of Soviet Power with William R. Corson. Released in 1985, the book asserts that the KGB took control of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. He was a source for David Wise's 1992 book Molehunt.

Reference:

Bhatia, Vandana. "Change in the U.S. Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Toward India (1998–2005): Accommodating the Anomaly." University of Alberta (Canada), 2012.

Perkovich, George. “Bhabha's quest for the bomb.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 56, no. 3 (May/June 2000): 54-63.

Reed, Thomas C. and Danny B. Stillman. The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation. Minneapolis, MN: Zenith Press, 2009

© Ramachandran