Cong took US money during Indira era: book
PTI
WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI, OCT 11
An allegation that the Congress party took money from the United States during the Indira Gandhi era has been made in a book to be released tomorrow, but the party dismissed the charge as “unsubstantiated and malicious”.
The allegation is contained in the book which is a collection of personal letters and journal entries of former US Senator and Ambassador to India, late Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Moynihan, who was Washington’s envoy to India during the crucial years of 1973 to 1975, refers to the then US Secretary of State Kissinger’s meeting with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 28, 1974 in New Delhi.
In his journal entry, the Ambassador says Kissinger had met the Indian leader alone, except for a few moments when her Principal Secretary P N Dhar was present. “What exactly went on I shall never know, but evidently it went well…”, he writes.
Moynihan nevertheless records that Gandhi began by saying that she assumed that Kissinger wanted to talk about the nuclear explosion conducted by India in May of that year.
“He (Kissinger) said yes, he wanted to talk about the bomb. India had one now…its interest is now to see that others do not get one.”
“Turning to CIA he (Kissinger) said that the United States supported the Congress party. (A fact she must know, in the past having taken our money. He would know that she would know that he would know this),” he writes in the entry.
It is not clear from the book titled “Daniel Patrick Moynihan; A Portrait in Letter of an American Visionary” what is the basis of the Ambassador’s account of the Gandhi-Kissinger meeting since he himself records that he was not present. At one point he uses the expression “if I surmise correctly” about the exchanges between the two leaders.
