Story behind ‘treason' charge against Morarji Desai & why Congress is reviving it to target Jaishankar

The Print

23-05-2025

The purported incident dates back to Desai's tenure as the prime minister between 1977 and 1979, leading the Janata Party government formed in the aftermath of the Emergency imposed by former prime minister Indira Gandhi.
It was this flattery and friendship that had led Desai to reveal that India was aware of Pakistan's covert attempts at developing military nuclear capability, the book titled The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane had alleged.
New Delhi: A 2007 book by a former Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) officer B. Raman had claimed that to flatter India's Morarji Desai, Pakistan's General Zia-ul-Haq would ask, 'Excellency, how many times one should drink the urine in a day? Should it be the first urine of the morning or can it be any time of the day?'
These allegations against Desai have now resurfaced, with India coming fresh out of a flare-up with Pakistan. In accusing External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar of doing something 'eerily similar to what Morarji did', Congress Kerala's X handle refers to this book in making these claims against the former prime minister, alleging that the aftermath of Desai's disclosure was that 'several RAW agents were captured, executed or vanished'. Raman's book does not speak of such repercussions.
Responding to the allegations, Desai's great-grandson and national vice president of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, Advocate Madhukeshwar Desai points to the fact that Morarji Desai was India's first non-Congress prime minister and challenged Indira Gandhi multiple times. This, he asserts, 'remains a historical sore point for the Congress party, which has long treated the office of prime minister as the exclusive preserve of one family'.
'Any leader who emerges from outside that lineage—whether Morarji Desai, Lal Bahadur Shastri, P.V. Narasimha Rao, or even Manmohan Singh—inevitably finds their legacy either diminished, sidelined or tarnished by Congress leaders,' he told ThePrint.
'Treason'
At the centre of this furore are Jaishankar's remarks about a 'message' by New Delhi to Islamabad at the 'start' of Operation Sindoor that it was targeting terrorist infrastructure, and not military bases. Citing these remarks, the Congress earlier this week alleged 'treason' on the part of the minister, alleging that he had acted as an 'informant' for Pakistan.
The Ministry of External Affairs has called this 'misrepresentation of facts'. However, Congress media and publicity department chairperson Pawan Khera went on to draw comparisons, and recalled a 'history of such espionage involving Pakistan'.
'Turn back the pages of history and consider what Morarji Desai, who was made the PM by the Janata Party and Jana Sangh, did. Recorded history shows that on a telephone call with (Pakistan's military dictator) Zia-Ul-Haq, Desai had passed on information on RAW's infrastructure in Pakistan. That was the undoing of decades of work,' Khera was quoted as saying. 'What he did was a sin, a crime. What Jaishankar did is also a sin. And the PM's silence is a sin as well.'
However, Madhukeshwar asserts that the comments are 'baseless and driven purely by political motives'.
'These allegations, revived from the misinterpretation of a 2007 book by a former R&AW officer, have never been substantiated by any credible evidence,' he said, adding that no formal inquiry or independent assessment has ever supported the notion that the former prime minister compromised Indian intelligence or national security.
Also Read: Congress revives Morarji 'treason' charge to attack Jaishankar over Op Sindoor 'message' to Pakistan
'Indiscreet political leaders'
While there isn't a lot of official documentation on the claim, the book by Raman, former head of R&AW's Counter-Terrorism Division, details the efforts taken by the agency's Science and Technology Division to establish details of Pakistan's clandestine military nuclear programme.
This S&T Division had first discovered that Pakistan was secretly constructing a uranium enrichment plant at Kahuta, in addition to a plutonium reprocessing plant. This was done through 'brilliant analysis' of tit bits of technical intelligence collected by the monitoring division of the intelligence agency.
According to Raman, Desai had told Zia that he was aware of Pakistan's clandestine attempts to develop nuclear capability in a conversation. 'Indiscreet political leaders are the unavoidable occupational hazards of the intelligence profession,' the book asserts.
Commentators have claimed that this allegedly led to several of R&AW's assets in Pakistan being compromised. However, there does not seem to be any official documentation or inquiry on this.
Desai often spoke of his attempts at maintaining friendly relations with General Zia. In his acceptance speech of Nishan-e-Pakistan—the country's highest civilian honour—in 1991, he mentions one such conversation. According to a newspaper report from the time, Desai had recalled that when he was the Prime Minister, he had told Zia: 'If you have any trouble, you come to me, and whenever I have any trouble, I shall come to you—we need not go to the army'.
Nishan-e-Pakistan
The 'Nishan-e-Pakistan' further muddled the conspiracy theories against Desai. The conferment of the award, which roughly means 'the ultimate symbol of Pakistan', was announced on 14 August, 1988—Pakistan's independence day.
However, the award was kept in abeyance for several reasons—from the controversy it had thrown up in India, to President Zia's death in an aircrash days after the award was announced, according to reports from the time.
Desai had recognised it as a gesture of goodwill towards the people of India by the people of Pakistan. However, it had drawn sharp reactions from the Congress at the time.
A report by the The Indian Express from 17 August, 1988 talks about the All India Congress Committee-I opining that Desai's acceptance of the award was unconstitutional, referring to Article 18(2) of the Constitution, which says, 'No citizen of India shall accept any title from any foreign State'.
Then AICC-I general secretary K.N. Singh and MP R.L. Bhatia had said that it was expected that Desal would reject the title 'with contempt it deserves', pointing out that the Pakistan president had been aiding terrorists in Punjab and indulging in hostility.
'Mr Singh and Mr Bhatia said that Mr Desai's acceptance of the title confirmed the 'suspicion' that the belated offer was linked with internal turmoil in Pakistan and the emergence once again of an opportunistic anti-Congress Janata type alliance in India,' the news report said.
The award was formally conferred on Desai only in 1991 in a simple ceremony held in Bombay. Abdul Sattar, then Pakistani high commissioner to India, had said that the award was in recognition of Desai's contribution to promotion of good neighbourly relations between India and Pakistan.
Also Read: Morarji Desai scolded Vajpayee for drinking alcohol. He was India's puritan PM
'Petty beyond belief'
However, Desai's actions also found support.
K.R. Malkani, the former editor of Organiser and a senior BJP and RSS leader, had written to The Times of India that Pakistan had 'honoured itself' in honouring Desai, and lauded Desai's foreign policy as 'a great success'. He had even written, 'We should hope we both trust more and more leaders on the other side of the Radcliffe Line.'
This is documented in the book The People Next Door: The Curious History of India's Relations with Pakistan, authored by T.C.A. Raghavan, former high commissioner to Pakistan.
An editorial in The Indian Express from 20 August, 1988, titled 'Petty beyond belief', had then called out the Congress's reaction to the award. It saw the award as a kind of 'tit-for-tat', speculating the reasons behind the conferment of the award.
'At worse, Gen Zia did not take kindly to the conferment on the Pakistani opposition leader, the late Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, of the Indian award of Bharat Ratna and sought only to pay New Delhi in kind,' it said, adding that the statement issued by Congress (I) leaders 'implicitly casting doubts on Mr Desai's patriotism is petty beyond belief'.
Desai's great-grandson Madhukeshwar asserts that it was in recognition of his 'unwavering dedication to peace' that he was awarded the Nishan-e-Pakistan.
'Morarji Bhai was a lifelong Gandhian, who believed deeply in truth, non-violence, and peaceful coexistence. His commitment to these values was reflected not only in his personal life, but also in his politics. His efforts to improve relations with Pakistan were reflective of this,' he told ThePrint.
'Far from being an indictment, this underscored his Gandhian statesmanship and his courageous pursuit of regional stability at a time when dialogue was politically unpopular. To twist this into an allegation of betrayal is deeply disingenuous.'
He added that the contributions of leaders like Desai, 'who upheld democratic values, championed civil liberties, and governed with integrity, deserve respect, not cheap attacks'.
'CIA informant'
However, this is not the only allegation against Desai. A 1983 book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh had called Desai a 'paid CIA informant'.
The book, titled The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, had alleged that Desai was paid $20,000 a year by the Central Intelligence Agency for information, and was considered a valuable 'asset' to the US government during the administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.
Desai had called the allegations 'sheer madness' and a 'scandalous and malicious lie', and dragged Hersh to a US court. Reports from the time peg the lawsuit at anywhere between $5 million to $100 million suit for libel.
In August 1983, he lost an attempt at the Bombay High Court to stop the distribution of the book in India, with the judge only asking distributors to add a disclaimer on the title page of each copy, mentioning that the distributors 'have no reason to believe that the statements (relating to Desai) are true'.
Meanwhile, the US trial saw Desai's lawyers subpoenaing former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, who submitted that Desai was not a CIA agent, 'to the best of my knowledge'.
According to archived news reports from the time, Hersh's lawyer had claimed that the journalist's claim was based on consistent information received from half-a-dozen 'high level' government sources. In the libel lawsuit, Desai had to show not only that Hersh's claims were false, but also that he either knew it to be false, or wrote it in reckless disregard for the truth.
In October 1989, a jury in Chicago ruled in favour of Hersh, in a trial that lasted longer than six years.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
Also Read: Morarji Desai reversed the changes Indira Gandhi made to PMO. Starting with the name