Did the Indian government bug Tony Blair? You'd certainly think so if you believe Alastair Campbell, Blair's right hand man and spin-doctor.
Campbell, a blunt speaker, relays the news in his diaries, released this month in Britain. In an entry dated Friday October 5 2001, at the beginning of a couple of days of shuttle diplomacy after the events of September 11, Campbell lets slip that:
"We arrived in Delhi and drove into town. TB (Tony Blair) motioned to the ambassador, asking if the car was bugged. He gave a kind of non-committal no. Then at the hotel our security service guys had found two bugs in TB's bedroom and said they would not be able to move them without drilling the wall, so TB used a different room. We decided against making a fuss. I was given my own valet, Sunil, who just would not leave me alone. He followed me to the gym and I literally had to tell him to disappear. He was waiting at my door when I got back."
A day later Campbell records that Sunil was driving him "bananas". "Everywhere I went he was there. I was beginning to wonder if he had been put there either by the spooks or a paper".
If getting bugged and tailed were not bad enough, it was made worse because Delhi had been desperate for the visit. The British prime minister had to pop over to Pakistan to peer into the soul of Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf before the west would topple the Taliban.
Indian pride would be wounded if New Delhi was left out of South Asian diplomacy - not least because it deprived India of a chance to tell Britain the "truth" about Pakistan.
When the Blair administration was working out its travel plans in early October, Campbell said the British had a real problem with the Indians over prime minister's Blair trip to Pakistan. "(Atal Bihari) Vajpayee (prime minister of India) was on the phone totally adamant that if TB went to Pakistan without visiting India it would be a real disaster for him. He was normally so quiet and soft spoken but there was both panic and a bit of anger in his voice."
These days India is portrayed by neocons and their fellow travellers as the west's best democratic friend in the developing world, a kindred spirit in the fight against mystical fanaticism. Deep down, if Campbell is correct, the truth is the trust level between India and its former colonial master is pretty shallow.
