For the record

The Indian Express; Thu Nov 18 2010,

The two “Eyes Only” letters from Jawarharlal Nehru to John F. Kennedy requesting US assistance in the 1962 war with China published in this newspaper on Wednesday had been declassified by Boston’s JFK Library some years ago. Access to their copies had been denied by all relevant US institutions since the ’80s “at the request of the Government of India”. In the public domain now, what threat to national security do these letters pose? Haven’t they rather just added a missing dimension to our patchwork, vacuum-filled narratives of 1962? Neither national security nor the fear of damaging reputations excuses the institutional lethargy in automatically, unthinkingly taking recourse to the “official secrets” clamp on documents that should have been public long ago. The Henderson-Brooks (Brooks-Bhagat) report on the 1962 war, the classified bits of the Nehru papers, the P.N. Haksar papers have been highlighted again and again among documents that need to be accessible for understanding the recent past.

While the Henderson-Brooks account continues to wither in South Block, selective access has sometimes been permitted, as with the Haksar papers. But strictly selective who gets to see and how much access is only a tad better than altogether depriving historians and the public of key resources. Denial of access keeps us from learning from the past, it also perpetuates our assumptions as with 1962 that need scrutiny. Light-years behind best international practice, our Official Secrets Act 1923 would be a curiosity, if not for its power.

The Public Records Act 1993 was sought to be modified to ensure ministries appraised and released papers to the National Archives within a 20-25-year timeframe. Yet a basic declassification mechanism, such as the 30-year rule, is absent; and the RTI Act’s potential to access the archives is untested. Governments around the world have eased declassification, without compromising their national interest. Even China is opening up on the 1962 war. How long can we afford to avoid informed debates about our own past for lack access to extant resources ?