India's main opposition party Sunday called for an investigation into claims made in a new book that the former Soviet Union bribed senior figures of the Indira Gandhi government during the Cold War.
Former KGB senior archivist Vasili Mitrokhin wrote in "The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World" that the spy agency had bought secrets from Indian cabinet ministers and paid them retainers. "It seemed like the entire country was for sale," Mitrokhin quotes then KGB general Olef Kalugnin as saying, describing India as a model for the infiltration of a third world government.
Excerpts were published on the front pages of major Indian newspapers Sunday. The claims were likely to embarrass the ruling coalition headed by the Congress party and supported from the outside by the Communist Party of India - the two alleged recipients of KGB largesse.
"On at least one occasion a secret gift of two million rupees (then about 250,000 dollars) from Moscow to the Congress was personally delivered after midnight," Mitrokhin wrote.
"Another million rupees were given on the same occasion to a newspaper which supported Mrs. Gandhi."
Gandhi ruled India from 1966 to 1984, when she was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in revenge for ordering a raid on the religion's holiest shrine.
The book also alleged that the KGB arranged Gandhi's welcome to the Soviet Union during a personal visit in 1953 and "surrounded her with handsome, attentive male admirers".
The KGB also had subsidised the election campaigns of 21 politicians, including four cabinet ministers, in national polls, according to the excerpts.
One beneficiary was former defence minister V.K. Krishna Menon, who was persuaded to buy Soviet MiGs fighter jets instead of British planes and who had received KGB funding for election expenses in 1962 and 1967, the book alleged.
India's opposition Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party was quick to demand an explanation from the 120-year-old Congress party on Sunday.
"We demand a statement from the Congress," said BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. "These are serious allegations."
But the Congress Party and the communists dismissed the claims.
"This is the version of one person," said Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi. "There is no way of checking of facts as some of the people mentioned are no longer alive. "Such statements are meant for sensationalism and cannot be dignified with a reaction unless there is something specific to comment on."
Communist party spokesman D. Raja called the claims in the book "baseless" and said, "I dismiss it with the contempt that it deserves".
The book suggests the KGB was more successful than the American Central Intelligence Agency in India as it was more adept at exploiting corruption that had become "endemic under Indira's regime".
Mitrokhin defected to Britain from the Soviet Union in 1992 with classified material, the Indian Express reported.
His first book, written with Christopher Andrew, a historian at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, dealt with the KGB network in the West while the sequel deals with the network in the developing world. "The openness of Indias democracy ... combined with a streak of corruption through its media and political system provided numerous opportunities for Soviet intelligence," said one excerpt in the Indian Express newspaper. India was Russia's Cold War ally, and 70 percent of its military supplies come from Moscow. Despite the 1992 break-up of the Soviet Union, Moscow remains New Delhi's closest military ally.