NEW DELHI, India — As India’s parliament convenes for its winter session in late November, the world’s largest democracy is locked in a heated exchange between Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition party led by the Congress Party. I was prepared.
The northeastern state of Manipur is still simmering with ethnic violence that has raged for more than a year, with critics accusing the local Bharatiya Janata Party government of exacerbating it. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth is slowing. And Gautam Adani, one of India’s richest men, is at the center of a corruption indictment in the United States.
But on a cold, gray day in mid-December, Bharatiya Janata Party leaders aimed to push back on opposition criticism by linking Congress to an unlikely villain in their eyes: George Soros. They marched through the parliament grounds holding placards.
Since early 2023, the Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist has emerged as a central target of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s rhetoric, with Soros backing the country’s opposition with the aim of destabilizing India. , has accused him of supporting other Modi critics. These accusations intensified ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections in which the Hindu-majority Bharatiya Janata Party lost its majority for the first time in a decade, but still secured enough seats to form a coalition government.
But the campaign has reached a fever pitch in recent days, with the Bharatiya Janata Party even accusing the US State Department of colluding with Mr Soros to undermine Mr Modi.
In a series of posts on Dec. 5, the BJP said Congress leaders, including opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, have criticized the work of a group of investigative journalists partially funded by Soros’s foundation and the State Department. He posted on X that he used it to target Soros. Modi government on issues related to economy, security and democracy.
The BJP cited an article in French media outlet Mediapart claiming that Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the State Department are funding the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Subsequently, OCCCP’s revelations about the Modi government’s alleged use of Pegasus spyware, an investigation into the activities of the Adani Group, and reports on the decline in religious freedom in India drew attention, with Soros and the Biden administration being substantially behind these reports. suggested that he had done so. .
“The deep state had a clear objective to destabilize India by targeting Prime Minister Modi,” a BJP spokesperson said at a press conference, adding, “The US State Department has always been behind this agenda. “OCCRP has been fulfilling its role as a media outlet.” Tools to carry out the deep state agenda. ”
The comments targeting the State Department surprised many analysts, as the United States is one of India’s closest strategic allies. But some experts say the move is more about domestic political posturing and how the “deep state” is conspiring to undermine democracy, pinning the Modi government against the incoming Trump administration. It is also suggested that the purpose is to conform to the claims of
“The instrumentalization of Western criticism into a domestic political platform represents a fairly new phenomenon in Modi’s India,” said political researcher Asim Ali. This represents an effort to build a narrative of “a confrontation between a ‘Western-backed coalition’ and a ‘nationalist coalition supported by the people,'” he said.
“Easy target”
In January 2023, US-based forensic financial investigation firm Hindenburg alleged in a report that Adani Group was involved in a “decades-long scheme of brazen stock price manipulation and accounting fraud.”
After the report was released, Adani Group’s stock price fell by about $112 billion, but recovered in the following days. The company has since continued to further investigate and analyze the conglomerate’s business practices.
The Adani conglomerate denies the allegations. Meanwhile, Hindenburg received a show-cause notice from India’s capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) accusing the group of using non-public information to build a short position in Adani Group. .
But allegations of fraud and corruption have become central to the Congress-led campaign against Mr. Modi and Mr. Adani in India’s upcoming parliamentary elections.
Congress leader Gandhi claimed in Parliament in February 2023 that “government policies are designed to favor the Adani group.” He displayed two photos, one of the prime minister and a billionaire sharing a private jet, and another of Modi taking off on an Adani Group jet for campaigning in the run-up to the 2014 national elections.
In February 2023, Soros intervened in India’s political war over Adani. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, he said the Adani crisis would “significantly weaken” Mr. Modi’s “stranglehold” on the Indian government.
This drew fierce criticism from Modi’s party. The then Union Minister Smriti Irani said the founder of the Open Society Foundations had “expressed malicious intent to interfere in (India’s) democratic process”. India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar described the billionaire as “an old, wealthy, opinionated…dangerous person”.
Al Jazeera has asked the Open Society Foundations for answers to the allegations raised against it by the Bharatiya Janata Party and Modi’s ministers, but has not yet received a response. However, in September 2023, it issued a statement regarding its activities in India, saying, “Since mid-2016, our grant-making activities in India have been limited by government restrictions on funding local NGOs.” .
But Neelanjan Sirkar, a political scientist at the Center for Policy Research (CPR) in New Delhi, said recent criticism of Soros is less about the billionaire than it is about Soros.
“Soros is an easy target. He represents big money, he represents positions critical of Modi, and of course he funds a lot of things,” Sircar said. “But it is not that he is some abstract figure that everyone should hate, but rather his alleged association with a range of social and political actors that the Bharatiya Janata Party seeks to vilify within India. ”
Mr. Modi’s party has stepped up its attacks on Congress and Mr. Soros, trying to portray deep ties between the two since Mr. Adani was recently indicted in the United States over bribery allegations in India that the group has denied. To strengthen its case, the BJP cited Soros’s alleged funding of the Democratic Leaders Forum of Asia and the Pacific (FDL-AP), which is co-chaired by Rahul Gandhi’s mother Sonia Gandhi. “Mr. Soros is not the people of this country and wants to destabilize the country,” said Jagdambika Pal, an MP from the Bharatiya Janata Party.
But the Congress has denied suggestions that it is influenced by foreign forces, saying the Bharatiya Janata Party’s anti-Soros campaign has focused its attention on the Manipur crisis, India’s economic challenges and the U.S. bribery indictment of Adani. He claimed that the purpose was to deflect. scheme.
BJP leader and spokesperson Vijay Chauthaiwala declined a request from Al Jazeera for comment on criticism of the party’s attack on Soros.
Meanwhile, in an official statement, the French media Media Part categorically condemns the instrumentalization of the recently published investigative article on OCCRP in order to serve the political objectives of the Bharatiya Janata Party and attack freedom of the press. ” he said.
anti-soros story
India is not the only country where right-wing movements have targeted Soros, placing the 94-year-old at the center of a global conspiracy.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has accused Soros of trying to push migrants into Europe and is seeking to block Soros’ support for groups in the country through legislation. In the United States, supporters of President-elect Donald Trump have frequently accused Soros, without evidence, of funding Black Lives Matter protests and migrant caravans heading to the United States during the first Trump administration. denounced.
Critics say these plots often have anti-Semitic overtones.
But the campaign in India is different, according to research by Joyojeet Pal, an associate professor at the University of Michigan. Pal told Al Jazeera that an analysis of posts about He said it was found to be focused on the country’s “weakness towards Muslims”. According to this narrative, it in turn leads to “hatred against Hindus,” Pal said.
Pal’s research found that when Soros’s party pushed back against his comments about Adani and Modi, several social media accounts apparently belonging to Bharatiya Janata Party politicians “sent important content” to Soros. It turned out that it was important. “But it was the (pro-Modi) influencers who primarily amplified the content by actively retweeting it and making it viral.”
Pal said presenting Soros as a shadowy puppeteer is “very appealing” to some political movements, saying it “suggests a broader conspiracy” and that his opponents are “intimidated by foreign manipulation.” “This is to show that they are weak enough to need to take orders from others.”
In India, attacks on Soros have moved from social platforms like X and Instagram to WhatsApp chats, and he has increasingly been targeted by BJP spokespeople and party supporters on mainstream television.
As a result, “people know down to the village that there is an entity called Soros targeting India, but no one knows exactly who this person is.” Pal said. “An unknown enemy is much scarier than one that can be seen and assessed.”
“Tone-deaf” or “posture”?
For many observers of Indian foreign relations, the big surprise in recent days has been the Bharatiya Janata Party’s decision to treat the US State Department as a party to an alleged Soros-led conspiracy against the Modi government.
In a media briefing on December 5, Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson and Congressman Samvit Patra said, “50 percent of OCCRP’s funding comes directly from the US State Department… (and) supports deep state policies. It has functioned as a media tool to accomplish this.” .
On December 7, the State Department said the Bharatiya Janata Party’s accusations were “disappointing,” adding that the United States “has long been a champion of press freedom around the world.”
Experts also questioned the Bharatiya Janata Party’s accusations.
“India’s attacks are tone-deaf and out of touch with reality, in the sense that the U.S. State Department appears to be going out of its way to convey its desire to strengthen and deepen ties with India,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute. It looks like there is,” he said. at the Wilson Center, a think tank based in Washington, DC. “That is the exact opposite of the idea of wanting to defame and destabilize the country.”
He said the US government is “leaning back quite a bit to demonstrate how committed we are to partnership with India” in multiple areas, from security, technology and trade to education.
But Kugelman noted that “the central bank’s stance could be geared toward the incoming Trump administration, which is making essentially similar claims against the so-called U.S. deep state.”
Meanwhile, Sircar and Ali both said that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s emphasis on Soros as a villain is, in their view, fundamentally rooted in domestic politics. Ali said Prime Minister Modi wants to use “anti-Western nationalism as an attractive pillar of nationalism in parts of India that are more susceptible to the temptations of Hindu nationalism.”
And in Mr. Soros, India’s ruling party has found a face to put on its dartboard.
