How George Soros became ‘Enemy Number 1’ in Indian Modi | Narendra Modi News

New Delhi, India – As India’s Parliament convenes for its winter session in late November, the world’s largest democracy braced for a heated debate between Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition, led by the Congress party.

The northeastern state of Manipur is still on fire, after more than a year of ethnic tensions critics have accused the local BJP government of fueling; gross domestic product (GDP) growth has slowed; and one of India’s richest men, Gautam Adani, is at the center of a corruption case in the United States.

But on a cold and gray day in mid-December, BJP leaders marched through the grounds of Parliament carrying placards aimed at deflecting criticism from the opposition by linking the Congress to an illegitimate figure in their eyes: George Soros.

Since the beginning of 2023, the Hungarian-American financier-philanthropist has emerged as the main target of the BJP’s rhetoric, accusing Soros of funding the country’s opposition and supporting other critics of Modi with the aim of discrediting India. Those suspicions intensified ahead of 2024 parliamentary elections in which the Hindu-majority BJP lost its majority for the first time in a decade, though it still won enough seats to form a coalition government.

But the campaign has reached a fever pitch in recent days, with the BJP even accusing the US State Department of working with Soros to undermine Modi.

In a series of posts on December 5, the BJP posted on X that Congress leaders, including Opposition Leader Rahul Gandhi, are using the work of a group of investigative journalists – funded in part by the Soros foundation and the State Department – to target the Modi Government on questions related to the economy, security and democracy. .

The BJP cited an article by French news agency Mediapart that claimed Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the State Department were funding the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). After that, it drew attention to OCCRP’s revelations about the Modi government’s use of Pegasus spyware, investigations into the Adani group’s work, and reports of declining religious freedom in India to suggest that Soros and the Biden administration were behind the installation. . .

“The deep state had a clear intention to discredit India by targeting Prime Minister Modi,” said a BJP spokesperson at a press conference, adding that “it has always been the US State Department that supports this plan. [and] The OCCRP has served as a media tool to drive a deep state agenda”.

The comments addressed to the State Department surprised many analysts as the US is one of India’s closest strategic partners. But some experts have suggested the move is about domestic political posturing, also aimed at aligning the Modi government with Trump’s impending emphasis on how the “deep state” is conspiring to undermine democracy.

“The weaponization of criticism of the West into a domestic political platform represents something new in Modi’s India,” said Asim Ali, a political analyst. He said it was an attempt to create a story of “disagreement between a ‘Western-backed movement’ and a ‘nationalist coalition that is heavily supported’.”

‘Easy target’

In January 2023, the US financial research firm Hindenburg reported in a report that the Adani Group had engaged in “a scheme of stock manipulation and a fraudulent accounting scheme spanning decades”.

Following the release of the report, Adani Group shares fell in value by around $112 billion, before rebounding in the following days. The company has pursued further research and analysis of the conglomerate’s business practices.

The Adani conglomerate denied the allegations. Hindenburg, in turn, received a show-cause notice from India’s capital markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), accusing the group of using non-public information to build short positions against the Adani Group.

But allegations of fraud and corruption became the focus of a Congress-led campaign against Modi and Adani in India’s upcoming parliamentary elections.

Congress leader Gandhi alleged in Parliament in February 2023 that “government policies are designed to favor the Adani Group”. He showed two pictures of the prime minister and a billionaire using a private jet and of Modi taking an Adani Group plane to campaign ahead of the 2014 general elections.

In February 2023, Soros entered that Indian political battle against Adani. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, he said that the Adani crisis would “very weaken” Modi’s “participation” in the Indian government.

This was met with heavy criticism from Modi’s party. Union minister Smriti Irani said the founder of the Open Society Foundation “has now announced his evil intentions to intervene [India’s] democratic processes”. India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar described the businessman as “an old, rich man with ideas … dangerous”.

Al Jazeera has sought answers from the Open Society Foundations about the allegations leveled by the BJP and ministers in the Modi government but has yet to receive a response. However, in September 2023, it issued a statement about its operations in India, in which it said, “Since mid-2016, our grantmaking in India has been restricted by government restrictions on our funding of local NGOs.”

But the latest criticism of Soros is not so much about billionaires, says Neelanjan Sircar, a political scientist at the Center for Policy Research (CPR) in New Delhi.

“Soros is easily viewed: he represents a lot of money, he represents a position critical of Modi, and, of course, he funds a lot of things,” Sircar said. “But it’s not about him as an invisible entity that everyone hates – rather, it’s his connection to a set of social and political actors that the BJP is trying to discredit in India.”

Since the recent US indictment of Adani, for alleged bribery in India which the party has denied, Modi’s party has stepped up its attacks on the Congress and Soros, trying to expose the deep connection between the two. The BJP cited Soros’ alleged funding of the Forum for Democratic Leaders in the Asia Pacific (FDL-AP), which has Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi’s mother, as its co-president, to bolster its claim. “Soros is not a citizen of this country and he wants to create instability in the country,” said Jagdambika Pal, a BJP member of parliament.

The Congress, however, rejected suggestions that it was being influenced by any foreign actor and insisted that the BJP’s anti-Soros campaign was aimed at distracting the country from the Manipur crisis, India’s economic challenges and the indictment of Adani in the US on bribery allegations. system.

BJP leader and spokesperson Vijay Chauthaiwala declined a request from Al Jazeera to comment on the party’s criticism of Soros.

Meanwhile, French media Mediapart in a public statement, said it “strongly condemns the creation of an investigative article recently published on the OCCRP…

The anti-Soros narrative

India is not the only country where right-wing movements have targeted Soros, placing the 94-year-old at the heart of a global conspiracy.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban accused Soros of trying to push immigrants out of Europe and tried to stop the billionaire’s support for parties in the country through a bill. In the US, supporters of President-elect Donald Trump often accused Soros – without evidence – of financing Black Lives Matter protests and migrant delegations heading to the US during the Trump administration.

Often, these conspiracy theories also carry anti-Semitic undertones, critics say.

But India’s campaign is different, according to research by Joyojeet Pal, an associate professor at the University of Michigan. An analysis of posts on X near Soros found that Indian campaigners who spread conspiracy theories about him are often “careful not to use anti-Semitic rhetoric” and instead focus on his “soft spot for Islam”, Pal told Al Jazeera. In addition, that translates into “Hindu hatred”, according to the narrative, Pal said.

Pal’s research found that several social media accounts belonging to BJP politicians were “crucial in publishing critical content” against Soros while the party contested his comments about Adani and Modi. “However, the main content amplifiers were there [pro-Modi] by aggressively rewriting content to make it viral. “

Presenting Soros as a shadowy puppet is “very attractive” to some political movements, Pal said, because it “suggests a wider conspiracy”, showing their opponents “weak enough that they need to take orders from an outsider”.

In India, attacks on Soros have moved from social media platforms like X and Instagram to WhatsApp chats and are increasingly shown on mainstream television where he is targeted by BJP spokesmen and party supporters.

Because of this, “people far away in the cities know that there is this organization called Soros targeting India, but none of them know exactly who this person is,” said Pal. “The unknown enemy is more terrifying than we see and explore.”

‘Deaf voice’ or ‘posting’?

For many observers of India’s international relations, the biggest surprise in recent days has come from the BJP’s decision to paint the US State Department as part of a Soros-led conspiracy against the Modi government.

At a press conference on December 5, Sambit Patra, a BJP spokesperson and member of parliament, insisted that “50 percent of the OCCRP funds come directly from the US State Department… [and] it has served as a media tool to drive the deep state agenda”.

On December 7, the State Department said the BJP’s allegations were “disappointing”, adding that the US “has long championed press freedom around the world”.

Experts also doubted the BJP’s accusation.

“The Indian attack seems irrational and unrealistic in the sense that the US State Department seems to have gone out of its way to convey its desire to strengthen and deepen relations with India,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute. at The Wilson Center, a think tank based in Washington, DC. “It is very different from wanting to humiliate and humiliate the country.”

The US government is “really pulling back to show how willing they are to work with India” in many areas, from security, technology, and trade, to education, he said.

But Kugelman noted that “the BJP’s deployment is likely to belong to the incoming Trump administration, making the same kind of arguments against the so-called US deep state”.

Sircar and Ali, on the other hand, both say that the BJP’s focus on Soros as a villain is – in their view – rooted in domestic politics. Modi, said Ali, wants to use “anti-Western nationalism as an attractive plank of nationalism in parts of India that are resistant to the lure of Hindu nationalism”.

And in Soros, India’s ruling party has found a face to put on its dartboard.