 "Great game of leverage: Of Khalistan smokescreen, Deep State, and foreign interference in India’s domestic politics")
One of the key concepts in Sanatan Dharma is ‘maya’. Nothing is what it seems. This illusory nature of maya leads us into delusion and prevents us from understanding the true nature of things. In the material world, for instance, that which appears ‘spontaneous’, ‘coincidental’, ‘unrelated’ at first glance might have an underlying connection that eludes the naked eye.
Take for example, foreign interference in Indian elections, or the illegitimate intrusion of international lobbies in Indian domestic politics. Foreign interference is a serious issue that compromises the sovereignty and integrity of a nation. Chinese manoeuvring in Australian domestic politics led the bilateral relationship almost to a point of no return. The US Senate formed a high-powered intelligence committee to probe allegations of Russian efforts to influence 2016 presidential elections.
Despite a restive debate in India that has led the external affairs minister and even the prime minister to comment on the topic bang in the middle of general elections, it is difficult to pinpoint the nature of the meddling, the source, and the way public discourse is being subtly remodelled to build and suit narratives by influence operations.
There is no fixed template for foreign interference. Given its amorphous nature, it becomes even more difficult to combat such information warfare in an open society like India that has a democratic political system, a complex, rambunctious polity and a discursive tradition of argumentation and debate. Swirling allegations in India of western interference have always been met with layers of incredulity and plausible deniability.
If we can’t pinpoint the players in this murky game of shadows, if we can’t access their motives, mitigating the challenges becomes nearly impossible. We often hear about Western ‘Deep State’ and foreign lobbies that are opposed to the so-called ‘Hindu nationalist’ regime in India, working to subvert the democratically elected government, or even trying to shape electoral outcomes.
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More ShortsWhat is this ‘Deep State’? How does it operate? What is its motive? Is it a signifier for the shape-shifting aggregation of western intelligence agencies, perma-bureaucracy, academia, major foundations, multinational corporates, civil society, political activists, ‘human rights’ organizations, ‘democracy rating’ agencies, media outlets and think tanks that further each other’s interests and all curiously end up advancing the major goals of American foreign policy, neoliberals and globalists?
It all sounds very far-fetched and fantastic, and therein lies its effectiveness. Diffusion is an instrument of statecraft. Tracing the source of influence operations led by the Deep State could be a bit like tracing hackers who keep their IPs bouncing around the globe. And if you can’t trace it, you have no case.
The omnipotence and omniscience of this ambiguous clique of vested interests paint a mayajaal (an illusory network) of narratives in a way that not only pushes and establishes preset western notions/ interpretations, but also make the viewpoints and perspectives seem ‘organic’ and even indigenous. It also makes targeted action difficult and open to criticism.
If a foreign journalist’s visa is not renewed by the Indian government, the focus is likely to be on the controversy. The government will inevitably be painted as a ‘thin-skinned bully’ and the fact that a foreign national working in India may have wilfully blurred the line between ‘journalism’ and ‘political activism’ will be silently glossed over. It’ll invite even more charges of ‘democratic backsliding’ and ‘repression’, no matter how ill-placed and misleading those charges are.
There have been allegations that the major narrative weapons in the Opposition’s armoury, such as ‘caste census’, in the just concluded general elections where the Narendra Modi-led BJP saw an erosion in power, were provided by shadowy figures of this nebulous foreign adversary.
According to painstaking research by Disinfo Lab, an independent OSINT-based research organization, that went after the hydra-headed money trail, it appears that liberal ‘philanthropy’ funds were pumped out to various fronts, think tanks, western media outlets, and members of academia in nations such as France and the US to influence public discourse in India through a tsunami of macro, micro and meta narratives and impact voter mindset.
The pattern of funding, according to their findings, suggests an aim to invalidate the legitimacy of Indian electoral process and undermine Indian democracy, the world’s largest where 642 million Indians recently exercised their voting rights.
Former Prasar Bharati chief Shashi Shekhar Vempati’s compilation of some of these media headlines are worth a look, if only to have an idea about the depth and scale of the ‘seemingly uncoordinated’ operations. As I said, ‘mayajaal'.
These patterns are visible, however, with a degree of effort. For instance, there has been a lot of noise of late over a report by Australian government-funded ABC News’s ‘Four Corners’ report that highlighted India’s alleged actions against Khalistani terrorists based in Australia, one of the nations in the Five Eyes (FVEY) Anglosphere intelligence network comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the US.
India is already involved in major controversies with Canada and Washington over the issue of Khalistani terrorism, and the report, named ‘Infiltrating Australia’, claims that the Indian government is prying into the lives of the Indian diaspora to smoke out the Khalistani network, and that at least four Indian diplomats were asked to leave by the Australian government on charges of “spying”.
Interestingly, while the Australian government has sought to play down the controversy – the media discourse has turned more antagonistic towards India, and the Australian political establishment has been accused by its own media of cozying up to India for ‘economic gains’. The same pattern is visible in the American and Canadian media discourse, though in the case of the latter the Justin Trudeau government has appeared more incendiary and confrontational.
However, by and large, it is possible to discern a difference between the countries’ political establishments and a narrative targeting the Modi government over Khalistani terrorism, which according to the Anglosphere media playbook is a case of “transnational repression” and India “must pay the price”. The Biden administration, for instance, has received flak for inviting Modi on a state visit to Washington, and that was even before the Gurpatwant Singh Pannun case exploded in public view.
Since then, the Pannun case, spearheaded by the FBI and US Department of Justice, has been taken forward by drip, drip, revelations in American media and it is anybody’s guess how much of this narrative is being driven by the Deep State using media as the cat’s paw. It is equally possible (and plausible) to argue that regime media is just an extended arm of the government with a degree of imperceptible distance thrown in. The ambiguity of these operations is part of the feature, designed to escape accountability.
In the cases involving Khalistani separatists in Canada and Australia, Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury has shown in Economic Times how there are “uncanny similarities” in the reportage of ABC News of Australia and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on “revelations” of “Modi government’s infiltration” in their societies. . If this suggests the role of Deep State led by the FVEY alliance, the apparently disjointed moves become clearer if we observe the pattern underneath.
As Disinfo Lab has pointed out in a series of posts, the latest ‘revelations’ in Australian media do not happen in medias res but occur in conjunction with a series of seemingly disconnected events across the Anglosphere.
Around the time that ABC News came out with its “report” written by journalist Avani Dias who was found to have violated visa rules while in India and was accused of faking visa denial, the Czech Republic police in an unusual move released a public video of Nikhil Gupta’s extradition to the US, who is allegedly behind the plot to take out Pannun on American soil, and Canadian Parliament observed a “moment of silence” for slain Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
Od pátku je cizinec podezřelý v USA ze spiknutí za účelem spáchání nájemné vraždy v rukou americké justice. Spolupráce policistů cizinecké policie, ředitelství pro mezinárodní policejní spolupráci a kolegů z USA umožnilo bezpečnou extradici z pražského letiště. #policiepp pic.twitter.com/492NKyltjd
— Policie ČR (@PolicieCZ) June 17, 2024
As Disinfo Lab points out, “All these events ‘independent’ of each other, all ‘organic’ – just happened to be in the same timeframe to generate maximum impact. All using same terminologies, the ‘approved’ narrative of #TransnationalRepression, mainstreaming Khalistani ‘activists’!”
Meanwhile, Politico, an American media outlet, came out with a report on June 18, a day after the ABC News ‘investigation’ was published, admonishing the Biden administration for sending US national security adviser Jake Sullivan and other high-ranking US officials to “shore up ties with India” at a time when “an alleged murder-for-hire plot linked to an Indian official plays out in the United States.” The article also advises the Biden administration to invoke what it itself terms “an obscure law” to “uphold military consequences for India and other countries that conduct nefarious plots on American soil.”
While this info warfare is playing out on public domain, a curious interplay was evident in India-US relations in the same week. A visiting US Congressional delegation, led by US lawmaker Michael McCaul and former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, met the Dalai Lama. Pelosi followed it up with a no holds-barred speech against China, and then the bipartisan delegation also met prime minister Narendra Modi and external affairs minister S Jaishankar.
Simultaneously, Sullivan held multiple rounds of talks in New Delhi with his counterpart Ajit Doval on deepening defence and technology cooperation through the US-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) and “set the vision for the next chapter of strategic technology partnership”. Sullivan and Doval, according to the White House readout, also “convened an industry roundtable that brought together CEOs and thought leaders from both countries as the US and India mobilize private sector investment and partnerships across strategic technology sectors.”
According to the New York Times, Sullivan and Doval’s “extensive discussions, coming weeks after PM Modi won a third term in office, indicate how much Washington prioritizes the relationship with India, with American officials increasingly speaking of New Delhi as a counterweight to Beijing.”
A week before he left for India along with Sullivan, Kurt Campbell, the second-highest ranking diplomat in the US, had said that “we are very confident and comfortable about the state of our bilateral relationship” with India.
While you chew on this apparent bonhomie, consider also the fact that in the same week that all this diplomatic schmoozing is taking place, Gupta is appearing at a court in New York to face trial on Pannun case, and a group of American lawmakers – Jeff Merkley, Chris Van Hollen, Bernie Sanders, Tim Kaine, and Ron Wyden have sent a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken “calling for a strong diplomatic response following credible allegations of the Indian government’s involvement in a foiled plot to assassinate an American citizen on U.S. soil”, and demanded that the Biden administration “match words with actions to hold Indian officials involved in the plot accountable, and to send a clear message that there will be consequences” for “transnational repression”. Observe the repetition of the particular expression.
FBI chief Christopher Wray has also chipped in, saying that the US federal probe agency won’t “tolerate attempts by foreign nationals, or anyone else for that matter, to repress constitutionally-protected freedoms”.
It is not my case that the Biden or Anthony Albanese administrations are hatching elaborate conspiracies to put India on the mat. But there certainly seems to be vested interests at work that operate behind the scenes to tamper with the pace and depth of engagement or, even more importantly, look for leverage over a rising power.
Given its young demography, abundance of human resources as the world’s most populous nation, and robustly growing economy, it’s reasonable to expect that the world’s fifth-largest economy will achieve its great power ambitions since wealth and population are translatable to military strength.
Add to that a strategic culture of being autonomous and aspirations of being a pole in its own right, and suddenly the balance of power shifts from West to the East with India’s neighbour and great adversary, China, already breathing down America’s neck.
As former Indian foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal writes in NDTV, “India’s rise inevitably means accelerating the shift of power from the West to the East. The rise of a power that seeks multipolarity, eschews alliances and seeks a greater role in international governance cannot but affect the strategic calculations of established powers on handling the global system in ways that allow them to safeguard their traditional dominance.”
This puts the Western powers in a quandary. India’s role as China’s democratic counterbalance necessitates the West to purse a policy of engagement, but it also runs the risk of letting India become another powerful, independent competitor that may eventually undermine their dominance.
Hence the relentless urge of the Anglosphere, led by the FVEY alliance, to gain and maintain leverage over India. The Khalistan issue, a sensitive, festering sore for New Delhi, has presented a handy opportunity for the Western intelligence network to put India under the cosh and crank up the pressure when needed, while letting the political establishment get on with the policy of engagement.
What will be India’s countermeasure in this great game? That’s a question for another day.
The author is Deputy Executive Editor, Firstpost. He tweets @sreemoytalukdar. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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