New Delhi, India – As India's Parliament met for its fifth session in late November, the world's largest democracy braced for a clash between Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition, led by the Congress party.
The northeastern region of Manipur is still burningafter more than a year of ethnic tensions that the opposition accused the rural BJP government of exacerbating; Gross domestic product (GDP) has increased slowly; is one of the richest people in India, Gautam Adaniis 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 holding placards against the opposition by linking the Congress to an unlikely figure in front of them: George Soros.
Since early 2023, the Hungarian-American financier has been a target of the BJP, which accuses Soros of supporting the country's opposition and supporting other opponents of Modi with the aim of destabilizing India. The cases escalated ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections where the ruling Hindu BJP lost its majority for the first time in a decade, although it still won enough seats to form a coalition government.
But the campaign has come to a head in recent days, with the BJP accusing the US State Department of colluding with Soros to undermine Modi.
In a series of posts on December 5, the BJP wrote on X that Congress leaders, including Opposition Leader Rahul Gandhi, had used a group of investigative journalists – supported in part by the Soros Foundation and the State Department – to target the Modi Government on questions related to economy, security, and democracy.
The BJP cited a report published by a French media outlet that Soros's Open Society Foundations and the State Department had funded the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Then, it reviewed OCCRP's revelations about the Modi government's use of Pegasus spying software, the Adani group's investigation, and reports on religious freedom in India to allege that Soros and the Biden administration were behind it. .
“The deep government had an intention to destabilize India by targeting Prime Minister Modi,” a BJP spokesperson said at a press conference, adding that “it has always been the US State Department that is following this (and) the OCCRP has been a media tool. government”.
The comments aimed at the State Department surprised many experts because the US is one of India's biggest trading partners. But some analysts say the move is about domestic political establishment, which also seeks to align the Modi government with incoming Trump's insistence that the “deep state” is out to undermine democracy.
“Turning criticism of the West into domestic politics represents something new in Modi's India,” said Asim Ali, a political analyst. This represents an attempt, he said, to make a case for “the conflict between 'Western-sponsored cooperation' and 'nationally-sponsored international cooperation.'
'Easy target'
In January 2023, the US financial research firm Hindenburg stated in a report that the Adani Group has been engaged in “mass fraud and fraud over the years”.
After the report was released, Adani Group shares fell by around $112bn, before recovering in the following days. The company has also followed extensive research and analysis of the conglomerate's business practices.
The Adani conglomerate has denied the allegations. Hindenburg, in turn, received a notice from the Indian capital market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), accusing the group of using private information to create short positions against the Adani Group.
But allegations of fraud and corruption became the basis of the Congress-led campaign against Modi and Adani in the upcoming Indian parliamentary elections.
Congress leader Gandhi said in Parliament in February 2023 that “government policies are designed to favor the Enemy group”. They showed two pictures of the Prime Minister and the billionaire sharing a private jet and of Modi taking off in an Adani Group jet to campaign ahead of the 2014 general elections.
In February 2023, Soros entered the Indian political war against Adani. Speaking at a security conference in Munich, he said the Adani crisis would “undermine” Modi's “untouchability” in the Indian government.
This was met sharp criticism from Modi's party. Federal Minister Smriti Irani said the founder of the Open Society Foundation “has now announced his sinister intentions to interfere in (India's) democracy”. India's Foreign Minister S Jaishankar described the billionaire as “an old, rich man…a dangerous man”.
Al Jazeera has asked for answers from the Open Society Foundations on the reasons given by the BJP and the Modi government, but they have not yet responded. However, in September 2023, it issued a statement about its operations in India, where it said, “Since mid-2016, our aid delivery to India has been restricted by government restrictions on funding local NGOs.”
But the latest criticism of Soros is not about billionaires, said Neelanjan Sircar, a political scientist at the Center for Policy Research (CPR) in New Delhi.
“Soros is an easy target: he represents a lot of money, he represents a position that opposes Modi, and, of course, he gives a lot of money,” Sircar said. “But it's not about him as a popular thing that everyone should hate – rather, it's about his association with the political and political movement that the BJP is trying to denigrate in India.”
Ever since the US adversaries accused Adani, in the corruption cases in India that the group has denied, Modi's party has increased its threats against the Congress and Soros, trying to show the deep connection between the two. The BJP cited Soros' funding of the Forum of Democratic Leaders in Asia Pacific (FDL-AP), which has Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi's mother, as its president, to back up his claims. “Soros is not a citizen of this country and he wants to create instability in this country,” said Jagdambika Pal, a member of parliament from the BJP.
The Congress, however, rejected the suggestion that it was influenced by any foreign actor and insisted that the BJP's anti-Soros campaign was aimed at distracting the country from the crisis in Manipur, India's economic crisis and the US case against Adani for corruption. system.
BJP leader and spokesperson Vijay Chauthaiwala declined Al Jazeera's request for comment on the party's criticism of Soros.
Meanwhile, the French media released Mediapart to the public wordsit said it “strongly condemns the implementation of its recently released investigative report on the OCCRP… to cater to the BJP's political agenda and attack the freedom of the press.”
The anti-Soros story
India is not the only country where the right wing has targeted Soros, putting the 94-year-old at Soros. the heart of the world's conspiracies.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has accused Soros of trying to push migrants into Europe and will try to block billions in aid to the country through a legislative bill. In the US, supporters of President-elect Donald Trump often criticized Soros – without evidence – of funding Black Lives Matter protests and immigration to the US during Trump's first administration.
In many cases, the schemes also contain anti-Semitic content, critics say.
But the campaign in India is different, according to research by Joyojeet Pal, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. An analysis In the articles on X around Soros he found that the Indian people who push conspiracy theories about him are often “careful not to use anti-Jewish weapons” and only look for a “soft spot for Muslims”, Pal told Al Jazeera. Moreover, this means “Hindu hatred”, according to the article, Pal said.
Pal's research found that several social media accounts belonging to BJP politicians “were instrumental in conveying what was important” against Soros while the party rejected the claims made by Adani and Modi. “However, the extensions contained in it were (pro-Modi) encouraging…
Portraying Soros as a dark puppet is “very attractive” to some political groups, said Pal, because it “shows a bigger conspiracy”, showing their opponents “weak enough that they need to be called in by an outside manipulator”.
In India, Soros' attacks have moved from social media sites such as X and Instagram to WhatsApp chats and increasingly featured on television where he targeted BJP spokespeople and party supporters.
As a result, “people even in the countryside know that there is a group called Soros that is targeting India, but no one knows who this person is,” said Pal. “An unknown enemy is more dangerous than what you can see and measure.”
'Deaf voice' or 'shipment'?
For many observers of India's foreign relations, the biggest surprise in recent days has come from the BJP's decision to paint the US State Department as the party of the Soros-led conspiracy against the Modi government.
In a press release on December 5, Sambit Patra, a BJP spokesperson and member of parliament, asserted that “50 percent of OCCRP's funding comes from the US State Department… .
On December 7, the State Department said the BJP's objections were “disappointing”, adding that the US “has always stood up for press freedom around the world”.
Experts also question the BJP's claims.
“India's attack seems insensitive and out of touch with reality because the US State Department seems to have failed to express its desire to strengthen and expand relations with India,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute. at The Wilson Center, a Washington, DC think tank. “It is very different from wanting to defame and destabilize the country.”
The US government has “stepped back in showing its commitment to cooperation with India” on a range of issues, from defense, technology, and trade, to education, he said.
But Kugelman also said that “the BJP's position may be for the incoming Trump administration, which has created similar conflicts with what is known as the US deep state”.
Sircar and Ali, meanwhile, both said that the BJP's focus on Soros as a common man – in their view – stemmed from domestic politics. Modi, Ali said, wants to use “anti-Western nationalism as an attractive nationalism platform in some parts of India that can absorb the influence of Hindus”.
And in Soros, India's ruling party has found a face to put on its dartboard.