How did the US Deep State, through ‘soft power’, attempt to destabilise and disrupt a democratically elected government in India?
Vast networks of NGOs and media houses, both in India and abroad, were well-funded and weaponised to attempt to discredit the government in the eyes of voters and create enough chaos and anarchy to execute a regime change.
From the 2018 violent anti-Sterlite protests to the 2020 Delhi riots and the 2020-21 farmer protests, the role of NGOs and certain media organisations was to fund and instigate.
In 2023, a consortium of publications funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the Omidyar Foundation published an ‘exposé’ about the phones of a handful of journalists and opposition leaders allegedly being bugged by the spyware Pegasus. Yet, the regime could not be changed.
French publication Mediapart has recently exposed the ‘world’s largest investigative reporting agency’ OCCRP as being in the pay of the US Deep State, receiving funding of up to $47 million from them and publishing ‘investigative reports’ about governments the US opposed.
When these tactics did not work, the Deep State targeted a respected symbol of India – the Adani Group, the only conglomerate capable of carrying out large infrastructure and power projects within and outside India. Hurting Adani would mean hurting India as a nation. Deep State assets such as OCCRP and their allies in India were deployed to make loud and confusing claims of corruption. Hindenburg Research lent a hand. How would falsities disguised as facts ever stand scrutiny? The Adani Group shook off temporary setbacks and moved on.
However, the web of NGOs and how they functioned, along with the Indian faces of these NGOs who did the bidding of the US Deep State, must necessarily be made public.
2016: FCRA Crackdown
Following the Indian government’s restrictions on foreign money flowing into Indian NGOs from 2016-17 onwards, Deep State and Soros-funded foreign foundations were in a fix.
The Ministry of Home Affairs placed George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and Open Society Institute on a ‘prior permission’ list. This meant that each time either of these foundations wished to make a donation to an Indian NGO or firm, they would have to seek the permission of the MHA.
The Ford Foundation also came under scrutiny from investigating agencies around 2015, when it was found that the American NGO had given USD 290,000 to Teesta Setalvad’s NGO Sabrang between 2004 and 2006. However, a diplomatic intervention appears to have allowed the Foundation to continue its operations in India.
As for the Omidyar Network, they came under scrutiny in May 2022 when they were among 10 NGOs accused of bribing FCRA officials to renew their licences.
As a result of this crackdown, these foreign entities began to find convenient Indian and international conduits to funnel money into the country for their pet projects, which included NGOs and media houses.
We look at three case studies in this article as examples of how the Deep State has worked over the years to disrupt India.
Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI)
One of the most intriguing NGOs, CHRI has been flush with funding from the Open Society Foundation (OSF) as well as The Ford Foundation.
The CHRI website states that the NGO “focuses on issues relating to access to justice, with a focus on police and prison reforms, and access to information. We work to address pressures on the freedom of expression and media rights, as well as build the capacity of civil society to access and engage with UN human rights mechanisms. We support the eradication of contemporary forms of slavery and human trafficking through research, capacity building, and grassroots mobilisation.”
A perusal of the FCRA data shows that in the 12 years between 2006 and 2018, over Rs 50 crore was donated to the NGO. Of this, about a quarter of the funding came from the Open Society Foundation and its sister organisation, Open Society Institute, from Switzerland, Budapest, and New York.
The second-largest donor is Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, a German foundation for liberal politics related to the Free Democratic Party, which follows the ideals of Protestant theologian Friedrich Naumann.
After 2016, though, OSF was no longer able to fund the NGO, as it was placed on the Home Ministry’s watchlist. As a result, an interesting shift occurred.
A new donor emerged in 2018: CHRI-UK, which donated Rs 2.1 crore to CHRI that same year.
What is CHRI-UK?
CHRI-UK is a registered charity in the United Kingdom. It received grants from the UK Foreign Office and the European Commission in 1998, totalling 50,000 Pounds.
In 2006-07, CHRI-UK received 20,000 Pounds from the Ford Foundation. For the year 2013-14, CHRI-UK reported a cash balance of just 7,337 Pounds. Even in 2016 and 2017, CHRI-UK reported having only small sums under ‘Reserves.’
CHRI-UK had little income until 2017. But its fortunes changed drastically from 2017-18 with large donations from the Foundation to Promote Open Society (133,732 Pounds) and Foundation Open Society Institute (18,971 Pounds). There was no other income that year.
The UK Charity Commission website also shows the same about the UK branch of the Indian NGO CHRI.
The CHRI-UK’s 2019-20 funding data can be found on its website, and when the data is collated, it shows a specific trend.
What does all this data show? It is evident that CHRI-UK acted as a conduit to funnel money from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation into CHRI India.
This was done despite restrictions placed on foreign funding into the country. In other words, once Soros’ OSF found that the Indian government had blocked its funding to CHRI, the foundation diverted its funding through other firms to ensure CHRI India received the same.
Who Runs CHRI?
RTI exponent Venkatesh Nayak has been the Director of CHRI since 2021.
Former journalist turned human rights activist Sanjoy Hazarika is the International Director of CHRI. Hazarika also heads another NGO called the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) – we will look into this NGO later in this article.
Maja Daruwala is currently Senior Advisor at CHRI, having been its Director for 20 years until 2016. She is the daughter of decorated veteran, the late Sam Maneckshaw.
Hazarika is on the Executive Committee of another NGO called the Indian Police Foundation (IPF). Daruwala is on IPF’s General Council. IPF is helmed by Prakash Singh, a retired IPS officer.
The stated goal of the IPF is “to work for police reform and the improvement of policing through research, capacity building, and policy advocacy.”
To this effect, Prakash Singh filed a writ petition before the Supreme Court of India in 1996, along with advocate Prashant Bhushan, demanding police reforms. The verdict arrived in Singh’s favour, with the Supreme Court imposing a limit of 3 months of residual service for aspiring DGPs, a two-year tenure for DGPs, and a caveat for the UPSC to clear the names of DGPs sent by states. This resulted in a shake-up of the police force, with officers across the country clashing to gain the top post and becoming increasingly subservient to their political bosses.
CHRI has consistently supported Prakash Singh’s causes, and with two members of CHRI’s leadership on the Board of IPF, it is natural that they would do so.
National Foundation for India (NFI)
The second large NGO we are going to look at is the National Foundation for India (NFI), also headquartered in Delhi.
The NGO’s stated aim is to serve as a “foundation for a diverse range of social actors in our collective journey to enable social justice. To this end, we partner with, train, and mentor many individuals in climate action, women’s empowerment, independent journalism, gender rights, peace, health & nutrition, among other goals.”
The Executive Director of NFI is Biraj Patnaik, former South Asia Director for Amnesty International.
A perusal of the FCRA donations declared by the NGO on its website reveals that between 2015 and 2022, NFI received Rs 58.1 crore in foreign donations. Of this, Rs 94 lakh was donated by Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society, the Omidyar Network contributed Rs 3.3 crore, and the Ford Foundation donated Rs 12 crore.
After 2016, when Soros’ foundations were placed on the prior permission list, there were no direct donations. However, other Indian donors increased their funding to NFI.
One glaring example is that of Swadhikar. Swadhikar’s donations began in November 2016, totalling Rs 9.5 lakh. Between then and 2018, Swadhikar donated around Rs 50 lakh to NFI.
Swadhikar is an NGO that supports Dalit rights and is sponsored directly by Soros’ OSF (as per FCRA filings) and indirectly through Fund for Global Human Rights, which is supported by Soros’ OSF as well as Luminate, another Soros entity.
Donations to NFI from another South Africa-based NGO called the Global Fund for Community Foundations began in May 2018. By 2021, NFI had received a total of Rs 73 lakh from this organisation.
The GFCF’s website shows that Soros’ OSF is one of its major sponsors.
This again shows how cleverly FCRA rules are circumvented and how Soros, the Ford Foundation, and Omidyar continue to push money to India through their preferred NGOs.
As for NFI, they offer fellowships to train journalists and young professionals, run The Reporters’ Collective, and provide grants to publish stories that align with the ideology of their funders.
Centre for Policy Research (CPR)
CPR’s FCRA licence was revoked in January this year. However, until then, this large NGO had raked in funding from the foreign entities in question.
Its direct foreign funding in 2019-20 was Rs 24.5 crore. Apart from this, it had unspent FCRA funds totalling Rs 43.7 crore.
CPR had received Rs 11.63 crore from the Ford Foundation between 2013 and 2019 to study an ‘urban research network.’
By the financial year ending March 2021, CPR had a balance of Rs 2.3 crore from Ford Foundation grants, Rs 1.6 crore from the Omidyar Network, and Rs 8.2 lakh from Washington DC-based Namati.
In 2022, according to FCRA data, Namati provided funding of Rs 2 crore.
The same year, the Ford Foundation provided Rs 52 lakh in funding.
The World Resources Institute (WRI) contributed Rs 89 lakh in 2022.
WRI has listed Soros’ OSF as a major donor. While the exact funding is not provided, it appears that OSF contributed more than USD 750,000 to WRI between 2020 and 2022.
Let us take a look at Namati as well. Namati is directly funded by George Soros’ OSF, Luminate, the Ford Foundation, and the US State Department.
In fact, George Soros is on the Advisory Board of Namati, according to its website.
This is yet another example of how Soros and Ford continue to funnel money into India despite the restrictions on FCRA.
CPR was headed by Chairperson Meenakshi Gopinath. Its President and Chief Executive Yamini Aiyar resigned in March this year. She is the daughter of Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar. Earlier, CPR was headed by journalist Pratap Bhanu Mehta.
A Maze of NGOs & Media Houses
It is very apparent that the pathways to seeding ideology have been perfected over the decades, grooming individuals and creating spaces for them to perform. The funding pathways do not seem to pose a challenge, with the foreign entities in question evolving and landing on their feet even as new checks and balances are put into place.
It is clear that this did not happen overnight. It is the result of decades of institution- and people-building in covert and overt ways, with policymakers, media persons, and many others complicit in the process.
A maze of entities from across the world is interlinked with these big foundations, and money flows from one to another in confusing disarray. The foreign entities in question appear to have evolved an almost perfect mechanism to continue pushing funding into India in an effort to propagate the political ideologies of their respective founders.
This is the ‘soft power’ that is being weaponised in India today.