[The following article is the first instalment in a series.]
1. Introduction
On December 21, 2023, India’s Parliament passed bills replacing three existing legislations regarding criminal justice[1]with revised Acts titled in Sanskrit.[2] The Prime Minister said that this was a “watershed moment in our history. These bills mark the end of colonial-era laws. A new era begins…”
This is the latest in a series of such measures by the Indian government. In his 2022 Independence Day speech, the Prime Minister asked Indians pledge to remove “any trace of the colonial mindset”. Shortly thereafter, he changed the name of the capital’s central avenue from Rajpath to Kartavya Path, and congratulated the Indian people “for their freedom from yet another symbol of slavery of the British Raj”. In September 2023, the Indian Parliament moved from its colonial-era building to a brand new structure. The Finance Minister no longer carries a briefcase when presenting the Union Budget, but instead the Indian ‘bahi-khata’, thereby “shedding another vestige of a colonial past.”[3]
Nor are these changes merely symbolic, says the Government. It claims there is a change in India’s political and economic relations with the rest of the world. Thus on September 26, India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar declared to the United Nations General Assembly that “The days when a few nations set the agenda and expected others to fall in line are over.”[4]
Indeed, over the last two years, the apparent independence, self-reliance, assertiveness and nationalist spirit of India’s government, and even the Indian corporate sector, have been much in the news. From time to time, their spokespersons use words such as ‘colonial’ and ‘imperialist’, in order to describe the actions and policies of the western powers. Let us set out a few developments, all of which are well-known, but bear repeating.
1. Oil imports: First, despite much pressure from the US and European powers to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine in international fora, the Indian government has avoided taking any stand on the conflict. At the same time, it has massively increased its purchases of Russian oil – so much so that Russia has become the number one supplier of oil to India, and India has become Russia’s number one customer. In the face of western criticism, the external affairs minister has asserted bluntly: “Indian foreign policy is there to serve the Indian people; we will do whatever it takes to discharge that responsibility”.[5] A commentator notes: “Since the start of the war in Ukraine, India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar has been vocal in defending his government’s refusal to accede to Washington’s pressure.”[6]
2. ‘Human rights’: In the wake of India’s decision to remain neutral in the Ukraine conflict, the Modi government’s human rights record has come under criticism in the west. In 2022, the US Secretary of State twice raised questions about the rise of human rights abuses in India. One of these occasions was in the presence of the Indian external affairs and defence ministers, in what Reuters referred to as “a rare direct rebuke by Washington of the Asian nation’s rights record.”[7]
Then, in January 2023, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) broadcast a documentary on the Gujarat riots of 2002, directly indicting Narendra Modi. The Indian government promptly blocked its screening on Indian platforms. The spokesperson of the external affairs ministry declared that the documentary reflected a “continuing colonial mindset.”[8]The Indian tax authorities raided the BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai.
3. Assassinations: On September 18, 2023, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the sensational announcement that his government was investigating “credible allegations” that the Indian government agents were linked to the June 18, 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen and the head of Khalistan Tiger Force. The Indian government termed this allegation “absurd”, and External Affairs Minister Jaishankar asserted: “One, we told the Canadians that this is not the Government of India’s policy. Two, we told the Canadian[s] saying that, look, if you have something specific, if you have something relevant, you know, let us know. We are open to looking at it.” He added that “the picture is not complete without the context… you also have to appreciate then that in the last few years Canada actually has seen a lot of organized crime, you know, relating to, you know, the secessionist forces.”[9]
Outside the Government, others were more direct. The principal Indian opposition party, the Congress, implicitly endorsed the killing of Nijjar, saying: “The Indian National Congress has always believed that our country’s fight against terrorism has to be uncompromising, especially when terrorism threatens India’s sovereignty, unity and integrity”. Sections of the Indian media too tacitly acknowledged Indian culpability by celebrating the incident: “Times Nowwondered whether India’s Research and Analysis Wing…had become ‘the new Mossad’.”[10]
Then, in November 2023, US federal prosecutors filed charges alleging that an “identified Indian government employee” had directed a plot to assassinate, in New York city, a US citizen who runs a pro-Khalistan organisation banned by India. For this purpose, the government employee is said to have hired an Indian, Nikhil Gupta, facing criminal charges in Gujarat. These events took place in May-June 2023. The charges appear to be extensively documented, and more difficult to refute[11].
The indictment cites what it claims are transcripts of conversations between Gupta and the Indian government official. In these, the latter indicates that a number of persons are targeted in the US and Canada. Gupta in turn told an undercover US agent that “we have so many targets”. For the Indian government to have carried out even a single assassination on US or Canadian soil would have been unprecedented; a series of such ‘hits’ on US soil would be even more extraordinary.
The Indian government did not rebut the US allegations in the same fashion which it did in the case of Canada. The spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs said that the case was a “matter of concern”, and that the acts alleged were “contrary to government policy”. He acknowledged that the US had “shared some inputs”, and said that on November 18, a high-level inquiry committee had been constituted to look into the matter.[12]
The Indian government invited the US President Joseph Biden as its chief guest for the Republic Day celebration on January 26, 2024, but the US government discreetly declined. The media speculated that it would have been difficult for Biden to accept in the immediate wake of the Pannun case and consequent dispute. The French President, Emmanuel Macron, has consented to substitute Biden on the occasion.
4. Adani: In January 2023, the American hedge fund Hindenburg released a detailed investigation of the business house of Gautam Adani, who was at the time considered the world’s second-richest man, and the richest in India. In response, the Adani conglomerate declared: “This is not merely an unwarranted attack on any specific company but a calculated attack on India, the independence, integrity and quality of Indian institutions, and the growth story and ambition of India.”[13] The Adani Group’s Chief Financial Officer, Jugeshinder Singh, compared the drop in Adani stock prices to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre under British rule.[14]
The billionaire investor George Soros explicitly linked the crisis of the Adani conglomerate to the Modi government’s foreign policy. One should note that Soros is no run-of-the-mill billionaire: his Open Society Foundations (OSF) claims to “support democracy and human rights in more than 100 countries”. In particular, he has actively intervened in the political life of Eastern Europe and the region of the former Soviet Union, in favour of western political and economic interests, and against Russian political influence. Western experts celebrate OSF as having had a “huge” impact in Eastern Europe, often “the only funder of independent civil society” in some parts of the region, including Ukraine, where its ‘International Renaissance Foundation’ has “spent over $230 million on pro-democracy activities and supported more than 9,000 projects and initiatives”.[15] For all practical purposes OSF can be seen as an arm of US-UK foreign policy. In this fight between billionaires, Soros is almost as closely identified with the US and UK governments as Adani is with the Modi government.
In his address to the Munich Security Conference in February, Soros pointedly remarked:
“Modi maintains close relations with both open and closed societies. India is a member of the Quad (which also includes Australia, the US, and Japan), but it buys a lot of Russian oil at a steep discount and makes a lot of money on it.
“Modi and business tycoon Adani are close allies; their fate is intertwined. Adani Enterprises tried to raise funds in the stock market, but he failed. Adani is accused of stock manipulation and his stock collapsed like a house of cards. Modi is silent on the subject, but he will have to answer questions from foreign investors and in parliament.
“This will significantly weaken Modi’s stranglehold on India’s federal government and open the door to push for much needed institutional reforms.
“I may be naïve, but I expect a democratic revival in India.”[16]
Within hours of Soros’s statement, Union Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani retorted:
This war is being mounted against India and what stands between the war and India’s interests is Modi…. Designs to weaken Indian democracy will be met with India’s might under PM Modi’s leadership..the imperialist intentions of an entrepreneur are coming to light who seeks to demonize our democracy.[17]
5. Atmanirbhar: The Indian government has continued to pursue its ‘Atmanirbhar’ (‘self-reliant’) economic policy. This includes increased tariffs on (and other barriers against) certain categories of imports, and subsidies to large foreign firms for carrying out manufacturing in India. Announcing the policy on May 12, 2020, Prime Minister Modi declared that “It is said in our scriptures – Aish: Pantha: That is – Atmanirbhar Bharat…. Friends, the Corona crisis has also explained to us the importance of Local manufacturing, Local market and Local supply chain…. The mindset of free India should be ‘vocal for local’.”[18] A month later, he declared: “India will turn this COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity. It has taught India to be self-reliant and we will reduce our dependence on imports.”[19]
Since then, a large number of policies and measures of the Government have been linked to, or branded as, ‘Atmanirbhar’. The latest measure, on August 3, requires Indian firms importing personal computers or tablets to obtain a license. The Union Minister of State for Technology tweeted that “It is govts objective to ensure trusted hardware n systems, reduce import dependance and increase domestic mfg of this category of products.”[20]
6. Internationalisation of the rupee: Lastly, in the wake of the rise in oil imports from Russia, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in July 2022 announced a plan to allow overseas trade to be settled in rupees. This was intended to replace transactions in US dollars, and thereby make it easier to trade with countries under US sanctions, such as Russia and Iran. In September 2022, India’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman claimed that many countries had shown interest in bilateral trade in the rupee after the RBI’s announcement. She pointed to the fact that this was a step towards capital account convertibility – i.e., treating foreign investors on par with Indians, and removing all barriers to the flow of international capital into and out of the country. What of the consequent risks of volatility? According to the RBI, “These risks are real, but they are unavoidable if India is to progress to be an economic superpower.”[21]
How do we interpret these developments?
These developments have given rise to divergent political responses.
On the one hand, some commentators with strong anti-American views view the Indian government’s recent foreign policy stances as assertions of its independence; one even celebrated the rise of Adani in this context.[22] Commentators who applaud the rise of ‘multipolarity’ in the form of platforms such as BRICS[23] see India’s participation in such platforms as a sign of its new, more assertive, foreign policy stance.[24]
On the other hand, several liberal commentators in India with strong anti-Modi views welcomed the the BBC documentary. Some harboured hopes that the Hindenburg report would deflate the Adani bubble. Others bemoaned the Government’s ‘Atmanirbhar’ economic policies as a ‘return to the pre-1991 license-permit raj’.
Yet other commentators are more sceptical of western powers’ concerns about human rights in India. But their scepticism is based on their assessment that countries like the US and France, eager to sell their goods in an expanding Indian market, and to sell their weapons to an increasingly powerful Indian State, will ignore India’s human rights violations.
In a sense, even such harsh critics of the present Indian rulers accept the claim that India is a burgeoning economic and political power. Their worry is that India’s increasing strength provides it too much ‘leverage’, insulating it from international questioning.
However, the reality of India’s economic and political power in the present world order is entirely different from the various views described above. Let us examine certain recent developments concretely, and see how far India has shed the vestiges of its colonial past.
[To be continued.]
[1] Indian Penal Code, 1860, Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 and Indian Evidence Act, 1872.
[2] Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam.
[3] Press Information Bureau, “New India: Shedding the Vestiges of a Colonial Past”, December 1, 2022. https://pib.gov.in/FeaturesDeatils.aspx?NoteId=151220&ModuleId%20=%202
[4] https://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/37148/National_Statement_by_External_Affairs_Minister_Dr_S_Jaishankar_at_the_General_Debate_of_the_78th_UNGA
[5] ANI, “How Jaishankar defended the India way this year amid Ukraine conflict”, December 14, 2022.
[6] Prashad, op. cit.
[7] Kanishka Singh, “U.S. monitoring rise in rights abuses in India, Blinken says”, Reuters, April 12, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/india/us-monitoring-rise-rights-abuses-india-blinken-says-2022-04-11/
[8] Kallol Bhattacharjee, “BBC documentary on PM Modi is ‘propaganda’ and reflects a ‘colonial mindset’, says India”, The Hindu, January 19, 2023.
[9] Council on Foreign Relations, “A Conversation With External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar of India,” September 26, 2023 https://www.cfr.org/event/conversation-external-affairs-minister-subrahmanyam-jaishankar-india
[10] “‘Explosive, albeit unproven’: Canadian media on Trudeau’s allegations against India”, Newslaundry, September 20, 2023.
[11] See “U.S. Attorney Announces Charges In Connection With Foiled Plot To Assassinate U.S. Citizen In New York City,” November 29, 2023, with a link to the indictment. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-attorney-announces-charges-connection-foiled-plot-assassinate-us-citizen-new-york
[12] Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Leyland Cecco, “‘Contrary to government policy’: India responds to US assassination plot claims”, Guardian, November 30, 2023.
[13] Moneylife Digital Team, “Adani Replies with 413-page report; Hindenburg says fraud cannot be camouflaged with patriotism”, January 30, 2023, https://www.moneylife.in/article/adani-replies-with-413-page-report-hindenburg-says-fraud-cannot-be-camouflaged-with-patriotism/69662.html
[14] Swaraj Singh Dhanjal, Anirudh Laskar and Satish John, “Each one of Hindenburg’s allegations is a lie: Adani’s Jugeshinder Singh”, Mint, January 30, 2023.
[15] Stephanie Beasley, “Why the Ukraine crisis is a defining moment for George Soros’ OSF”, https://www.devex.com/news/why-the-ukraine-crisis-is-a-defining-moment-for-george-soros-osf-102796; also see the website of the International Renaissance Foundation, https://www.irf.ua/en/about/
[16] “Remarks delivered at the Munich Security Conference”, February 16, 2023, https://www.georgesoros.com/2023/02/16/remarks-delivered-at-the-2023-munich-security-conference/
[17] “BBC and Adani row: ‘George Soros to Rajan to BBC, it’s a confluence of interests’, Smriti Irani lashes out”, Mint, February 17 2023.
[18] https://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/news_updates/pms-address-to-the-nation-on-12-5-2020/
[19] Cited in Ronojoy Sen, John Joseph Vater, “Modi, the RSS and a Self-Reliant India”, ISAS Insights, June 24, 2020. https://www.isas.nus.edu.sg/papers/modi-the-rss-and-a-self-reliant-india/
[20] https://twitter.com/Rajeev_GoI/status/1687359889130311681?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[21] “Internationalisation of the Rupee: Is It Time to Shift Gears?”, speech by T. Rabi Sankar, Deputy Governor, RBI, on October 20, 2022.
[22] M. K. Bhadrakumar, “Reports of Adani’s Eclipse are Greatly Exaggerated”, February 23, 2023, https://www.indianpunchline.com/reports-of-adanis-eclipse-are-greatly-exaggerated/
[23] A forum originally comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and recently expanded to include six more developing countries.
[24] Vijay Prashad, “The Emergence of a New Non-Alignment: The Twenty-Fourth Newsletter”, Tricontinental, June 15, 2023.
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