How did the US Deep State attempt to destabilize and disrupt the democratically elected government in India through ‘soft power’?
The vast network of NGOs and media houses in India and abroad was well funded and armed to discredit the government in the eyes of the voters and create enough chaos to precipitate regime change.
From the violent anti-Sterlite protests of 2018 to the Delhi riots of 2020 and the farmer protests of 2020-21, the role of NGOs and some media organizations was funding and instigating.
In 2023, a consortium of publications funded by Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the Omidyar Foundation published an ‘expose’ about the phones of a handful of journalists and opposition leaders allegedly being compromised by the spyware Pegasus. Still the system could not be changed.
French publication Mediapart recently published ‘investigative reports’ about OCCRP, ‘the world’s largest investigative reporting agency’, being in the pay of the US deep state, receiving up to $47 million in funding from them, and governments the US opposes. Is disclosed to be published.
When these tactics did not work, the Deep State targeted a revered icon of India – the Adani Group, the only conglomerate capable of completing large infrastructure and power projects in and outside India. Hurting Adani would mean hurting India as a nation. Deep state assets like OCCRP and their allies in India were deployed to make loud and confusing claims of corruption. Hindenburg Research helped. How can lies disguised as facts ever stand up to scrutiny? The Adani Group shook off temporary setbacks and moved ahead.
However, the web of NGOs and how they work, as well as the Indian faces of these NGOs, who did the bidding of the US Deep State, must be made public.
2016: FCRA action
Following Indian government restrictions on the flow of foreign funds into Indian NGOs since 2016–17, the Deep State and foreign foundations funded by Soros were in trouble.
The Home Ministry placed George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and Open Society Institute on the ‘prior permission’ list. This meant that whenever any of these foundations wanted to donate to an Indian NGO or firm, they would have to seek permission from the MHA.
The Ford Foundation also came under the scanner of investigative agencies around 2015, when it was found that the American NGO had given US$290,000 to Teesta Setalvad’s NGO Sabrang between 2004 and 2006. However, a diplomatic intervention has allowed the Foundation to continue its operations. In India.
As far as Omidyar Network is concerned, they came under scrutiny in May 2022 when they were among 10 NGOs accused of bribing FCRA officials to renew their licenses.
As a result of this action, these foreign entities started finding convenient Indian and international channels, including NGOs and media houses, to channel money into the country for their favorite projects.
We look at three case studies in this article as examples of how the Deep State has worked to disrupt India over the years.
Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI)
One of the most interesting NGOs, CHRI has been receiving funding from the Open Society Foundations (OSF) as well as the Ford Foundation.
The CHRI website states that the NGO “focuses on issues related to access to justice, including police and prison reforms and access to information. We work to address pressures on freedom of expression and media rights, as well as build the capacity of civil society to access and engage with the UN human rights mechanism. We support the eradication of contemporary forms of slavery and human trafficking through research, capacity building and grassroots mobilization.
An overview of FCRA data shows that more than Rs 50 crore was donated to NGOs in the 12 years between 2006 and 2018. About a quarter of this funding came from the Open Society Foundations and its sister organization, the Open Society Institute, in Switzerland, Budapest and New York.
The second largest donor is the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, a German foundation of liberal politics affiliated with the Free Democratic Party, which follows the ideals of Protestant theologian Friedrich Naumann.
However, after 2016, OSF was not able to fund the NGO, as it was placed on the Home Ministry’s watch list. As a result, an interesting change occurred.
A new donor emerged in 2018: CHRI-UK, which donated Rs 2.1 crore to CHRI in the same year.
What is CHRI-UK?
CHRI-UK is a registered charity in the United Kingdom. It received grants totaling £50,000 from the UK Foreign Office and the European Commission in 1998.
In 2006–07, CHRI-UK received £20,000 from the Ford Foundation. For the year 2013–14, CHRI-UK reported a cash balance of only £7,337. Even in 2016 and 2017, CHRI-UK reported having only small amounts under ‘reserves’.
CHRI-UK had little income as of 2017. But its fortunes changed significantly from 2017–18 with major donations from the Foundation to Promote Open Society (pounds 133,732) and the Foundation Open Society Institute (pounds 18,971). There was no other income that year.
The UK Charity Commission website also says the same about the UK branch of the Indian NGO CHRI.
CHRI-UK’s funding data for 2019-20 can be found on its website, and when the data is aggregated, it shows a distinct trend.
What does all this data show? It is clear that CHRI-UK acted as a conduit to channel money from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations to CHRI India.
This was done despite the ban on foreign funding in the country. In other words, once Soros’s OSF learned that the Indian government had halted its funding of CHRI, the foundation channeled its funding through other companies to ensure that CHRI India also received funding. Did it from.
Who runs CHRI?
RTI proponent Venkatesh Nayak is the director of CHRI since 2021.
Sanjay Hazarika, a former journalist turned human rights activist, is the International Director of CHRI. Hazarika also heads another NGO called Center for Policy Research (CPR) – we will look at this NGO later in this article.
Maja Daruwalla is currently a Senior Advisor at CHRI, having been its Director for 20 years until 2016. She is the daughter of distinguished veteran late Sam Manekshaw.
Hazarika is on the executive committee of another NGO called Indian Police Foundation (IPF). Daruwala is on the General Council of IPF. IPF is headed by retired IPS officer Prakash Singh.
The stated goal of the IPF is to “work to improve policing through police reform and research, capacity building and policy advocacy.”
To this effect, Prakash Singh, along with lawyer Prashant Bhushan, filed a writ petition before the Supreme Court of India in 1996, demanding police reforms. The verdict came in favor of Singh, with the Supreme Court imposing a limit of 3 months of remaining service for aspiring DGPs, a two-year tenure for DGPs and a warning to UPSC to clear the names of DGPs sent by the states. This resulted in turmoil within the police force, with officers across the country jockeying for position at the top and becoming increasingly subservient to their political masters.
CHRI has consistently supported Prakash Singh’s causes, and with two members of CHRI’s leadership on IPF’s board, it is natural that they would do so.
National Foundation for India (NFI)
The second big NGO that we are going to look at is the National Foundation for India (NFI), which is also headquartered in Delhi.
The stated purpose of the NGO is to serve as “a foundation for a variety of social actors in our collective journey to enable social justice”. To this end, we partner with, train and mentor a range of individuals across climate action, women’s empowerment, independent journalism, gender rights, peace, health and nutrition, among other goals.
The Executive Director of NFI is Biraj Patnaik, former South Asia Director of Amnesty International.
An overview of FCRA donations declared by the NGO on its website shows that between 2015 and 2022, NFI received Rs 58.1 crore in foreign donations. Of this, Soros Foundation donated Rs 94 lakh, Omidyar Network donated Rs 3.3 crore and Ford Foundation donated Rs 12 crore to promote open society.
After 2016, when Soros’s foundation was placed on the preclearance list, no direct donations were made. However, other Indian donors increased their funding to NFI.
A vivid example of this is that of self-rights. Swadhikar donations began in November 2016, totaling Rs 9.5 lakh. Between then and 2018, Swadhikar donated approximately 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 the Fund for Global Human Rights, which is co-founded by Soros’ OSF as well. Soros is also backed by another entity, Luminate.
Donations to NFI from another South Africa-based NGO, called Global Fund for Community Foundation, began in May 2018. As of 2021, NFI had received a total of Rs 73 lakh from this organization.
The GFCF’s website shows that Soros’s OSF is one of its major sponsors.
This again shows how cleverly the FCRA rules are circumvented and how Soros, Ford Foundation and Omidyar continue to send money to India through their favorite NGOs.
As for NFI, they provide fellowships to train journalists and young professionals, run The Reporters Collective, and provide grants to publish stories that are in line with the ideology of their funders.
Center for Policy Research (CPR)
CPR’s FCRA license was canceled in January this year. However, by then, this large NGO had raised funds from related foreign entities.
Its foreign direct funding in 2019-20 was Rs 24.5 crore. Moreover, it had unspent FCRA funds totaling Rs 43.7 crore.
CPR had received Rs 11.63 crore from the Ford Foundation between 2013 and 2019 to study the ‘Urban Research Network’.
As of the fiscal year ending March 2021, CPR had Rs 2.3 crore remaining from a Ford Foundation grant, Rs 1.6 crore from Omidyar Network and Rs 8.2 lakh from Washington DC-based Namati.
According to FCRA data, Namati provided funding of Rs 2 crore in 2022.
In the same year, the Ford Foundation provided funding of Rs 52 lakh.
World Resources Institute (WRI) contributed Rs 89 lakh in 2022.
WRI lists Soros’s OSF as a major donor. Although exact funding has not been provided, OSF appears to have contributed more than US$750,000 to WRI between 2020 and 2022.
Let’s take a look at Namati also. Namati is funded directly by George Soros’ OSF, Luminate, the Ford Foundation, and the US State Department.
In fact, according to its website, George Soros is on Namati’s advisory board.
This is another example of how Soros and Ford continue to send money to India despite the FCRA ban.
CPR was presided over by Chairperson Meenakshi Gopinath. Its chairman and chief executive Yamini Iyer had resigned in March this year. She is the daughter of Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar. Earlier, CPR was headed by journalist Pratap Bhanu Mehta.
Maze of NGOs and media houses
It is very clear that the avenues for seeding the ideology have been perfected over decades, individuals have been groomed and space has been created for their demonstration. Funding routes do not appear to pose any challenges, with foreign institutions growing and getting on their feet, even as new checks and balances are put in place.
It is clear that all this did not happen overnight. It is the result of decades of institution and people building in covert and overt ways, with policy makers, media persons and many others complicit in the process.
A maze of institutions around the world are linked to these large foundations, and money flows from one to another in a confusing mess. It appears that the foreign institutions in question have developed an almost perfect mechanism to continue funding India in an effort to propagate the political ideologies of their respective founders.
It is this ‘soft power’ that is being weaponized in India today.
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