The Return of the Foreign Hand

From Hindenburg and George Soros to international human rights organisations to an assortment of spooks and spies, the Foreign Hand is allegedly back in India. Despite the popular basis of the protests and the mass mobilisation by young persons that sent former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina packing, there have been allegations that a Foreign Hand was behind her ouster. 

To be sure, South Asia may well be a playground in an unfolding New Cold War, as it was during the Old Cold War, so to speak. Many countries big and small have acquired a stake in the region. So it would be tempting to see shadow forces operating, more so when cataclysmic events like a regime change occur. However, more often than not, the sources of the problems South Asian countries are having to deal with lie at home.

Every now and then the Foreign Hand makes its appearance in Indian political discourse. In the run up to the 2024 general elections, none other than the prime minister himself spoke about global threats to India’s internal stability and progress and emphasised the need for a ‘strong and stable’ government with an overwhelming parliamentary majority. In the event, the electorate did not take that threat seriously and gave him a sub-optimal result.

Many political analysts have often remarked that Modi has borrowed much from the political toolkit of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Blaming the Foreign Hand for his political problems is one such idea. Except, that Gandhi was operating in an era wherein heads of government were bumped off by shadowy elements. Her media advisor, the late H.Y. Sharada Prasad, has left behind notes suggesting that she may well have imposed Emergency rule in 1974 fearing that she was the next target of a Foreign Hand after Chile’s Salvador Allende was assassinated in 1973. Both Fidel Castro and Leonid Brezhnev had allegedly warned her as much.

The 1960s and ’70s, the high noon of the Cold War, was indeed the era of the Foreign Hand. Both the United States and the Soviet Union were seeking allies and puppets to bolster their own power. India was then on the wrong side of western powers. Today India sees itself as a ‘strategic partner’ and a ‘non-NATO ally’ of the United States. Yet, paranoia and the politics around the Foreign Hand, in which even the US is suspect, have not gone away. 

With the end of the Cold War, the talk of a Foreign Hand subsided but never disappeared. With the implosion of the Soviet Union, India drifting closer to the United States and a surge in the numbers of Indians heading West and seeking citizenship of Anglophone countries, the Foreign Hand receded from public discourse. It would make its appearance every now and then, as it did in 2012 when even a sober leader like former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh felt compelled to see the Foreign Hand behind the protests targeting the Russian aided nuclear plant at Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu.

Given this background, it is not at all surprising that a political party like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under a leader like Modi, should see Foreign Hands behind every problem and challenge. For a decade now various agencies of the state have hounded all manner of organisations, ranging from the Ford Foundation to the Centre for Policy Research, alleging plots hatched by Foreign Hands. So it is not surprising that many within the ruling dispensation in India see a Foreign Hand not just behind Hasina’s ouster but also behind stock market analyst Hindenburg’s research into the financial operations of the Adani Group.

Maybe there are many Foreign Hands at work in India, just as Indian ‘hands’ are at work overseas. That allegations about Indian agents being involved in assassination plots overseas are being taken seriously around the world point to the coming of age of the Indian hand. Even if elements outside a country are conspiring against one, the bottom line has to be that the government of each such country should look inwards and ask what actions it may or may not have taken that have helped Foreign Hands play.

In an uncertain and rapidly changing world, a major power like India must focus on internal security and governance so as not to create situations that open up space for Foreign Hands to play around. It is easy to divert attention from misgovernance at home by alleging that a Foreign Hand is responsible for everything that goes wrong. The fact is that Hasina laid the foundations for her ouster. The fact also is that arbitrary actions of various institutions in India, from investigative agencies to regulatory ones, are responsible for questionable actions and decisions. 

There is no denying that the Cold War era has left behind the memory of unfriendly Foreign Hand destabilising the country. It is also understandable that in a post-colonial society that still has memory of the East India Company morphing into the British state, the Foreign Hand is seen not merely in the suspected and alleged actions of spooks and fifth columnists but also in the actions of those in the corporate and financial world. 

However, India has moved on. With the exception of less than a handful of countries, there are no others that would want to see India remain weak, backward and under-developed. Western powers have recognised that a developed and self-confident India is in their interests. Even as our foreign policy seeks an external environment conducive to the country’s economic development, at home the focus has to be on good and transparent governance rather than the search for an alibi to explain domestic failures and bad governance.  

This article was originally published in The Tribune.