BLOG/ Reality Bites: Spectre of the ‘Foreign Hand’

If Russia can influence the US election, can the US influence the outcome of an election in India? That foreign powers do influence policies is a no brainer. But is that all that they do? Did US agencies play a role in demonetisation as suggested by a report in TheQuint.com?

One of the most satisfying essays I ever wrote was in a University examination when I was barely 17. This was in 1973. While I no longer remember the exact subject (there were four options to choose from), I do remember the delight with which I wrote about the ‘Foreign Hand’ being responsible for all of India’s woes. I wrote with mock-seriousness how the invisible hand was influencing our lives and affecting election results.

The then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of course made no secret of her misgivings about interference by foreign powers, a suspicion which was then dismissed routinely and disdainfully by editorial writers who attributed it to her own sense of insecurity. Even the US threat to send the US Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal in 1971 to prevent any Indian misadventure in what was then East Pakistan did nothing to allay the perception that blaming the ‘foreign hand’ was a pathetic and laughable political ploy designed to hide one’s own failings.

But the spectre of the ‘foreign hand’ again started bothering me when reports began to appear over the past several weeks that Russia could have influenced this year’s US Presidential election. Could the CIA, KGB or the ISI influence Indian elections, I began to wonder.

In the US, the allegations became increasingly bizarre with the media quoting American Intelligence sources blaming Russian hackers, lobbyists and eventually President Putin himself of masterminding the operation. The President-elect Donald Trump had never made any secret of the chemistry he shared with the Russian President, and therefore the allegations initially seemed to me somewhat predictable and motivated.

Then President Obama intervened and ordered an inquiry. He even hinted that the US might retaliate, possibly with a cyber attack. It was getting serious. And now come reports that both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have reached a rare consensus about Russian attempts to influence the outcome of the election. And on Sunday evening of December 18, I watched with fascination a discussion on BBC in which a venerable scholar from Oxford was pointing out the possibility of Russia doing something similar in Germany and France, both of which are going to have elections in 2017.

It was, of course, ironical. The CIA is known to have toppled governments, organised assassinations and provided intelligence inputs, discovered later to be misplaced, which led the US to war with disastrous consequences for everyone. The all-powerful agency has been accused of interfering in elections in the developing world for decades. And its report on the Balkanisation of India made headlines in India in the late seventies. Barely five or six years ago, the defection of an Indian officer working for Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Rabindra Singh, who was given a new identity in the US, was barely discussed in the media. And now this all-powerful agency is making the pathetic admission that it has been outsmarted by Moscow and despite its resources and expertise, it was caught unaware.

While I had always been skeptical of the ‘foreign hand’ (because I naively and simplistically thought that each country had enough trouble on its plate at home to meddle into others’ affairs), I had been jolted out of my innocence by the reply I received when I asked the then Editor of The Telegraph, MJ Akbar, what he thought of the friendship between Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto. Both were young, were Prime Ministers of their respective countries, hailed from well-known dynasties and seemed to share a chemistry. There was hope that the two would break new grounds.

MJ had just returned from Pakistan after meeting Benazir and was then believed to be close to Rajiv Gandhi as well. He had made a stopover in Patna before returning to his base in Calcutta. And this lowly correspondent was emboldened to ask the question because MJ had had a few swigs of rum that he preferred those days and I myself may had had a peg or two. But his reply was so stunning that it has remained with me as if he said it last night.

“I feel sorry about both Benazir and Rajiv,” MJ, now Minister of State in the Ministry of External Affairs, had quipped, “because the CIA would not allow any independent PM to enjoy power in the subcontinent.” Even more explosive was his prophetic prediction as he went on to say, “they will either be toppled or assassinated”. I wish I had recorded the chilling words. But I forgot about it the very next morning till I was reminded of his words in May, 1991 after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.

CIA’s presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan and its important role there are of course taken for granted. And although I read about the ‘Great Game’ in Rudyard Kipling’s Kim while in college, it was much later that I learnt to appreciate what he was writing about. But CIA’s role in India, judging by the absence of reports in the media, seem confined to reporting political gossip and punditry in the media. Or so we are led to believe. But now with CIA’s own allegation against Russia, I have again begun to wonder about the ‘foreign hands’ and the roles they play here. To make me even more uneasy is a report that suggests that USAID, with suspected CIA links, may have played a role in the decision to demonetise currencies.

It may not be out of place to point out here a passage in a book written by Sam Pitroda and published last year. While recalling the day Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, Pitroda writes about a midnight knock by the ‘local KGB agent’ in New Delhi, who said that he was under instruction to fly him and his family out of Delhi, if necessary. Clearly Intelligence agencies take a keen interest in the developments here, even more so now that India’s economy has been growing faster than others.

We in the media do not seem to be sufficiently aware of the geo-political and geo-strategic interests that other countries have in the subcontinent. Could it be in their interest to perpetuate a state of conflict? If so, to what end? Could they be influencing our politics, our election and our policies? With industry and industrialists increasingly influencing politics, if not interfering in it, and with industrialists openly brokering deals between India and other countries (Sajjan Jindal’s admission of his role in promoting friendship between the Indian PM and Nawaz Sharif being a case in point), it no longer seems far-fetched to think of the ‘foreign hand’ dictating our lives and action. Manipulating social media is just one of the many tools that could facilitate their designs.

With the large number of bureaucrats and politicians invited to visit foreign countries, an abnormally high number of their wards getting scholarship to study in these countries and securing jobs in multinationals there, there is need more than ever to beware of the ‘foreign hand’ and the manipulations and mischief they are capable of.

Uttam Sengupta is Executive Editor of National Herald. He tweets at @chatukhor