On February 16, the billionaire George Soros launched another attack against India’s Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi. He claimed that Modi is “no democrat” and hoped for a weakened Modi expecting a “democratic revival” in India. He is notorious for interfering in countries’ internal affairs, attacking their sovereignty, financing anti-government activities and hate for nationalism and nationalists.
Given George Soros’s recent comments, BJP leader and Union Minister Smriti Irani replied, “The man who broke bank of England & is designated by nation an economic war criminal has now pronounced his desire to break Indian democracy. George Soros an international entrepreneur has declared his ill-intention to intervene in democratic processes of India.”
External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar also replied to Soros’s comments against the PM, stating, “Mr Soros is an old, rich opinionated person sitting in New York who still thinks that his views should determine how the entire world works…such people actually invest resources in shaping narratives.”
The billionaire performs his anti-nationalist antics and finances his anti-government activities through, among other avenues, the Open Society Foundation (OSF), which is known to fund political NGOs, including Israeli NGOs denying Israel’s legitimacy and Palestinian NGOs with ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terror organisation. In 2015, the Russian government banned two foundations tied to the billionaire, claiming that the foundations posed a “threat to national security.”
However, his attempt to destabilise democratic governments is not limited to the use of political influence. For example, OSF-backed Sherpa Association attempted to attack India’s defence when the foundation filed a complaint against the India-France Rafale deal.
OSF-backed Sherpa Association, in their tweet from November 23, 2018, said, “We filed a complaint with the national financial prosecutor’s office in Paris in order to clarify the conditions surrounding the sale of 36 Rafale plane by #Dassault Aviation to India in 2016,” alleging “possible acts of corruption.”
While the OSF-backed Sherpa Association attacked India’s defence in France, a three-judge bench of India’s Supreme Court, chaired by former Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, denied a petition seeking an investigation into the India-France Rafale deal. The bench stated that there was no commercial favouritism to “seriously mistrust the decision making process.”
While OSF-backed Sherpa Association tried to undermine India’s defence with its 2018 complaint against India’s Rafale deal, George Soros met with Pakistan’s ex-PM, Imran Khan, despite Pakistan’s image as a terror state and their continued human rights violations in the Baluchistan region in 2019.
Earlier, in 2016, the Modi government put the OSF on their watchlist, making it harder for the billionaire to fund anti-nationalist initiatives in India. However, Soros has been successful at weaponising his giant fortune and cultivating an ecosystem of anti-nationalist media and NGOs that works to meddle in the country’s internal affairs to shape the world in his vision.
