The decade of 2014-2024 had become the decade of change. Now, Bharat has moved moved from the category of fragile five economies to top five economies of the world, reputation of Bharat and its diasporas is all time high in the history of this modern independent nation, now Bharat is an emerging economic and strategic power. Bharat has propounded a unique foreign policy matrix when it comes to Russia-Ukraine war and Israel-Hamas war. Bharat under Narendra Modi has achieved many more such milestones in all spheres and is leading in different indexes of almost every sector.
In 2024 when Bharat was celebrating the festival of democracy it is important to note that the outcome of elections is going to play a important role in shaping global dynamics as Bharat is at the centre of new geo-political chess. During these elections there had been a sinister plot by a nexus of academicians and global media which attempts to influence the voting pattern of the Bhartiya voters. NGOs and so-called Philanthrophic organisations like Open Society Foundation and Henry Luce Foundation (HLF) had emerged as the propaganda powerhouses. But a unique thing appeared this time in narrative manufacturing process that narratives has been propelled from the French media also, for example the oldest and the largest circulating newspaper of France – Le Monde, was having opeds/columns/articles either written or based on interviews/ statements made by one political scientist and researcher Christophe Jaffrelot. During or before elections there was a commonality of events and activities from outside Bharat and having a common source of fundings. There had been a collaborative network of French and US ecosystem funded by the US based so called philanthrophic organisations like Henry Luce Foundation and Open Society Foundation and they manufactured the narrative which introduced terms like ‘Declining Democracy in India’, ‘Hindutva Majoritarianism’, ‘Fascism in India’, ‘Caste Census and Survey’ etc. which became the topics of mainstream discourse in General Parliamentary Elections, 2024 !
There was a deliberate effort to push an agenda that undermines the largest democratic process of the world. French media, unusually this time, took a high interest in Indian elections this time as number of articles in different newspapers and portals like Le Soir, La Croix (International), Le Temps, Reporterre, Radio France International (RFI) etc appeared which tried to tamper the opinions of Bharat’s electorate. In Le Monde, articles with slanted narratives like ‘Rising Islamophobia in India’ , ‘Undemocratic nature of India’, ‘Stigmatization of Muslims’, ‘Growing Authoritarianism’ etc were propelled and the source of such type of anti-Bharat imageries is one intellectual – Christophe Jaffrelot. Jaffrelot was widely quoted in French and Foreign Media as well as in the Bhartiya Media like Indian Express, The Wire etc as a political commentator and expert on Indian Elections. Some of the examples testifying the involvement of Jaffrelot to shape the mainstream discourse are given below :
A. In La Croix (International) – Interview titled “Nationalists are aiming to transform India into a Hindu State” appeared on April 16, 2024
B. In Financial Times – Jaffrelot was quoted in a article titled “Is the cult of Modi starting to lose its lustre” published on May 22, 2024.
C. Voice of America – Article titled “Hindu Nationalism now mainstream, thanks to Modi’s decade in power” quoting Jaffrelot, appeared on April 19, 2024
Their are plethora of articles which were either written or quoted Christophe Jaffrelot in a length so to temper the opinion regarding Modi and the ruling dispensation of BJP.
But, who is Christophe Jaffrelot ? and why his credibility is in question !
Jaffrelot is a professor of South Asian Politics and history at Centre d’etudes et de recherches internationales (CERI) at Sciences Po (Paris), a professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King’s India Institute (London), and a Research Director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) . It is interesting to note that George Soros son Alexander Soros is in the Strategic Committee of Sciences Po !
In 2021, Christophe Jaffrelot published a research report on need for a caste census in India and wrote articles in Indian media. And this caste census issue became a topic for discourse in the General Elections of 2024 ! But the most striking factor is that Jaffrelot’s caste census narrative timed with a fund from a US-based Philanthrophic foundation named Henry Luce Foundation (HLF) and received HLF’s funding for the period between 2021 and 2024. And there are many other fronts at the same time receiving HLF’s funding !
This whole caste narrative has been fuelled by the foreign powers in the foreign land. The role of Caste Survey done by Equality Labs in 2018 in USA has been a catalyst to pop up the issue of caste census/survey in the mainstream discourse.
Equality Labs
Equality Labs claims to be a progressive organisation combating caste discrimination. It has been operating since 2016 but it was officially registered in the year of 2022 as Equality Labs LLC in Delaware and California. Thenmozhi Soundarajan is the founder of Equality Labs she is a artist and activist born and brought up in USA, known for her anti India stance. In one of her podcasts hosted by Matthew Remski titled ‘Conspirituality’ , during her podcast she claimed that Yoga was used by the Brahmins to oppress the Dalit community. She further claimed that Yoga was practised by indigenous communities in India but the rules of the practice were written by ‘others’. Soundarajan insinuated that Yoga had an in-built system of hierarchy, which supposedly made it vulnerable to abuse. However, as has been the practice, she offered little evidence to prove her claims. Thenmozhi Soundarajan has worked on the grants from the open society foundation in 2014. Like Soundarajan, co founder of Equality Labs Sharminda Hosain, a Bangladeshi American was a 2015 Open Society Youth Exchange Fellow, another George Soros connection ! It’s another co-founder Huma Dar who is a lecturer of South Asian Studies at University of California, in 2019 had called for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDSM) against Bharat. BDSM is a Muslim Brotherhood sponsored project. In December 2021 a precursor event to BDSM was organised in Bosnia jointly by individuals such as Haley Dus Chinski, Farhan Mujahid Chak (Kashmir Civitas) and Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami.
How Christophe Jaffrelot received funds
Jaffrelot received funds from the Henry Luce Foundation (HLF) through the New York based affiliate of the Sciences Po i.e. the Sciences Po America Foundation. In January, 2021 Sciences Po America Foundation alongwith Princeton University and Columbia University conceived a project titled “Muslims in a time of Hindu Majoritarianism” spanning for three years between 2021-2024. Project was jointly developed by:
– Bernard Haykel , Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Columbia University
– Mannan Ahmed Asif , Associate Professor of History at Columbia University
– and Christophe Jaffrelot.
Although the amount for the project was granted in 2020, the public announcement for the same was made in the year of 2021.
Henry Luce Foundation
The organisation was founded by Henry Luce, co-founder of Time Magazine, in the year of 1936. The organisation claims to work in the fields of journalism, higher education and public policy. However, in different times many theories used to be propounded that Henry Luce was having connection with the CIA of America. It was claimed that Luce used his media empire to get Eisenhower elected as the President of USA and in return Eisenhower, in 1953, appointed Luce’s spouse Clare Booth Luce as the Ambassador of USA to Italy. Italian Historian Claudio Accogli claims that Luce was heavily involved with the local CIA operatives in the anti communist covert operations. Similarly, eminent American investigative journalist and author Carl Bernstein argued that Charles Douglas Jackson, Luce’s close friend and publisher of Life Magazine, was “Henry Luce’s personal emissary to the CIA”.
Henry Luce Foundation (HLF) and Bharat’s General Parliamentary Elections, 2024
In January 2021, Henry Luce Foundation (HLF) approved a grant of $ 3,46,000 to the Berkeley Centre for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. This grant was aimed at “Transatlantic Policy Network on Religion and Diplomacy” (TPNRD) so that it can expand its public engagement efforts so to forge new partnerships.
Transatlantic Policy Network for Religion and Diplomacy (TPNRD) was founded by European External Action Service and US State Department in 2015. It is a policy forum having onboard top diplomats from foreign ministries in the European and Atlantic regions whose portfolios focus on religion related issues.
In October 2023, Berkeley Centre along with TPNRD published a report titled “ The Hindu Right and India’s Religious Diplomacy”, the report criticises the Bharat’s foreign policy by making out the conclusion that Bharat is investing in religious diplomacy which is having a Hindu character and also states that how Bharat’s reputation has declined in the eyes of foreign governments and think tanks by taking reference to the tag labelled by US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) on Bharat as ‘Country of Particular Concern’ !
Another organisation which received funds from the Henry Alice Foundation is Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) . CEIP received funds from HLF on two occasions i.e. 2018 and 2020. In 2018 CEIP received a grant of $40,000 for the project titled “Religious Populism and the Future of Indian Democracy”. On April 04,2019 CEIP published a report titled “The BJP in power: Indian Democracy and Religious Nationalism” authored by Milan Vaishnav with contributions from Christophe Jaffrelot and others, just one week before the commencement of 2019 General Parliamentary elections. In 2020, HLF granted a sum of $ 1,20,000 to CEIP under the project titled “Communalizing Citizenship in India”.
As a result of which CEIP on June 02,2022 published a collection of essays which were sponsored by grants from HLF, which are :
1. Religion ,Citizenship and Belonging in India by Madhav Khosla and Milan Vaishnav
2. Reinventing the Republic: Faith and Citizenship in India by Neerja Gopal Jayal
3. Hindu Nationalsim:From Ethnic identity to Authoritarian Repression by Pratap Bhanu Mehta
4. New India,Hindutva Constitutionalism and Muslim Political Attitudes by Hilal Ahmed.
5. Representation and legitimacy in the Supreme Court: Adjudicating Law and Religion in India by Raeesa Vakil
6. Religion-as-Ethnicity and the Emerging Hindu Vote in India by Neelanjan Sircar.
Similarly, the Henry Luce Foundation funded the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative (PCRes) housed at the Centre for Race and Gender at University of California, Berkeley, in April 2021. HLF approved a grant of $ 3,70,000 to “examine the fault lines between citizenship, religion in the public sphere, and belonging in contemporary South Asia” .
When 2024 elections were going in Bharat PCRes organised an online event titled “Indian Election 2024:Hindu Nationalism,Ayodhya and Dispossession” as part of CRG forum series. Co sponsors of the event were Institute for South Asia Studies, Department of Gender and Women Studies, the the Berkeley Centre for Right Wing Studies and Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. It is worth to note that PCRes and Stanford University’s Department of Anthropology and Stanford libraries got grants from HLF for collaboration.
Today, Bharat is ready to achieve new milestones . A strong and a resurgent Bharat is not in the favour of many global powers and this year of 2024 is a turning point in the history of Bharat. So to stop Bharat, before and during the elections vicious attempts were made to erode the nationalistic waves and which were surfing in the hearts of the people of this country. Slanted Narratives were manufactured by global powers to subvert the opinions of the people of Bharat and broaden the faultlines to divide the society. But all their exercise have gone to vain. Bharat has now started to travel with a faster speed to achieve its dream of Viksit Bharat in 2047.
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