In modern times, wars do not necessarily involve the use of weapons of mass destruction. They are also fought by other means, such as creating internal problems, toppling democratically elected governments and debt-trapping and later taking control of vital assets. Ports top the list of such assets. In the Indian context one can safely assume that ports are one of the underlying causes of the “Adani-Modi” ranting, led by Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi. In fact, this campaign is only the latest in a series of mysterious acts of leaders from the Nehru-Gandhi family.
History is replete with examples of maritime trade making economies powerful and traders building empires. Control of ports is very important in this business, and an expansionist China knows it better than others. Companies owned or sponsored by the Chinese state have an eye on ports around the globe, in particular those situated close to the South China Sea. The interest is not just commercial. China has a naval base in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, at the mouth of the Red Sea. It has a naval presence in Cambodia. In recent years Chinese “spy ships” have visited Sri Lankan ports, raising concern in India.
The Chinese government owns the largest shipping company, COSCO with 1,417 vessels, and close to 100 ports scattered across the world. Ownership of ports gives China crucial advantages. It can gather critical data on what a country buys and sells and the volume of the country’s trade in each item. As a result, the global supplier can increase or decrease production and decide what and what not to produce. It can also choke a nation by delaying the transshipment of important goods. Predictably, a neo-imperialist nation like China would not tolerate a business rival in its neighbourhood, whether a government or a private company, who can unsettle its plan.
China has been on a global buying spree. Open acquisition of companies would cause discomfort to most host countries, including China’s debtors, and so direct buyout is not considered a good option. Therefore, it applies a clever strategy: if it wants to have a presence in a foreign facility, it would set up a private-looking company and buy controlling stakes of shareholders or partners of that facility. Any Chinese company ultimately belongs to the Chinese government, which effectively means the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Building and maintaining big ports is part of the business activities of the Adani Group, headed by Gautam Adani. During the corona pandemic, China made a surreptitious bid to secure a foothold in the Adani-run Mundra port through China Merchants Port Holdings Company Ltd., which also owns the Hambantota International Port in Sri Lanka. It is a subsidiary of the Chinese government-owned company China Merchants Group Limited. The idea was to buy the 50 per cent stake a French company had in a terminal of the port. The Indian government defeated the move by refusing consent to the deal for security reasons.
In the recent past, the short seller Hindenburg, which also claims to be a research group, released a report on the Adani group. The serious charges of malpractices it made found an echo in the market and in Indian politics. There was much noise, but two important aspects of the case did not get the attention they deserved. One, Hindenburg monetised the resultant chaos in the market. Second, Hindenburg had leaked the report to Mark Kingdon, its client, two months before the report was released. Kingdon’s wife is allegedly a Chinese spy.
Dubious record
There are sufficient reasons to be suspicious about Rahul Gandhi’s actions. In 2008, during the Olympic Games in Beijing, Rahul Gandhi, then Congress general secretary, signed in the presence of Sonia Gandhi, his mother and then Congress president, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the CPC, enabling the two parties to consult each other on issues of mutual interest and on bilateral, regional and international developments. Curiously, the details of the MoU are concealed from the public. Not just that. The Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, which has Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi at the helm, has received money from the Chinese several times.
There is also a question of political morality here, among other things. Was it proper for a party in power to sign a secret deal with the government of an unfriendly country? China has attacked India and has border disputes with almost all its neighbours. Kingdoms used to sign pacts with other kingdoms to eliminate a common enemy. Narendra Modi heads a democratically elected government. Is he seen as a common enemy by both the Congress leadership and China’s ruling party?
Apparently, Congress leaders or the governments they led never learnt any lesson from what China did. Jawaharlal Nehru, Rahul Gandhi’s great grandfather, lamented that the Chinese attack on India in 1962 was a “great Chinese betrayal” and a stab in the back. A Sunday Guardian report says, quoting Claude Arpi’s book “Will Tibet Ever Find Her Soul Again?”, that it was Nehru’s government that made continued Chinese occupation of Tibet possible by providing the Chinese soldiers rice and other food supplies for four years, till 1954. China has tried to occupy Indian territory several times even after the 1962 war.
Rahul Gandhi, though given Special Protection Group (SPG) cover, has on many occasions left the country without taking security personnel with him. Union Home Minister Amit Shah told Parliament in 2019 that Rahul Gandhi had made 247 such trips after 2015 and had violated SPG protection norms a total of 1,892 times in the same period. This gives rise to suspicions, given his closeness to the CPC and other anti-India elements. The statements he has made against India and its systems while being abroad make one doubt whether he is tutored by persons or groups who cannot stomach the way India is developing. If that is the case, security personnel would naturally be seen as a hindrance.
Rahul Gandhi made fervent appeals to Europe and the United States to help save India’s democracy. In the last century one Gandhi led the movement to evict Western colonisers from India. Now another “Gandhi” invites the West to repair its systems. What an irony!
Back home, the speeches he makes at various places have plenty of naive-looking but dangerous statements. Addressing a gathering in Tamil Nadu in 2021, he claimed that India needed no defence forces to defeat China. The only thing to be done, according to him, was to strengthen “our farmers, labourers, and small and medium businesses”. Remember, this claim was made at a time when China had the world’s largest army in terms of numbers. Was it not a deliberate attempt to discourage investment in the defence sector? (In the 1962 war, when his great grandfather ruled the country, Indian soldiers held the humble 303 rifles while the Chinese used semi-automatic weapons.) Was he not aware of the farmer-soldier coordination his ancestors in government had proudly held forth on (Jai jawan, jai kisan)? Doesn’t he know that most Indian soldiers come from the families of farmers?
Another claim he made was that China’s President would have worn a shirt made in India and Chinese people would have travelled in cars and planes made in India had “our farmers, labourers and small and medium businesses” been strengthened. Doesn’t he know that this did not happen because his ancestors in the Nehru-Gandhi family, who controlled the country’s fate for most part of the post-Independence period, crippled Indian industry by imposing a licence-quota raj in the name of “socialism”?
When the dots are joined, the image of Rahul Gandhi that emerges is not that of an innocent, well-meaning “Pappu”. It is a discomforting one for an average Indian.
