India’s ruling party, the BJP, has accused Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi of being in cahoots with “deep state” actors like George Soros in trying to derail India’s – read Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s – success story.
So just who is George Soros?
He is a Hungarian-American billionaire philanthropist who calls himself a stateless statesman. His opponents in America – usually Republicans – call him Red George because of his support for leftist and pro-immigrant causes.
Among his philanthropic efforts is the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, which provides 30 “outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants from all over the country and world who are pursuing graduate school here in the United States” up to $90,000 in funding over two years.
Among the books George Soros has written are The Bubble of American Supremacy: The Cost of Bush's War in Iraq and The Age of Fallibility.
Amartya Sen called him "an enlightened philanthropist who knows how to put his billions to the best use." The Nobel laureate economist said he had “the highest regard for him, and I read his books and benefit from them”.
On Thursday BJP MP from Godda in Jharkhand, Nishikant Dubey, insinuated that Rahul Gandhi and his party had links with Soros, who, according to the BJP leader, was attempting to undermine the Indian economy.
Dubey took to the floor during Zero Hour, beginning with the slogan: "Congress ka haath Soros ke saath [Congress is hand in glove with Soros]."
George Soros, a brief history
George Soros, chair of Soros Fund Management Limited Liabilities Company and founder of the Open Society Foundations, was born in Hungary in 1930.
He lived through Nazi occupation and later under the Iron Curtain until 1947.
“1944, the year of the German occupation, was my formative experience. Instead of submitting to our fate we resisted an evil force that was much stronger than we were—yet we prevailed,” Soros had said about his growing up during the tumultuous period.
He left for London in 1947. Studies and did some odd jobs and then went to the United States in 1956. In 1970, at 40, Soros launched his hedge fund and became a successful investor.
In his book The Age of Fallibility, Soros wrote that he became a philanthropist when his hedge fund became worth $100 million.
In 1979, Soros began his philanthropic work by giving scholarships to blacks in South Africa during the apartheid era and later, by creating Open Society Foundations, which funds foundations and projects in over 120 countries.
In a 2006 interview, Soros had said: “America has a long tradition of interfering in the affairs of other countries, protecting the Shah of Iran and so on. That is nothing new. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, America emerged as the unquestioned, sole remaining superpower. Therefore, it could now exert a leadership in the world of a different kind than the one the [then George W.] Bush administration uses.”
What is the George Soros-Rahul Gandhi connection?
The official X account of the BJP put out a series of posts on Thursday accusing Rahul Gandhi of shaking hands with vested interests to destabilise India.
“On November 13, 2020, Financial Times, known for its close connections with George Soros, published an article titled ‘Modi’s Rockefeller’: Gautam Adani and the concentration of power in India. The article explicitly suggested that to weaken PM Modi, one must target Adani,” said one post.
“On August 31, 2023, just 10 days before the G20 Summit, Rahul Gandhi held a press conference addressing the Adani issue and directly targeted Prime Minister Modi. Rahul Gandhi’s intentions were clear! His real targets were Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and India’s stock market, using Adani merely as a tool.”
Another post said: “Another issue where Congress caused significant disruptions in Parliament was the Pegasus controversy. The common link between the Adani and Pegasus issues is that the material used by the Congress party to target the government in both cases was provided by OCCRP, a Europe-based investigative journalism group. This suggests a possible special connection between Congress and the OCCRP in promoting these narratives against India.”
The motive of the posts was as much about defending Adani as about attacking Rahul Gandhi and Soros.
Yet another post claimed: “From 2023 until now, OCCRP has published around 5-7 articles targeting Adani. While there are thousands of major corporations globally, OCCRP seems singularly focused on just Adani. Prior to targeting Adani, OCCRP had a similar focus on Putin. A clear pattern appears to be emerging!”
The Adani link in BJP attack
A cursory glance at the investigative media platform Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) shows it is not about Adani only.
There are multiple reports on how black money is parked in Dubai’s real estate, unrestrained antiquities trade in the United Kingdom, drug cartels to money laundering in Southeast Asia.
The BJP claims that the US State Department is behind this “agenda” of “targeting Adani”, given that half of the OCCRP’s funding comes directly from the US State Department.
USAID and Soros’s Open Society Foundation both fund the OCCRP. So does the European Union, United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs of France and Skoll Foundation.
The BJP claimed: “Rahul Gandhi's frequent visits to the U.S. and the UK only further reinforce this connection.For instance, during his secret visit to Uzbekistan last year, Samantha Power, the administrator of USAID (which funds OCCRP), was also present there at the same time. The Deep State is an evil force that has brought nothing but destruction.”
The BJP has also underlined the fact that Open Society Foundation’s vice-president, Salil Shetty, walked with Rahul Gandhi in the Bharat Jodo Yatra in 2023.
Soros and India
Soros’s foundation began operating in India in 1999.
According to the foundation factsheet on India, “In 2014, we launched an India-specific grant-making program, supporting local organizations that work in three areas: extending access to medicine; promoting justice system reforms; and strengthening and establishing rights, public services, and community living for people with psychosocial disabilities. Since mid-2016, our grant making in India has been constrained by government restrictions on our funding for local NGOs.”
After Modi came to power, foreign endowments, covered under the Foreign Currency Regulation Act, have become stringent.
As of 2021, Soros’s foundation has given approximately Rs 3.4 crore in its India activities, which is 0.02 per cent of its total 12,703 crore funding worldwide in that year.
Some of its activities include scholarships to over 650 students to attend India’s top colleges and universities, funding agricultural supply chain companies Siddhi Vinayak Agri Processing Pvt. Ltd and All Fresh Supply Management Pvt. Ltd, a chain of 10 hospitals (Be Well Hospitals) in Tamil Nadu to improve access of secondary care for lower income households, partnering with city governments to help fund local organisations that promote support models for people with disabilities, and financial technology companies such as NeoGrowth and Capital Float.
George Soros and controversies
In February 2023, George Soros had said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be weakened by the business troubles of Gautam Adani “opening the door” to a democratic revival in the country.
PM Modi would “have to answer questions”, Soros reportedly said after Hindenburg Research released a report accusing Adani of stock manipulations.
But Soros is not new to controversy. According to the BBC, he first invited controversy when he criticised the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and started to donate to the Democrats.
Soon, he became the object of harsh criticism and conspiracies of the Republicans.
After Donald Trump assumed power in 2016, the vitriol increased. Trump supporters and certain media channels often accuse him of perpetrating violence, instigating migrants to bring down the state.
Who else hates George Soros?
It’s not just American supremacists who abuse Soros as a Jewish conspirator.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused him of leading a Jewish conspiracy to divide Turkey.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Soros is the “biggest danger in the western world” and is plotting to flood Hungary with migrants.
For these people, he is the global villain trying to destabilise nations with money.
A scan of George Soros’s instagram account shows he talks about political issues and human rights crusaders.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan are some of the people he has posted about.
Besides, he has posted about the Bosnia war, the fall of the Berlin Wall, racial justice, abortion rights, refugee rights and criticisms about Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping’s administrations.
George Soros: Global hero or master villain?
A study, titled ‘The Framing of George Soros as a Political Puppetmaster on Indian Social Media Networks’ by academics Sheyril Agarwal and Joyojeet Pal at the University of Michigan analysed X (formerly Twitter) accounts of 40,000 Indian politicians and 11,500 people classified as journalists, social media influencers and media houses between January and April 2023.
It found that “8,490 tweets that mentioned George Soros and were authored by prominent Indian social media accounts. Out of these, 3,703 were either original tweets, replies or quotes while the remaining were retweets.”
The study found that the right-wing eco system sees “Soros as a powerful and influential person…part of a global illuminati, including other philanthropists incl Gates, Rockefellers as well as media houses incl BBC, Time etc which published articles that show Modi in poor light. This is a trope seen in a range of online conspiracy theories that present issues such as vaccination, climate change etc. as having the hand of wealthy philanthropists trying to run the world on their own terms.”
So, is George Soros a global hero or a master villain? The answer depends on whether you believe like the BJP that there is a global left-wing conspiracy emanating from the most capitalist country in the world to destablise India, where all parties try to outdo others in upholding left-wing ideals of government.