Economic turmoil, in conjunction with mass protests on the social front, whipping up sentiments on communal and caste lines will be the likely targets of the toolkit operators, looking at regime change.
A notable feature of global events as they unfolded since the turn of the century was the occurrence of mass protests aimed at paralysing governments with the underlying purpose of carrying out regime change. This was another form of colonialism by major powers to get a more favourable and pliable government in power. As an example, the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, which forced President Eduard Shevardnadze to resign, also marked the end of the Soviet era leadership of the country. But the process to achieve this outcome had begun three years earlier, with huge funds being received by opposition parties and NGOs in Georgia from foreign governments and international organisations, to drum up anti-government sentiment. One such organisation was the Open Society Institute funded by George Soros.
The Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004 again led to the annulment of the election result and the inauguration of Viktor Yushchenko as the new President in January 2005, after an election rerun. A decade later, the Euromaidan protests in 2014 once again led to a regime change as the incumbent President chose to have closer ties with Russia rather than with the European Union. The present war in Ukraine, which began a year earlier on 24 February 2022, can largely be traced to Russian concerns of the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, which would impinge directly on Russian security concerns.
The wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings that took place in the Middle East and North Africa beginning in 2010 and 2011, are now commonly termed as the Arab Spring. This led to a change of regime in Tunisia and Egypt and spread to Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and Syria in the early months of 2011. The protests led to bloody and protracted struggles between opposition groups and ruling regimes and the area remains volatile till date.
It would be naive to believe that these protests were the result of a sudden awakening and desire for democratic norms among the local population. Local grievances were repeatedly highlighted and protests were conducted over long periods of time to bring about a magnification effect, which resulted in regime change. We can see the same happening in India, ever since the NDA government was swept into power in 2014. Since then, deliberate attempts are being made to create discord in society as seen by the protests on the alleged attack on churches, the CAA protests which led to some parts of the capital being placed under siege for months, protest by farmers’ groups, protests by climate activists, environmentalists and the like. These protests were organised, agenda-based events which had huge funding from interested parties. The aim was regime change. The efforts of those who wanted a compliant government in the Centre could not fructify in 2019, where the ruling dispensation won an even bigger mandate than in 2014. Now, with the elections to the Lok Sabha just a year away, the process to create discord and disharmony in the country has started once again in earnest. This is a typical toolkit operation, the first salvo of which was fired by the release of a documentary by the BBC on the post Godhra riots, followed soon thereafter by a hit job on a leading industrialist of India by a US-based firm called Hindenburg.
The BBC documentary was released a few days before India’s Republic Day. It was a one-sided production, filled with inaccuracies, innuendo, hyperbole and downright distortion of facts, in an attempt to attribute culpability to the then Chief Minister of Gujarat and his government as being complicit in the riots. The people interviewed in the documentary were all ideologically motivated with slanted views, and were working towards promoting an agenda aimed at political destabilisation. So it was not surprising to see the names of people from discredited organisations like the Wire, Caravan and Newsclick as also individuals with far-left leanings like Arundhati Suzanne Roy and Christophe Jaffrelot spewing venom, devoid of facts. It was also no surprise that Karan Thapar chose to interview Jack Straw, a discredited British politician who was the then foreign secretary under Tony Blair’s government. Conveniently left out of the documentary was the fact that it was Muslim mobs which set fire to the train, killing innocent men, women and children, which was the causative factor of the riots. But surprisingly, the very mature and focused role of the government in acting quickly to defuse the situation was left out. Communal riots of far worse nature have taken place in India earlier too, but this was the first time that the Army was called in within 24 hours of the riots breaking out on 28 February 2002. By 1 March, the Army was deployed and by late evening had started dousing the flames. They would have been deployed in an even faster time-frame, but at that time, the troops were deployed in the border and getting them together and sending them by air took some time. A lot of false reporting took place later stating that it took four days for the Army to be called in. That was a blatant lie, with the spin doctors conveniently forgetting to tell people that February had only 28 days.
The documentary is a hitjob by the BBC and a badly executed one. This organisation, which boasts of its credibility has played to an agenda, as it conveniently left out the fact that India’s Apex Court has reviewed every aspect of what happened during those troubled times and has conclusively debunked the lie that the state was complicit in the riots. The timing of the documentary, over two decades after the riots, when the matter has been thoroughly investigated and the guilty have been punished, stands testimony to its biased nature. Why the BBC also chose to make a mention of the revocation of Article 35A and the operative parts of Article 370 as also of the CAA boggles the mind. These later events have no connection with what happened in Gujarat.
So, what was the BBC documentary aimed at? It appears to be an attempt to whip up communal passions before the 2024 elections. Ram Madhav has rightly called the documentary a damp squib, but nevertheless, it is merely the first of many such attacks that are likely to come up over the months ahead, leading to the 2024 elections. The aim appears to be to cause communal polarisation and the coming days will see an escalation of this trend. A responsible journalist like James Dorsey has also written two articles in which he characterises the RSS as a regressive anti-Muslim organisation. While Dorsey is too respectable a journalist to be a part of the toolkit gang, his views do tend to widen existing cleavages, when the Indian establishment is trying to bring communities closer together.
The hitjob on Adani by the Hindenburg short seller group is also aimed at weakening India economically. We can expect other leading industrialists to be targeted, albeit in different ways. Ramdev’s Patanjali could be next on the list, but even prominent and well established business conglomerates like the Tata group and the Birla group will be on the radar of foreign entities. Economic turmoil, in conjunction with mass protests on the social front, whipping up sentiments on communal and caste lines will be the likely targets of the toolkit operators, looking at regime change. A politically strong and economically dynamic Bharat is anathema to those external powers that would like a subservient and pliable India. They have the money power to instigate protests and violence within the country. Keeping such forces and their Indian supporters at bay will be the defining challenge for the coming year.
Maj Gen Dhruv C. Katoch is a retired Army officer.