Is ‘Deep State’ threat real or just a bogey?
A bogey is something or someone that people are worried about, perhaps without much cause or reason – something that causes fear among a lot of people, often without reason. It is an excellent means for politicians to create misgivings, even hatred, among the public their opponents.
During the last years of late PM Indira Gandhi, there were two hand symbols, often touted by her and her party rank and file - one, her party symbol, and the other, a ‘foreign hand’. Espe-cially during rallies in last years of her rule, Indi-ra Gandhi would take up the issue of ‘foreign hand’, alleging external forces were using oppo-sition parties to destabilise the country.
After all these years, the ‘foreign hand’ bogey has reared its ugly head again, albeit with new nomenclature. Now-a-days, ‘deep state’ has be-come a favourite word of the BJP to water down fierce criticism and allegations of crony capitalism by the bloc INDIA. With LoP Rahul Gandhi kicking up dirt on the government, an otherwise cool BJP has unusually hurled a new charge at him, which is quite grave in its nature.
The saffron party big wigs have started alleging that the US State Department and “deep state” elements in the US, in collusion with some journalists and opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, were plotting to destabilise India. It particularly charges that Gandhi has become a pawn in the hands of a 92-year-old billionaire George Soros. It detests Gandhi citing the articles of Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OC-CRP), which allege misdoing by the Adani Group, to target the Narendra Modi govern-ment. A US court recently admitted an indict-ment that Gautam Adani and seven others were part of a $265 billion scheme to bribe In-dian officials. The group has since vehemently denied the charges. The opposition is pressing for a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe into the whole affair involving award of certain solar projects in the country.
What is strange that PM Modi’s party, itself, is levelling the charges that Rahul is kowtowing to the OCCRP. It claims OCCRP is funded by the American ‘deep state.’ This at a time when India and US are exhibiting never before seen close ties, bolstering and expanding cooperation in various sectors, even to geopolitical interests – to the extent that India is being seen as a US bulwark against the Chinese in the Indo Pacific. “The Deep State had a clear objective to desta-bilise India by targeting Prime Minister Modi,” the BJP said on X. It adds that, “It has always been the U.S. State Department behind this agenda...OCCRP has served as a media tool for carrying out a deep state agenda.”
The US government has strongly denied the BJP charges. ‘Deep State’ in American context is attributed to authorised and clandestine gov-ernment networks such as CIA and FBI acting in concert with financial and defence industrial groups to influence media, powers-that-be or politicos in other countries.
Now, even the Vice President of India is joining the chorus. On Tuesday, as opposition mem-bers raised slogans targeting PM and Adani, a visibly disturbed Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar warned the members of the rising influence of a “deep state,” which, “affects us more perniciously than COVID disease, and this is an occasion where the entire nation needs to speak in one voice.”
However, even as it is creating uproar for debate on Adani, the opposition is backing out on the government dare for a debate on George Soros as well. The government contends that the Opposition is acting with ulterior motives in blaming Adani group to put the blame on the government. It shall not be a case of ‘shoot and scoot’ in re-spect of the opposition. If allegations against Adani should be believed, then allegations of Soros-Gandhis link also should be believed. One can’t be wrong and the other right.