A planted article in the Financial Times (FT) on an FBI-thwarted plot to assassinate the known terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on US soil by suspected Indian agents has made headlines in the Indian media. The FT is habitually anti-Indian. The article is by a journalist with a strong Hong Kong connection. He puts together bits of information culled from multiple unidentified sources to produce a report full of innuendos, insinuations and surmises.
Our press takes the veracity of the article for granted and amplifies it locally to serve the objectives of those behind this article of putting India on the defensive and answerable to unsubstantiated US allegations. The ploy seems to be to dent India's image as a law abiding democracy and "expose" its disregard for the rule of law. In other words, India is not a fully deserving partner of the US for certain circles within the country's establishment.
India is being attacked in US political, media and academic circles for violation of human rights. The US government too raises human rights issues with India, unmindful of its own far more gross violations of human rights within the country. Black Lives Matter, indiscriminate killing of innocent citizens in malls, schools and streets because of highly lax gun laws and ideological obsession in American society with gun possession, elevated to a constitutional right, is not an ill of Indian society. The imputed attempt to eliminate a US citizen on US soil would be, for those behind this propaganda offensive, another aspect of such disregard for human rights norms.
The obvious question that needed asking is whether it is normal for several people to leak information about a case to which they are privy disregarding the need for discretion when the FBI is involved. Why does the journalist have to be fed dribbles of information to build a story when a single source could provide it, if the intention was to make the India connection prematurely public for political reasons?
There is no way to judge the credibility of the journalist's sources. It is all left to the professional integrity of the journalist and the newspaper, which is questionable in both cases. The journalist is visibly delighted he has obtained a scoop and has advertised this boldly on social media. This is not normal behaviour.
The intriguing question is why the FT has been used to publish a story involving the US and India. It is interesting to note that Chyrstia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, a journalist, was a Deputy Editor of FT and then Editor of FT Week-End, FT's correspondent in Moscow and Managing Editor of FT USA. She was also Deputy Editor of Globe and Mail in Canada.
It is worth recalling that it was made out that Justin Trudeau had to make his statement in parliament quickly as the Globe and Mail had obtained the story about the suspected Indian hand in the Nijjar killing and was about to publish it, forcing pre-emption. Any Freeland connection there?
A similar tactic seems to have been followed in the Pannun case. The story of the purported India connection is leaked to the press and the ground is created to seek a reaction from the US National Security Council (NSC) and a spokesperson from the organisation, Adrienne Watson, makes a vague statement about the issue having been raised with India which, she said, expressed surprised and concern and agreed to look into the matter.
Our spokesperson says, in turn, that the US shared some information about organised crime, gun running and terrorism with India, and as this concerns India's national security and that of the US, both sides agreed to follow up on it.
The question remains why after the Canada episode, which has caused a virtual collapse of our ties with the Trudeau government, and the knowledge that the capacities of the Five Eyes are brandished in our face, the government of India would take the risk of getting involved in any form of killing of a US citizen, however odious he may be, on US soil and risk a very serious blow to burgeoning India-US ties. The government is not devoid of common sense.
If in Canada's case our reaction was unusually strong, it was because Trudeau's provocation was formal, at the highest political level, and was strong without precedent. In the case of the US, it is a report in a UK paper to which an NSC spokesperson has made some unclear comment. It did not require the same kind of reaction from us. Nor was there any need for a frontal denial as if we accept we are answerable as there is no frontal accusation. There is no need at this stage to get into an open spat with the US government, as both sides would want to deal with the issue discreetly, whatever the reality.
This episode raises a larger question. The West continues to have the power to create a narrative globally on issues of interest to them. They can shape the thinking about other countries at the international level by the kind of coverage they give to them.
In general, the western media is judgmental, fault finding, intrusive, interfering, politically biased in reporting on the non-western world. This stems from the West's colonialist inheritance, the belief that the rest of the world has to measure up to its superior values, whether political, economic or social.
The Anglosphere, in particular the media of the US and the UK, exercises inordinate power in this regard. Such narratives are built through the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Economist, The Financial Times, the BBC, CNN, news agencies such as Reuters, AP, AFP, and so on.
The global spread of the English language aids this narrative-setting. The political, economic and academic elites in English speaking non-western countries are very susceptible to these externally promoted narratives. Stories are picked up from the mainstream western media and amplified locally in these countries as part of the free flow of information, forgetting that this flow is one-sided.
What the local media in non-western countries may say about the western countries, good or bad, is ignored as it has no international resonance.
Countries like Russia or China try to promote narratives of their own but their international reach is constrained because Russian or Chinese is not the language of the international elite. Unlike in the case of India, Russia and China do not use the English language internally and do not have a thriving local English language press linked to western sources.
While Russia and China cannot build their own media narratives at the international level in their own language, they have tried to do so by developing English level international channels of their own. RT of Russia is particularly good. It is therefore not surprising that it and other Russian media have been banned in Europe altogether in the wake of the conflict in Ukraine. Freedom of press is a principle to be defended to preserve the media hegemony of the West, not when that hegemony is contested.
The Chinese exercise draconian censorship and western mainstream media or even the social media do not get access to China. The very limited knowledge of English amongst the Chinese also limits influence peddling by western media amongst the Chinese elite, unlike in the case of India where our society is very closely plugged into the western information eco-system.
The FT article and its front line coverage in the Indian media as if its content is not questionable reflects the power of agenda-setting by the Anglosphere media. The purpose of the FT article would not have been served if it had been relegated to a small item in the back pages.
(Kanwal Sibal was Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France, and Russia, and Deputy Chief Of Mission in Washington.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.