Peddling conspiracy theory
Abelief that there is an international conspiracy to defame India is gaining ground domestically, mostly among poorly informed, but highly vocal, sections of the population. They can hardly be faulted. When television anchors, especially the younger, inexperienced ones, sit in their studios and blithely tout such a conspiracy without offering a shred of evidence, many of their viewers who know little about global affairs are more than willing to suspend their disbelief, if they had any, in such conspiracy theories.
The good ‘India story,’ which steadily gained traction worldwide from the year 2000 with the visit of Bill Clinton, one of the most charismatic US Presidents, was not built overnight. It was the result of many years of hard work, imaginative campaigns invoking soft power and the promise of a new horizon, especially for those from South East Asia to South America, who had grown tired of the hackneyed theme of the rise of China.
It was a massive effort, in which every Indian who had something to contribute to that effort chipped in. India’s private sector conglomerates set up India Chairs at prestigious universities and think tanks in many countries. Influential People of Indian Origin abroad used their influence with their elected representatives to paint India in its best colours. The foreign media was assiduously wooed.
After several years of such coordinated work, the results were there for all to see. The most illustrative story which I have heard about the change in perception of India overseas is from Kiran Pasricha, who was tasked in 1995 to set up the North American office of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Washington. Once she arrived in the US, Pasricha began calling up people to brief them about corporate India’s American outreach through its representative organisation. Not one American worth anything returned her calls. Americans had written off India as a lost cause. One day her call was returned by a senior officer of the US State Department. She began telling this official about her organisation and that she hoped to liaise with US diplomats at senior levels. The man at the other end suddenly lost interest. ‘I am sorry. My secretary told me you are Karen from the CIA. That is why I called back.’ The caller disconnected.
When Pasricha was leaving Washington in 2011, to head the Ananta Centre, one of the farewells for her was in a US Senate Office building on Capitol Hill. By then, India was the flavour in Washington and there were few Congressmen who were not familiar with the work of the CII. Senators and Congressmen walked in and out of that reception, going to their respective chambers to cast their votes, then returning.
The big coup of this period was when Thomas L Friedman, celebrated columnist of The New York Times, was persuaded to devote a sizeable portion of his best-selling book, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century, to India. His accounts of the convergence of technology and growth in India, the rise of its affluent middle class and a liberalised India’s integration into a globalised market, especially of its supply chains and services, created such awareness of a new India that its impact knew no boundaries.
Around the same time, it became an annual practice for the then PM Manmohan Singh to have a private lunch at the New York Stock Exchange with about 15 chairmen or CEOs of the richest and most dynamic US multinationals during Singh’s visits for the UN General Assembly. Ronen Sen, the then Ambassador to the US, had raised the benchmark so high for attending this much-sought-after lunch that anyone below a chairman or a CEO, no matter how big the conglomerate, did not get invited. One year, several CEOs who were with Singh, told me that they looked at India seriously as a business prospect only after reading Friedman’s highly positive accounts of change.
Answering a question from the audience after delivering the Ramnath Goenka Lecture a year and a half ago, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, said, ‘My reputation is not decided by a newspaper in New York.’ The question was about criticism of India in the mainstream US media, which was incipient in 2019, but has since grown. ‘Uninformed comments abroad on our internal affairs are hardly internationalisation,’ he added.
Jaishankar knows from his 44 years as a diplomat that actions and reactions about India based on ignorance are not new. There is an anecdote about an editorial in a leading British newspaper about cow slaughter in India. The sub-editor who had a final look at the editorial changed cow slaughter to animal slaughter. His explanation after the editorial caused sniggers all over was that ‘animal slaughter’ read far better than ‘cow slaughter’. Why single out the poor cow when primitive rituals like slaughter of all animals must be widely practiced in India!
After India tested nuclear weapons in 1998, opinion in every medium in virtually every country was firmly anti-India. But Indian diplomats, strategic experts, foreign correspondents like this writer, industry leaders and others who supported the Vajpayee government’s historic decision on Pokhran II rallied to change opinion. The result was a mix of successes and failures. Opinion in the US changed considerably after Brajesh Mishra, the then Principal Secretary to the PM, persuaded Henry Kissinger, the repository of America’s diplomatic wisdom, to write and speak in the US media rationalising India’s action.
No one in India complained then that there was an organised conspiracy to defame or put down India. Instead, those who criticised India were courted and efforts made to influence their opinion. There is still a huge reservoir of goodwill for India, but those who share such goodwill, also publicly express what they see as some things going wrong in the country. What are friends for if they cannot share honest disagreements!
