When Rajiv Malhotra, with Aravindan Neelakandan, wrote Breaking India in 2011, he premised his argument around how India’s integrity was being undermined by three global networks with their well-entrenched bases inside and outside the country: Islamic radicalism pushed and promoted by Pakistan; Maoism implicitly supported by China and their Nepali intermediaries; and, Dravidian and Dalit identity separatism fostered by the West in the guise of human rights. The battles were intensely fought among the poor in villages and areas that were geographically, development-wise as well as civilisationally on the periphery.
Eleven years later, in September-October 2022, Malhotra (this time he has teamed up with Vijaya Viswanathan) is ready with the second part of the Breaking India series — Snakes in the Ganga. Sitting leisurely at a hotel in Delhi’s Janpath over a cup of tea, I ask him how the modus operandi of Breaking India 2.0 is different from the first part. What has changed over the decade, if at all?
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“Breaking India 1.0 was aimed at poor people in the villages and trying to convert them, make them fight the system, etc. Breaking India 2.0, in sharp contrast, targets the children of the elites and brainwashes them. This is far more dangerous as it has more leverage; these kids, after all, would someday become top politicians, industry leaders and influential babus; they would also become the judges of the Supreme Court (smiles). The entire country is threatened to be taken over without a single bullet being fired,” says Malhotra.
Another change is, in these 10-11 years, a lot of technology is being used, like Big Data, through which algorithms can control the minds of people. “If you can make people buy products you want, you can one day make them vote for the person you want, convert into the religion you desire, or push them towards an idea or ideology, however subversive it might be. It’s not for no reason that social media is available for free; it makes money by changing your behavior pattern,” he adds.
The Breaking India modus operandi may have changed over the decade, but the objective remains the same: Dismantling of Hinduism, though the term Hindutva would be invoked publicly, by waging war against India’s government, educational institutions, society, culture, and even industry. And the ground zero of these anti-India forces, according to Malhotra, is Harvard University, which has an army of scholars, activists, journalists and even artists, many of them Indians, willing to play by the “anti-India rules”. No wonder, it’s now fashionable to equate caste with race; meritocracy, a big reason why the West has made big strides economically as well as technologically, is being projected as “Brahmanical patriarchy”; and, atrocity literature is being produced at a mass level.
Malhotra elaborates, “In the British era it was the Oxford that would not just create the India narrative but also train the officers who would rule over Indians. Today, that position has been appropriated by Harvard. It had a $50 billion endowment, which is in excess of the GDP of more than 100 nations. It influences the politics and economy of so many countries through the Harvard Kennedy School that trains so many government, business and corporate leaders. Harvard is also behind the much influential World Economic Forum.”
What’s ironic is despite Harvard’s alleged anti-India activities, the institution is being generously endowed by Indians. Not just rich private individuals (some of the top industrialists and entrepreneurs are its donors), but also the Government of India can be accused of being generous to a fault. In 2008, the Manmohan Singh government awarded $4.5 million of Indian taxpayers’ money to Harvard in honour of economist Amartya Sen.
“I had funded Harvard, long before the billionaires came to the party. But I realised they were biased. They would take your money and still denigrate you and your culture. On a personal level, they would flatter you but continue to say nasty things about India and Indians. I was not okay with this arrangement,” states Malhotra, who in 1994 established the Infinity Foundation, Princeton (USA), precisely to challenge the anti-India narratives coming from Harvard-like institutions.
What should have alerted India is the close connection Harvard has with China’s military. (The arrest of a few Harvard professors with Chinese links suggests the threats about which even the Americans seem to be waking up now.) A recent NBC News report has exposed this dangerous nexus. Then, there is another report that claims that at least $88 million linked to the Chinese military has made its way to American colleges “through a convoluted pipeline of partnerships”.
Still, many powerful Indians sponsor Harvard. “I have met a few of them. They are nice people. Maybe they are lazy enough not to fully comprehend the dirty work Harvard is doing. Maybe they want to be in the good book of these powerful people in the West. Maybe they think their donations would make them honorary whites,” explains Malhotra.
Being the worst victim of coloniality, Indians may be the fiercest critics of the West, but deep down they have always looked for — and still seek — some form of Western recognition and legitimacy. Nirad C Chaudhuri mentioned this Indian trait in Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (1964), as he wrote: “Nearly all our great men of the 19th century were not able to gain recognition from their countrymen nor exert any influence over them until they were recognised in the West.” Chaudhuri believed that “if Bankim Chandra Chatterji is not as highly rated in his own country as Tagore and Gandhi it is largely because he received less European recognition than they”.
Swami Vivekananda too pointed at this Indian trait when he said: “I travelled 12 years all over India, finding no way to work for my countrymen, and that was why I went to America.” Vivekananda received a rousing welcome in India after he wowed the West with his thunderous Chicago speech.
Be that as it may, the fact remains that Oxford is being generously donated by Indians and yet the institution regularly comes up with narratives that are often unfavourable to India. We find ourselves being called names globally. Maybe Indian donors, including the Government of India, can take a cue from China. “Delhi should oversee India studies, just like Beijing controls China studies. Only then can it prevent being misinterpreted and having its own people weaponised against its interests. We have already seen how the decades of research on Indian knowledge systems by the West has distilled into outcomes demanding the dismantling of Hinduism itself,” Malhotra says.
He explains this phenomenon in detail in Snakes in the Ganga, in which he writes: “India’s narrative being outsourced to Harvard is doubly negative for India, not only because Harvard is in the business of producing atrocity literature on India but also because the Harvard brand name gives its output high credibility. It is leveraging this brand to bring on board Indian thought leaders and politicians and is certifying Indian corporate leaders and bureaucrats. As a result, it is politically difficult to oppose any major report produced by Harvard on India’s public health, human rights, minorities, caste, and women.”
Harvard’s relationship with China is different. With China, they don’t misbehave. In fact, they are often seen defending China and its role in the Covid-19 pandemic. “My research suggests that their funding promotes their interests. For example, the Chinese have funded the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. That school has never accused China of Covid-19,” Malhotra states, as he recalls how in 2021, Harvard invited Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), as distinguished speaker at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Ghebreyesus, who was instrumental in shielding China from blame during Covid-19, was hailed for “great insight and the political leadership” and called the right person “to restore trust in the WHO at a critical moment in its history”.
Harvard also has a School of Public Health funded by a prominent Indian business group. In sharp contrast to the Covid support provided to China by the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Indian-donated school talked about discriminations being meted out to Dalits and Muslims during the pandemic. “Maybe Indians are not too involved in how their money is used — or misused — to tarnish India and Indians abroad,” Malhotra says.
To understand why India has failed to control the Harvard narrative, while China has been more than successful in handling it, one must realise that before one can control anyone else’s narrative, one has to have a consensus among one’s own people. “First of all, the Government of India must convene a meeting of all concerned ministries — from the Education and Culture ministries to the Ministry of External Affairs — and formulate the fundamental narrative it wants to spread in the West, and then set broad red lines that should not be crossed. Thereafter, all top business leaders and prominent donors should be invited and told matter-of-factly about broad contours of the India narrative that should be built, and of course the red lines that should not be crossed.”
This, sadly, may not be as easy as it appears. The Modi dispensation, despite all the charges to the contrary, has been too liberal to challenge the entrenched Left ecosystem. Changes are there but mostly at the top, while the old infrastructure remains more or less intact. A meeting early this year with a top official of the country’s top research body was revealing. When asked about what the esteemed institution was doing, especially any pioneering research work, the gentlemen with a sagely smile and soft voice, said while handing me over a booklet: “Look at this UN body report. It has praised a couple of our research works.”
It was a moment of utter and rude epiphany. How will India set its own narrative when the country’s top research body still takes pride in being praised by a global body whose interests often — and invariably — clash with India’s? Maybe a research should have been done on Harvard’s role in setting an anti-India narrative? Or how wokeism in the West is attempting to dismantle the Indic civilisation and culture? But then such research won’t get global applause.
India needs to come out of its colonial hangover. Till then it will be a lopsided battle with India scoring more misses than hits on the narrative setting parameters. The entrenched Western agenda won’t face any serious, unified Indian challenge, except from solitary individuals like Rajiv Malhotra. The country still has a long and arduous battle at hand. A battle that would decide the fate of civilisational India and its billion-plus people.
The author is Opinion Editor, Firstpost and News18. He tweets from @Utpal_Kumar1. Views express
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