Under President Xi Jinping, China has become increasingly predatory. Beijing uses propaganda to project power. Its Confucian Institutes number several thousand globally.
Why did China pick the Indian web portal NewsClick to spread misinformation about Indian politics, questioning for example whether Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir were an integral part of India?
NewsClick was an inconspicuous website founded in 2009 with local funding. It caught the eye of the Chinese before the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
The facts are now well known. The FIR filed by Delhi Police against NewsClick’s founder-editor Prabir Purkayastha alleges: “Since April, 2018…crores of rupees have been received by M/s PPK NewsClick Studio Pvt Ltd. through illegal means during a short span of five years from M/s Worldwide Media Holdings LLC, USA and others. Such foreign funds have been fraudulently infused by Neville Roy Singham, resident of Shanghai and active member of the Propaganda department of the Communist Party of China, through a complex web of several entities.”
NewsClick has denied these allegations, saying they are an assault on media freedom. It believes it is being targeted for running stories critical of the Narendra Modi government.
Its statement claimed the allegations were “absurd and a blatant attempt to muzzle the free and independent press in India. The allegations in the FIR are ex-facie untenable and bogus. NewsClick has not received any funding or instructions from China or Chinese entities. Further, NewsClick has never committed or sought to encourage violence, secession or any illegal act in any manner whatsoever.”
It took an exposé in The New York Times in August 2023 to wake Delhi Police up to a pending 2021 NewsClick case. Even then, nearly two months elapsed before a fresh FIR against NewsClick’s Purkayastha was filed.
In this, the usual suspects were named: Gautam Navlakha, who remains under arrest since 2018 in the Bhima-Koregaon case, and Teesta Setalvad, who is out on bail in the Gujarat riots forgery case.
The FIR links the three: “It is learnt that Navlakha, a shareholder in PPK NewsClick Studio Pvt. Ltd. since its inception in 2018, remained involved in anti-Indian and unlawful activities such as actively supporting banned Naxal organisations and having an anti-national nexus with Ghulam Nabi Fai, an agent of the ISI of Pakistan. It has also been learnt that such illegally routed foreign funds have been siphoned by Purkayastha and his associates…(and) distributed to Navlakha and associates of Teesta Setalvad…”
“Secret inputs also revealed that Purkayastha, Singham and some other Chinese employees of a Singham-owned Shanghai-based company StarStream exchanged mails which expose their intent to show Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh as not part of India…Their attempts… amount to an act intended towards undermining the unity and territorial integrity of India.”
Money laundering or terrorism?
Does all this add up to an act of terrorism? Obviously not. It amounts at most to money laundering. By employing the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), the authorities have given NewsClick and its cabal of sympathisers a pretext to change the discourse from criminal money laundering through China to the absurd charge of terrorism.
NewsClick deserves to be charged — but not for terrorism, simply for criminal activities of money laundering and spreading misinformation that could incite violence and public disorder. There are sufficient sections in the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) to charge NewsClick. Resorting to UAPA weakens the argument. It was used by the police only to strengthen the case for detention. When the court next hears an appeal, it could in fact weaken the case.
The NewsClick episode is only one symptom of an affliction that will be increasingly visible in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Web portals like NewsClick are minor proxies in a concerted effort to target the Modi government.
India’s geopolitical ascent has attracted the ire of not only China. The West sees India as a useful ally against China but also as a potential independent global power centre that could erode the West’s pre-eminence.
A group of Islamist countries too eye India with trepidation. Sunni Turkey and Qatar see Modi’s “Hindu nationalist” government as a challenge to the spread of global Islam. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) votes routinely to condemn India’s “occupation” of Kashmir.
Thus an unlikely coalition of China, the West and the Sunni Islamic world would prefer the “secular” Congress-led Opposition to wrest power from Modi in 2024.
China already has an MoU with the Congress signed by Rahul Gandhi when he and his mother Sonia Gandhi were guests of then Vice-President Xi Jinping during the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008.
Elements in the US-led West would also like a less globally assertive Indian Opposition to take charge in 2024. For the West, India’s rise, if it is too rapid, is unwelcome.
Finally, the Islamic world, while it supports India as a global economic power, remains uncomfortable with the Modi government’s strong support of Israel. It noted that Modi was among the first to unequivocally condemn the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.
NewsClick, like many other propaganda media organisations in India, is a pawn. It is used to mould a narrative ahead of 2024.
As always, India’s external enemies have faithful allies within India and among Indian-origin journalists and academics employed in the West.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is aware of this. He said recently in Washington that a rules-based world order applies to all, including the rule-makers. He added pointedly: “But for all the talk, it is still a few nations that shape the agenda and seek to define the norms. This cannot go on indefinitely. Nor will it go unchallenged.”
The writer is an editor, author and publisher. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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