The ‘Foreign Hand’ Phobia

India’s unease with things “foreign” found a recent manifestation in the debate surrounding the documentary film, India’s Daughter. One of the prime grouses some writers and columnists expressed with the film was that it propounded the “white” saviour narrative. 

Times Now went to town advocating a gag on the screening of the film. Its prime-time anchor Arnab Goswami, ironically, stated that those suffering with a “colonial hangover” could not see what was wrong with the film – which was in essence a naked attempt at showing India its place as third-rate country of brutes.

The suspicion of a “foreign hand” – the phrase made popular during the United Progressive Alliance regime that suspected an international conspiracy behind anything and everything, including the anti-nuke protests in Kudankulam – is not restricted to films or books (remember Wendy Doniger’s “attempt” to shame Hindus?). It’s a familiar distrust voiced with easy alacrity by people on both the Right and Left on all things foreign — movies, non-government organisations or investments.

Consider the Foreign Regulation Contribution Act (FCRA), for instance. In recent months, the debate on whether NGOs should be allowed to raise funds via the FCRA has come to the fore. Many who argue vociferously for NGOs’ right to raise foreign funds, viz the traditional left, would on other occasions oppose, say, foreign companies investing in India. Vice versa, some on the Right are all for foreign direct investment (FDI) but want the government to completely scrap FCRA so NGOs can’t raise funds abroad.

“There is no difference between the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, CPM and the Delhi liberals. Basically, they have the same view on economic policy, that is, they want the state to be in control, except when it come to their pet causes,” says economist and author Surjit S Bhalla.

He adds that people on the Left and Right don’t believe in checking numbers, sticking to logic or being consistent. “They are perfect exemplars of ‘my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with facts.’ The opposition is an ideological one and has little to do with economics,” says Bhalla. So, essentially some money is good because it serves the cause that one believes in while other money is bad because it doesn’t serve the cause. “The Left will oppose FDI in insurance, but is not opposed to FDI for their favourite NGO,” he says.

Business Standard Opinion Editor Mihir Sharma points out that it is frequently the most globalised Indians who feel the most under threat from foreign “influences”. “The Right that is most angry about Greenpeace etc is the NRI right. The Left most worried about the baleful effect of American MNCs on the Discourse constitutes those who read Gramsci and not Gokhale.”

Sharma’s recent book Restart: The Last Chance For The Indian Economy explores problems facing the Indian economy. “We are scared of Greenpeace coming in because then we will have to make a real argument to adivasis about why mining in their village will benefit them. We are terrified of Walmart and so on because if it turns out that poorer people’s lives are improved by access to Western capital, then how will we retain our positions as their appointed interlocutors with the world?” says Sharma. He adds, this is not hypocrisy as much as self-interest. “It is concealed under patriotism, but it’s just self-interest.”

Fortune Editor-at-Large Hindol Sengupta says it’s high time we got over the fear of foreign money that stems from the belief that it was foreign money that wrecked our country. While it’s obvious that NGOs that accept foreign funds must show greater accountability about how they spend the money, he says it is silly to ask for a complete scrapping of the FCRA. The debate on FCRA, he says, has been highly uninformed and is representative of the “Uber” syndrome – “ban every radio taxi because one company flouted rules”.

“India perhaps is the only country apart from North Korea and Cuba where debates centred on so-called foreign motives take place,” says Bhalla. Indeed, the foreign card has been used to reproach everything from Aamir Khan’s PK to Greenpeace, drowning out legitimate concerns around the issues raised.

“The point is always to attribute a sinister motive to something. The point is also to discredit the argument at hand, by making it look suspect,” says journalist and co-author of Gas Wars, Subir Ghosh.

Ghosh says the India’s Daughter case was one where you had people both from the Left and the Right whipping up hysteria with the help of the “foreign” card. “The Right insisted that it was the West which was out to defame India. In other words, something diabolical must have been at play when/why this film was made. Those from the Left, usually better with their use of words, argued that Udwin’s film was racist. Since she saw the issue through a racist prism, her perception of the issue was skewed.” In the first case, the motive was “sinister”. In the second case, the perception was “suspect”.

“What happens in the bargain is that the debate itself is framed erroneously, and the arguments and counter-argument become a babel of voices. The few words of reason (that always exist, and they did in the India’s Daughter case too) get drowned in this din,” says Ghosh.

Sharma adds that the debate on India’s Daughter was revealing in that it showed how the Left and the Right are in fact one when it comes to hating outsiders. “Both hate the West more than they care for India. For the Right, Christian Europe wanted to make Hindu India look bad; for the Left, White supremacy was condemning brown savagery. The overlap between the religious and racial categories, he adds, made the two arguments run in a disturbing parallel.

“This is why many Modi-loving Hindu supremacists can also speak the language of post-colonial anti-imperialism with ease; the ideologies are in fact cousins. They both confuse modernisation and westernisation — and further, assume both those impulses are bad,” he says.

As the reception to Udwin’s film and the debate around the FCRA-FDI show, India could do well to evolve a genuine critique of properties, cultural or otherwise, involving foreigners, a critique that is not laden with baggages of one stripe or another.