In Defence of the Open Society: consecutive letters to Mr. George Soros on the India Question

Posted on 03/03/2023

“India is an interesting case. It’s a democracy, but its leader Narendra Modi is no democrat. Inciting violence against Muslims was an important factor in his meteoric rise.
Modi maintains close relations with both open and closed societies. India is a member of the Quad (which also includes Australia, the US, and Japan), but it buys a lot of Russian oil at a steep discount and makes a lot of money on it.
(…)
Reverting to India, Modi and business tycoon Adani are close allies; their fate is intertwined. Adani Enterprises tried to raise funds in the stock market, but he failed. Adani is accused of stock manipulation and his stock collapsed like a house of cards. Modi is silent on the subject, but he will have to answer questions from foreign investors and in parliament.
This will significantly weaken Modi’s stranglehold on India’s federal government and open the door to push for much needed institutional reforms.
I may be naïve, but I expect a democratic revival in India.”
Mr. George Soros,
Selections from his speech at the Munich State Conference (16.02.2023)

LETTER 1: 18/02/2023

SOS from the DHFL FD and NCD Holders of India for restoring their business-related human rights

MR. GEORGE SOROS,

THE FOUNDER, THE OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS

Sub: SOS from the DHFL FD and NCD Holders of India for restoring their business-related human rights

Dear Mr. Soros,

We are writing this letter to you in the context of the unofficial concentration camp manufactured by the ruling party of India, viz., the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Please save us from this claustrophobic situation. Every sphere of our lives is threatened by the crony governance. As if we are living within the Gulag Archipelago!

This is to inform you the following matter of the Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL) scam, an instance of financial abuse or the curtailment of business-related rights in India, for your kind perusal:

1. A WHITE PAPER ON THE DEWAN HOUSING FINANCE CORPORATION LTD. (DHFL) VIEW HERE ⤡

2. THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE DHFL SCAM VIEW HERE ⤡

3. False allegations on the collusion among the BJP, Dawood-Mirchi and the DHFL: A Letter to the BJP President VIEW HERE ⤡

4. AN RTI ON THE ALLEGED COLLUSION AMONG DAWOOD-MIRCHI-RKW-DHFL-BJP VIEW HERE ⤡

If you please take into your kind consideration this bigger scam (the biggest scam being the recently revealed Adani Group scam), i.e., the Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL) Scam, more than 0.1 million FD and NCD Holders (including ailing senior citizens, physically challenged persons, widows of retired army personnel) would forever be obliged to you. We are well-aware of your contribution towards preserving and upholding the core democratic ethos throughout the world across decades. The DHFL scam is the result of crony capitalist favouritism by the ruling party, viz., the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is necessarily a religious extremist group that strives to create (as you know quite well) a mono-religious nation-state, following the footsteps of Nazi ideology.

We hope that you will consider our humble plea for the sake of regaining India’s lost democratic ethos.

Yours Sincerely,

Dr. Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay

https://spbu.academia.edu/DEBAPRASADBANDYOPADHYAY

Mrs. Rupa Bandyopadhyay

https://msub.academia.edu/RupaSanyal

Mr. Akhar Bandyopadhyay

https://presiuniv.academia.edu/AkharBandyopadhyay

LETTER 2: 03/03/2023

MR. GEORGE SOROS,

THE FOUNDER, THE OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS

Sub: Indian Democracy is Dead, Long Live Indian Democracy!

Dear Mr. Soros,

After being enthralled by your speech at the Munich Security Conference as part of the Technical University of Munich’s Speaker Series⤡ on the 16th of February, 2023, we hurriedly composed our first letter to you (dated 18.02.2023) with a plea to revive the democratic ethos of India. We are totally in agreement with your enunciation in the said speech.

In continuation with our previous letter that chiefly focused on the DHFL scam in India (there are many more scams and scandals that have been committed by the Modi Government and its associates), we are further trying to understand the Indian issue from the Popperian framework by taking as many variables as possible. Therefore, we are not abstracting the DHFL conundrum from the other relevant issues within the Indian spectrum. Holistically speaking, the ruling party of India deliberately follows the path of religious fundamentalism to veil or foreclose⤡ the crony and monopoly capitalism⤡ characterized by the free flow of private capital.

In the context of the Indian democracy, the hypothesis of a dialogue-based, participatory democracy (or otherwise, the open society as proposed by Popper and unfailingly adhered to by you throughout your life’s struggles) itself is falsified by the autocratic regime through their dominating surveillance and aggressive cum militant suppression of dissenting voices without a fair trial. Thus, the democratic ideal has got the label of ‘theory’ by the falsification of democracy in the context of Indian politics.

We are well-aware that you are quite familiar with this ongoing state of affairs (even though you said that you are “naive” as regard to India), since the V-Dem Institute’s World Democracy Report, 2023, has rightly placed India at the 108th position, not excluding from our mind the previously published reports by the V-Dem and other organizations like Freedom House, Amnesty International etc. We have previously cited the V-Dem reports on multiple occasions to resist the forces of militant authoritarianism in autocratic India. You may get a comprehensive glimpse into this worrying scenario of the Indian republic in the following article:

INDIA WOUNDED: A BIRD’S EYE VIEW VIEW HERE ⤡

In the political atmosphere of contemporary India dominated by “temple-mosque” narratives and genocidal calls from the ruling party members, we cannot help but recall the Popperian “Paradox of Tolerance”, the dead-end of the dialogue-constitutive universals in a non-manipulative discursive space. (We have analyzed this paradox in one of our previous books VIEW HERE ⤡, Published on 16th September, 2021)

When the sane intelligentsia of India is searching for tolerance in every sphere of life along with the freedom of speech, the religious extremist group of Hindutvavadins takes the opportunity of such tolerant attitude on the part of the organic intellectuals to proliferate their fascist tyranny over their specific target group, viz., a particular religious community who constitute about 15% of the Indian population. It is redundant to say that it is analogous to the annihilation of the Jews in the Third Reich.

In conclusion, we earnestly request you to help us in this regard to get ourselves out of this degenerating, catastrophic politico-economic situation of India in line with Karl Popper’s noble ideal of the open society:

“The authoritarian will in general select those who obey, who believe, who respond to his influence. But in doing so, he is bound to select mediocrities. For he excludes those who revolt, who doubt, who dare to resist his influence. Never can an authority admit that the intellectually courageous, i.e. those who dare to defy his authority, may be the most valuable type. Of course, the authorities will always remain convinced of their ability to detect initiative. But what they mean by this is only a quick grasp of their intentions, and they will remain for ever incapable of seeing the difference.”

It is our motive to defy the fascist authority that has undermined India’s image at the world stage over the past decade.

Thanking you in anticipation,