At least USAID saved Indians from starvation. Guess who conspired with CIA to bring down Nehru?
The doublespeak of the forked Tongue Parivar
Donald Trump's squeeze on the American aid agency USAID has sent tweetiyas into a tizzy, as their pet conspiracy of a "foreign hand" trying to meddle in Indian politics through NGOs receives the loony validation they crave, and which Elon Musk has so kindly provided.
All very well, but have they heard of what a CIA spy once revealed of their puppeteers, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)?
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John Discoe Smith aka John D. Smith was an American government employee based in Delhi in the 1950s--from 1950 to 1959 to be precise.
The US State Department said it had employed him as a “communications clerk”, but by his own admission, John Smith said he was a spy.
An American spy on Indian soil.
In October 1967, at the height of the Cold War, he suddenly popped up in Moscow. The Soviet Union said he had made the long, arduous journey from capitalism to communism.
Id est, he had defected.
Smith said the United States was preparing “a new world catastrophe”.
Smith wrote a series of articles for a Russian weekly 'Literaturnaya Gazeta', which the Russian state news agency Tass dutifully relayed around the world even before they were published.
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Tass said Smith revealed the names of CIA operatives in India, and that CIA had “many secret agents” among highly placed officers of the Indian Army and the Indian defence ministry.
But, since USAID is getting the rap, just one tiny political morsel is enough: the American boot was on the ‘Right’ foot not long ago.
John Smith revealed the RSS’s “close ties with CIA” to overthrow--hold your gau mutra--to overthrow the Congress government of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.
Yes, a foreign agency meddling in India’s domestic affairs with the Opposition’s help.
Sounds familiar?
Smith made two more key charges:
🕉️ One, that CIA had provided "large sums of money" for RSS's anti-cow slaughter rally held in 1966
🕉️ Two, the attempt to assassinate Congress president K. Kamaraj that day had been the work of RSS
M.S. Golwalkar was the RSS chief at the time.
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John Smith further revealed that J.A. Curran, an American sociologist attached to the US embassy in Delhi, was "one of the most experienced intelligence agents of the CIA in India".
Smith's source? His wife Mary, who worked directly under Curran.
As Dhirendra K. Jha says in his new biography of the RSS’s second chief, Golwalkar gave unusual access to Curran, who authored 'Militant Hinduism in Indian Politics: A Study of the RSS'.
As Jha writes, it is unclear if Golwalkar knew that Curran was a CIA agent, but as the BJP’s reaction to USAID shows, hindsight is 1967.
Smith was not alone in making these claims.
Four months earlier, in June 1967, The New York Times had reported that the Nehru government had investigated “secret American funding” to the Jana Sangh and other right-wing parties.
Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) was the earlier avatar of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
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The New York Times reported that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had investigated CIA's role in the general elections in February that year.
CBI found that the US had contributed "large sums of money" to BJP’s predecessor-party, and other right-wing parties.
Naturally, Jana Sangh denied the allegations and sought an independent investigation.
Union home minister Y.B. Chavan, the Amit Shah of his time, said, thank you, just such an investigation into the activities of foreign agencies during the elections had indeed been conducted.
“The methods by which foreign money is coming into this country to influence political parties should be studied and measures taken to stop such inflow,” Chavan said.
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The reverberations caused by The New York Times report had petered out when John Smith hurled the truth bombs from Moscow.
The Communist Party of India was on the front foot. Its MP S.A. Dange tabled a motion in the Lok Sabha demanding a discussion on “CIA activities in India as revealed by ex-CIA personnel”.
Terming Smith’s claims a part of “international propaganda”, Chavan said:
“A further enquiry may be ordered into the alleged use of foreign funds in the general election after the government has arrived at some tentative conclusions on the report recently submitted by the Intelligence Bureau.”
The issue died down.
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In end-1967, the Communist Party of India compiled John Smith's disclosures and brought out a 36-page book titled 'I was a CIA agent in India'. It is currently available in the @NITIAayog library.
The publication of the book drew CIA's attention (see above, right).
As The Washington Post said in an editorial, Doland Trump's attack on USAID will be good news to "autocrats and dictators who view civil society as a threat".
But who will tell the tweetiyas and trolls that their masters were once supping with the devil they now pretend to despise?
Or, that USAID played a key role in administering PL-480, which saved Indians from starvation till the 1970s; saved precious dollars; and paved the way for the Green Revolution?
As A.F.S. Talyarkhan would have asked: “Did you get me, Steve?”
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Watch John Oliver on USAID: https://youtu.be/cw0F8G4-dMw