Foreign hand bogey is wearing thin. Bury it

A kind of political and intellectual bankruptcy lies behind the attempt to blame domestic turmoil on secret plots hatched abroad and malevolent external forces.

It should resist the seductions of glib narratives that link tariffs with Jantar Mantar, and both with Dhaka, Kathmandu and Paris.

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3 min readOct 23, 2026 06:00 AM IST First published on: Oct 23, 2026 at 06:00 AM IST

In August, Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat visited America as part of a three-nation tour in the RSS’s centenary year. He spoke of India’s “destiny”, “duty” and “diversity”. His articulation and nuancing of the RSS worldview abroad was also part of a longer formal and informal process of engaging global audiences. In October, delivering his annual Dussehra speech from Nagpur, however, Bhagwat spoke darkly of a “western storm” and sinister “global conspiracy” that seeks to destabilise regimes, suggesting that India is its target, alongside France and Albania, Bangladesh and Nepal. The dissonance between the spirit of outreach in New York and the loose spectre-mongering in Nagpur is striking. Evidently, it has to do with the fact that students’ protests, which had wound up in July, have begun again, this time on the issue of the Chief Election Commissioner’s conduct of the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. And ever since the 1970s, when Indira Gandhi infamously peddled the “foreign hand” theory to delegitimise the mounting unrest against her government, this theory has been recycled by ruling elites faced with Opposition agitation and people’s resentments. It is disturbing that the RSS chief — and members of the BJP and NDA government — should be resorting to a jaded political alibi. It denies agency to protestors and disrespects their legitimate concerns. It delays an honest reckoning by the government with its own blind spots and abdications.

A kind of political and intellectual bankruptcy lies behind the attempt to blame domestic turmoil on secret plots hatched abroad and malevolent external forces. In fact, dots can be connected between the protests in India and other countries — a lesson, not a conspiracy, can be drawn. A sharp disconnect seems to be rising to the surface, across countries, between the politics-as-usual of complacent leaderships and the people, especially the young, whose frustrations are being amplified by social media. Political institutions, legislatures and parties need to rethink their roles and open their doors, instead of retreating behind denial and self-serving stories.

Of course, all nations, including India, operate in an environment rife with global pressures, foreign interests and constraints. But that must not make any country lose sight of the fundamental fact that the principal reasons why people feel anxious and alienated are hiding in plain sight at home — from economic mismanagement to rising corruption, from the closing of channels of communication to the clampdown on forums of accountability. As the Narendra Modi government falls back on the “foreign hand” in a bid to put down the young protestors on the streets, it also goes against the grain of its own successes in engaging a changing world and navigating global currents. It should resist the seductions of glib narratives that link tariffs with Jantar Mantar, and both with Dhaka, Kathmandu and Paris.