What is of more immediate concern is whether the Modi government bought the spyware using taxpayers’ money to spy on people themselves. Whatever be the answer, the ruling party and the government are in a hopeless situation. If they admit having bought the malware, they are doomed. Now, if they deny having made the purchase, they are more doomed because it amounts to admitting that the government has no control over the goings-on within its own domain.

The third option of avoiding both answers, which is what the Modi government is trying to do, though with little success, means the suspicion strengthens with every hour of delay in clarifying its role. For, in leaving things in ambiguity, the government has wittingly or unwittingly dropped enough hints of its complicity.

New IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who according to the government is the right person to speak about the issue, asserts there has been no ‘unauthorised’ use of Pegasus software in India. In the same breath, he cites the NSO, the Israeli owners of the spyware, to claim that such services are openly available to anyone, anywhere, and anytime, and are commonly used by governmental agencies as well as by private companies worldwide. It is also beyond dispute that the data has nothing to do with surveillance or with NSO, so there can be no factual basis to suggest that a use of the data somehow equates to surveillance.

Vaishnaw, at the same time, has not denied the existence of a well-established procedure through which lawful interception of electronic communication is carried out for the purpose of national security. As long as the definition of national security has been made highly elastic by the Modi government, which has repeatedly attracted the ire of the courts, Vaishnaw’s assurance carries little credibility, especially when reports have suggested that he was himself the victim of spying, along with two other members of Modi’s cabinet as well as functionaries of the PMO. This raises the question as to what kind of national security threat had warranted such surveillance. Or was it to keep a watch on potential Brutus-es.

Vaishnaw’s predecessor Ravi Shankar Prasad has raised the spectre of Indian democracy being targeted to be singled out for the use of Pegasus for surveillance. It was in 2019 when he was the IT minister that the Pegasus controversy first broke out. Prasad had sought to brush aside the allegation by insisting there was no ‘unauthorised’ interception. His claim about India being targeted when more than 45 nations were using the spyware in a way confirmed that India was indeed among those nations.

He has blamed ‘some people’ as being behind the current controversy and sees mischief in the timing, which is just before the monsoon session of parliament. And among the some people, he has Rahul Gandhi in mind, as the latter’s name allegedly figured in the list of victims. He has thus found a hand to blame the controversy on.

Indians are used to hearing the role of ‘foreign hand’ in whatever bad things were happening in the country. It was a favourite of Indira Gandhi as she used to see ‘foreign hands’ in everything, which was liberally used by other political parties of her time as well, particularly the left, with its imperialist angle. Over time blaming foreign hands has gone out of fashion.

But for Indira Gandhi, apart from having come handy in defending her government’s failures, the hand was always propitious. It was the ‘hand’ that brought her back from political wilderness during the Janata Party rule to become prime minister yet again. The new hand symbol of her party, replacing the ‘cow and calf’, which happened to be distinctly unlucky for her and the party, was inspired by the deity at a remote temple in Palakkad in Kerala, where she had gone to seek the blessings. The deity at the temple is goddess Parvati, but represented by her two hands. It is believed that the imagery struck Mrs Gandhi like a lightning and she chose the hand as the party symbol instantly.

Apparently things have moved a full circle and the BJP is now blaming the hand for all its woes as well as those of the country. And true to its character, not foreign, but Indian to the core. (IPA Service)