In If Modi Government Isn’t Snooping on Us, Who Else Unleashed Pegasus?, published in The Quint, I write on the snooping scandal that has deeply unsettled India. Investigative outlets have reported that the phones of opposition politicians, activists, journalists, and even an election commissioner were hacked by spyware that, the Israeli firm producing it says, is only sold to governments. Intercepting communications to prevent terrorism or crime is one thing; invading the privacy of private citizens, particularly political opponents, is profoundly un-democratic and illegal under Indian law. There are only two, equally alarming possibilities. Either the Indian government is spying on its own citizens, or a foreign government is doing so, making a mockery of national security. An independent investigation must be conducted.
I have also begun a fortnightly column in Mathrubhumi, titled “I Mean What I Say”. In my inaugural article, Stan Swamy: A Requiem for Justice, I argue that critics of Stan Swamy, the priest and social worker who dedicated himself to the well-being of tribals in Jharkhand before dying in jail without ever being convicted of a crime, are misguided in their views on his ideology. Many on the right wing believe that Father Stan, as a Jesuit, was driven by the “Marxist” tenets of “liberation theology”. This is a fundamental misreading of the Jesuit ideology. Father Stan’s beliefs led him to spend his life working for the dispossessed; seeking to discredit his life by spreading falsehoods about him is unworthy of the immense work he did.
1. If Modi Government Isn’t Snooping on Us, Who Else Unleashed Pegasus?; The Quint; July 19, 2021.
“I’m surprised,” wrote one of the many dozen friends who reached out after news broke of the “Pegasus Project.” “I’m surprised,” she added, “that people are surprised.” Hers was a widespread reaction—too many Indians are inured to the idea that they are being eavesdropped upon, and that every government agency is keeping tabs of their conversations, transactions and relationships. Still, the fact that Pegasus spyware for tracking terrorists and criminals, that is only sold by the Israeli firm NSO Group to “vetted governments”, was used in attempted and successful hacks of smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and politicians (and at least one “constitutional authority”), ought to concern us, whether or not we are surprised.
2. Stan Swamy: A Requiem for Justice; Mathrubhumi; July 26, 2021.
This weekend came news that a judge of the Bombay High Court had withdrawn his oral remarks praising the late Father Stan Swamy’s work for the poor and oppressed – because the prosecutor objected that the judge’s words had negatively affected the morale of the National Investigating Agency. I did not realise that our police spooks had such sensitive souls that they could feel demoralised by kind words about an octogenarian social worker who had already passed away, but let that be. There’s something bigger behind the entire episode.
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With warm regards,
Shashi Tharoor
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If Modi Government Isn’t Snooping on Us, Who Else Unleashed Pegasus?,
July 19, 2021,
The Quint.
“I’m surprised,” wrote one of the many dozen friends who reached out after news broke of the “Pegasus Project.” “I’m surprised,” she added, “that people are surprised.”
Hers was a widespread reaction—too many Indians are inured to the idea that they are being eavesdropped upon, and that every government agency is keeping tabs of their conversations, transactions and relationships.
Still, the fact that Pegasus spyware for tracking terrorists and criminals, that is only sold by the Israeli firm NSO Group to “vetted governments”, was used in attempted and successful hacks of smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and politicians (and at least one “constitutional authority”), ought to concern us, whether or not we are surprised.
The implication that the government has been snooping on its own citizens, including many going about their lawful business, is, however, very serious. We are a democracy where the rule of law prevails; while no one would object to the government intercepting communications to track terrorists or prevent crimes, private citizens—including opposition politicians—enjoy a fundamental right to privacy, as affirmed by the Supreme Court in the Puttaswamy judgement.
For the ruling party to use Pegasus to obtain information on its political opponents—as the targeting of Rahul Gandhi or Prashant Kishor suggests—would not just be unethical but a misuse of taxpayers’ money for partisan political purposes. It would also, as I explain below, be illegal.
An investigation by The Washington Post and 16 media partners, including India’s The Wire, established that at least 37 smartphones (that were actually forensically examined) appeared on a list of more than 50,000 numbers that seemed to constitute a database of actual or potential surveillance targets.
Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based journalism non-profit organisation, and the global human rights group Amnesty International, whose Security Lab conducted the forensic analyses on the smartphones, shared the list with the news organisations, which did additional research and analysis. Since a large number of countries are affected, the controversy has spread worldwide.
In India, the government has declared that there is no substance to the story, “only sensationalism”. Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vasihnaw—ironically, himself a one-time target of Pegasus—has stated that any form of illegal surveillance isn’t possible in India, given the checks and balances in our laws and procedures. Under our robust institutions, there is a well-established procedure through which lawful interception of electronic communications is carried out for the purposes of national security.
The Indian government has the power to surveil, monitor and decrypt communications, but hacking is a crime in India. Section 5(2) of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 and Section 69 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act) allow for the interception of telephone communications and electronic data in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the state, friendly relation with foreign states or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of an offence.
However, the exercise of this power was restricted after the Supreme Court issued guidelines in 1996 in PUCL v Union of India, to make up for the lack of procedural safeguards in the Act. The Court decreed that interception can only be ordered by the Home Secretary or home secretaries of State Governments, that these must be sent to a Review Committee within one week, with the details on number of persons intercepted, and that the period of interception may be permitted for two months, and can be renewed, but not beyond 6 months.
The role of the Review Committee was codified under Rule 419A of the Indian Telegraph Rules, 1951. In relation to the Central Government, the Review Committee consists of: The Cabinet Secretary, the Law Secretary, and the Information Technology Secretary.
There is an important catch here: hacking is against the law in India, except if the government invokes a national security exception, which, to my knowledge, they have not done. Hacking is a criminal offence under the Information Technology Act. As per Section 43 read with Section 66, unauthorized access to a computer device, computer resource, computer network can attract imprisonment up to 3 years or a fine which may extend to 5 lakh rupees, or both.
Taking control of devices or hacking them through spyware or malware is clearly a gross violation of the right to privacy recognised by the Supreme Court. Surveillance using a spyware tool like Pegasus would be illegal unless those who have done it can demonstrate otherwise.
This is why I have called for an independent investigation of the entire Pegasus affair.
But NSO has also admitted that it does not operate the spyware licensed to its clients and “has no insight” into their specific intelligence-gathering activities using Pegasus. If the Government of India did not deploy Pegasus against Indian citizens, and NSO only sells it to governments, then it can only mean that some other government(s) are snooping on us. Surely that alone warrants a serious, thorough and impartial investigation.
National security, and national self-respect, demands no less.
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Stan Swamy: A Requiem for Justice
July 26, 2021,
Mathrubhumi.
This weekend came news that a judge of the Bombay High Court had withdrawn his oral remarks praising the late Father Stan Swamy’s work for the poor and oppressed – because the prosecutor objected that the judge’s words had negatively affected the morale of the National Investigating Agency. I did not realise that our police spooks had such sensitive souls that they could feel demoralised by kind words about an octogenarian social worker who had already passed away, but let that be. There’s something bigger behind the entire episode.
Stan Swamy’s death witnessed a major outpouring of regret across India, as individuals of every conceivable religious and political affiliation and none (barring, of course, those with any connection to the ruling party) expressed their sorrow at his demise in police custody. A Jesuit priest who had devoted himself to the well-being of tribals in Jharkhand, serving them selflessly, dying under police custody without ever having been convicted of any crime – this was the kind of injustice our Constitution and laws were written to prevent. Stan Swamy’s passing won him the attention of people who were unaware of his struggles while he was alive, and widespread condemnation of the “system” that could have done this to him.
But one strain of criticism still persisted, on the right wing of the political spectrum. And that was to attack Swamy for his work as a Jesuit and activist, accusing him of stirring up trouble for the Indian state out of a misplaced commitment to the “Marxist” tenets of “liberation theology”. In this reading, he was not acting merely out of religious compassion for the poor and marginalised, but out of a dangerous affiliation to a religious sect whose ideology is dangerous for our country.
I must admit, as a product of two Jesuit schools (in Bombay and Calcutta, as they were then called) myself, to be a bit perplexed by this. I knew the Jesuit order, founded in 1534, as a dedicated group of priests who took a missionary and scholarly approach to Catholic teachings. At Campion School, Bombay, and St Xavier’s, Calcutta, I had seen the Jesuits as priests admirably committed to the vocation of educating the (somewhat) privileged and ministering to the under-privileged. I remember my class X teacher, Father Remedios, brilliantly instilling in his students a detailed appreciation of Shakespeare before cycling off to prison to attend to the needs of its inmates. That, I had always seen, was the Jesuit way.
It is true that in Latin America especially, Jesuits had developed a great awareness of the “sinful” socioeconomic structures that caused injustice, and devoted themselves to work to change this. “Liberation theologians” believe that God speaks particularly through the poor and that Jesus’s message has to be understood from their perspective. The charge that this was a Marxist idea grew from their insistence that priests should involve themselves in the political struggle of the poor against wealthy elites. Liberation theology was largely eclipsed where it began, in Latin America, as the Roman Catholic Church appointed conservative prelates who clamped down on leftist social activism. But its central idea – that social justice is something priests must strive to bring about – remains, and some Jesuits have arguably embodied this conviction in their life’s work, including, in some cases, in India.
Yet when a Jesuit speaks of class struggle, or of unjust social structures, he does so not with a Marxist interpretation but with a Christian one. Since their 32nd general congregation in 1975, the Jesuits have proclaimed a joint mission of faith and justice. They believe that Jesus preached love of the poor, and that to fulfil His teachings calls for both deep spirituality and a more critical sense of the iniquities embedded in society.
Pope Francis is himself a Jesuit, who places major emphasis on the poor in his teachings. But as an Archbishop he prevented the Jesuits from becoming politically active or working directly in community groups for social change. Jesuit support for the poor does not necessarily translate into leftist politics.
Pope Francis famously exhorted Catholic clergy that, if people were not going to church, then the church had to go to the people. Some interpreted that to mean that if the people were in the streets in protest, then the church had to be in the streets in protest, too. As long as they do so within the permissible boundaries of our Constitution, Indian democracy permits them to do that too. Stan Swamy moved the courts on behalf of oppressed tribals; he did not give them Kalashnikovs.
This is surely Christian, not Marxist. Jesuits like Pope Francis look to the Scripture, not to Marxist social analysis, for the principles and ideas that could inspire their work to free people suffering social and economic injustice. Many Catholics would argue that Jesus, after all, preached good news to the poor and shamed the wealthy. Mother Mary called on God to feed the hungry and dismiss the rich, praying to Him to uplift the weak and dethrone the powerful. The Bible famously says that it is harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle.
To my knowledge, most liberation theologians assert that though they are not Marxists, they make use of Marxism as a social science. Jesuits, like other disciples of Christ, shun private property, but that does not make them Communist. They argue that Marxist analysis of economic inequality is intellectually useful, but it is religious teaching that tells them to work to overcome inequality, since Jesus himself sought to do so. Catholic theology has a history of citing non-Catholic philosophers: St. Thomas Aquinas quoted Aristotle and philosophers like Martin Heidegger, who was Jewish, have inspired Catholic theologians. This places Jesuits like Stan Swamy in the Christian tradition, rather than the Communist one.
So the criticism of Stan Swamy as a dangerous exponent of liberation theology is misplaced. He was a good man, whose spiritual beliefs prompted him to work for the most dispossessed in our society. Our “system” killed him, and seeking to discredit his life by reference to Marxism or liberation is an unworthy endeavour on the part of his critics. Let us, instead, simply mourn the passing of a good soul.
–> Copyright © 2021 Shashi Tharoor, All rights reserved.
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Shashi Tharoor · 97, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi 110 003 · New Delhi 110003 · India
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