George Soros | A Wall Street philanthropist Premium

The billionaire, who attacked India’s government for being ‘undemocratic’, spends billions on civil society groups across geographies through his Open Society Foundations

Hungarian-American billionaire and philanthropist George Soros, 92, has made headlines in India for making critical remarks about Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the Munich Security Conference last month. In his speech, Mr. Soros identified two threats to world peace: climate change and growing conflict between two systems of governance, what he calls ‘open societies’ and ‘closed societies’. He defined the two systems thus: “In an open society the role of the state is to protect the freedom of the individual; in a closed society the role of the individual is to serve the interests of the state.” While liberal democracies were ‘open societies’, communist and fascist states, and dictatorships were ‘closed’ ones. But there were also some states that were between the two, such as India.

Elaborating on this aspect, Mr. Soros observed in his speech that although India was a democracy — making it an ‘open society’ on paper — its current head of government “Modi is no democrat. Inciting violence against Muslims was an important factor in his meteoric rise.” Referring to recent developments around the Hindenburg report, he went on to add, “Modi and business tycoon Adani are close allies; their fate is intertwined... Adani is accused of stock manipulation and his stock collapsed like a house of cards... 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.”

Also read: George Soros ‘is a crazy nut’, addled by age: K.P. Singh of DLF

These remarks sparked a storm of condemnation from members of the Modi Cabinet and the BJP. “Soros is an old, rich opinionated person sitting in New York who still thinks that his views should determine how the entire world works...he is also dangerous as such people and such views and such organisations actually invest resources in shaping narratives,” responded External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

Union Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani described Mr. Soros’ remarks as “not just an attempt to hurt India’s image. If you listen to him carefully, he talks of regime change.”

These comments might seem like an excessively prickly overreaction to the conference remarks of an ageing billionaire. However, this is not the first time such accusations have been flung at him – other heads of state have done so, including Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Soros’ country of birth. Often described as “the world’s most influential investor”, Mr. Soros’s public life and persona are struck through by an irreconcilable contradiction between, on the one hand, his extreme wealth and the predatory means by which they were accumulated, and on the other, the extreme idealism and generosity of his philanthropy.

Also read: Whether Adani issue sparks revival depends on Opposition, not George Soros: Congress