'What's there to hide': Why snooping is not a big deal in India

Anand and Anjali Sen (names changed) were mostly indifferent to their daughter’s requests for ‘privacy’. They would often barge into her room without knocking, or snoop into her phone when she was not looking. If caught doing so, their common refrain was: “Why are you scared if you have nothing to hide?”

Many Indians pushed the same argument as Anand and Anjali when the Pegasus spyware row exploded last month. Only this time, it wasn’t some paranoid couple eavesdropping on their teenage child.

Pegasus, a private Israeli spyware that has been classified as a weapon to be used against criminals and terrorists, was allegedly used in India to spy on opposition politicians, bureaucrats and journalists, among others. While the Indian government has denied the charges, it called the revelations a ‘non-issue’. Interestingly, the NSO Group insists that the spyware is sold only to “vetted governments” and not private entities.

The latest ‘snooping saga’ first came to the light in May 2019 when WhatApp made a stunning revelation that Pegasus was used to target about 1,400 of its users from 20 countries, including India. But at that time the issue failed to hog headlines.

A subsequent collaborative investigation by Forbidden Stories, a France-based network of journalists, with technical support from Amnesty’s Security Lab, revealed the wider magnitude of the scam and its larger ramifications on Indian democracy. The ambit of the alleged snooping this time was much wider than any previous such scandal in India, encompassing even non-politicians such as journalists, judges and civil society activists.

Moreover, apart from spying, Pegasus could also be used to implicate critics of the establishments in false cases as has been allegedly done in the Bhima-Koregaon cases.

Despite all that, opposition parties and internet freedom activists are finding it difficult to make their concerns heard. There is no major public outcry.

So, it begs the question whether Indians really don’t care much about privacy.

Watergate Vs watered-down

In the United States, the burglary-style break-in into the office of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington DC, ostensibly at the behest of administration of President Richard Nixon — to install listening devices in telephones and to photograph campaign documents of the Democratic Party in the ’70s — is still regarded as the most shameful chapter in the democratic history of the country.

Unlike the US, political-snooping in India in the past failed to stir the conscience of the nation as it should have been. This, despite a long history of illegal domestic surveillance and political espionage.

Former Intelligence Bureau joint director MK Dhar, in his book Open Secrets: India’s Intelligence Unveiled, claimed that Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi used the espionage agency to snoop on their political adversaries.

In fact, allegations of phone tapping have been haunting Indian politics from the late ’60s when Kamraj, Morarji Desai and other leaders of a breakaway faction of the Congress accused then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of bugging their phones.

Murmurs of phone tapping were heard even during the recently concluded Assembly elections in West Bengal. TMC supremo and chief minister Mamata Banerjee had accused the BJP-led central government of tapping her phone after the saffron party released an audio clip in which she was purportedly heard telling her party nominee from Sitalkuchi to hold rallies with bodies of the four people killed in “firing by Central forces” in the constituency during April 10 polling.

However, breach of privacy still fails to jolt the collective conscience of Indian polity. So much so that at times some politicians even brag about their ability to snoop on others.

West Bengal opposition leader and BJP MLA Suvendu Adhikari last month bragged to have the phone call records of the East Midnapore Police Superintendent Amarnath K and the TMC’s Abhishek Banerjee.

“I’ve each and every call record, phone number of all those who call you from the nephew’s [TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee] office. If you have the state government with you, we have the central government with us,” Adhikari said.

The remarks show that for many like Adhikari snooping is also an assertion of authority. The source of this haughtiness obviously stems from the fact that Indian masses by and large are indifferent to matters related to individual freedom and privacy.

“We tend to believe that as law-abiding citizens we should be subservient to the government, and that the state has a right to keep its citizens under surveillance for the sake of national security,” says Ashok Kumar Deb, chairman Bar Council of West Bengal.

Traditional statecraft

Spying has a long history in India and goes back to the days of Rigveda. In ancient India, it developed into a sophisticated statecraft. “A complete network of spies used to be spread throughout the length and breadth of the country. They provided their services in every field of life. Their functions were manifold… They informed the king about every-minute news of native state as well as foreign… They collected information about government personnel, functioned as the vigilance and anti-corruption squad. They spied on the general populace of the kingdom as well,” writes Manila Rohatgi in her book, Spy System in Ancient India: From Vedic Period to Gupta Period.

Ancient Indian scriptures — from the Manusmriti to Mahabharata and Kautilya’s Arthasastra — delved in length on espionage as an important tool of statecraft. The Manusmriti and the Arthasastra have in fact entire manuals on spying.

The influence of this ancient tradition is writ large on people’s psyche even now — when India is a modern democratic state — as has been evident from the collective inertia of the public over the previous snooping cases, says TMC’s Mukul Bairagya.

Of course, allegations of snooping did lead to the fall of a central as we all as a state government in the past.

In 1988, the Ramakrishna Hegde-led Janata Dal government in Karnataka had an unceremonious exit after the chief minister was accused of tapping phones of about 50 politicians.

A few years later Chandra Shekhar’s government at the Centre collapsed after the Congress withdrew its support from the coalition government alleging that the two Haryana policemen were spying on its leader Rajiv Gandhi. It was a bizarre twist of event for Chandra Shekhar who himself had earlier accused his predecessor VP Singh of wiretapping his and several other politicians’ phones.

In both the cases, however, the fall of the governments was not forced by any public outcry.

Even over the Pegasus case, the discourse is limited among the politicians, journalists and social activists. The issue has so far failed to create a buzz among the common public despite uproar over it in Parliament.

“But times have changed. So has technology and its impact on the private lives of citizens. People have to understand that,” says Rupesh Kumar Singh, a Jharkhand-based social activist and journalist whose phone number too was in the list of potential targets of the Israeli-made Pegasus spyware.

The common citizens though, Singh feels, are slowly waking up to the urgency. They understand how important individual rights are for a modern democracy to survive. Singh has moved the Supreme Court urging it to declare the use of a spyware such as Pegasus unconstitutional.

He believes it’s imperative to build a mass awareness campaign to make the general public aware of the threat such surveillance poses to democracy.

“It is the responsibility of the opinion makers to counter the government’s narrative by explaining to the people how such surveillance could impact national security as well as individual rights.”

But much to the disappointment of Singh and a few others like him, the government continues to run roughshod over such concerns. The brute majority in Parliament, particularly in the lower House, also helped the BJP to steadfastly refuse any discussions on the issue so far which the opposition think can be India’s Watergate moment.

As the nation soaks in self-adulation over Olympic medals, the BJP has already upped its pitch on nationalism to drown out the Opposition’s fervent cry for a discussion on alleged snooping on 300 people from India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 5 claimed that the sole intention of the Opposition to disrupt Parliament proceedings was to create roadblocks on the path of development, and termed the action “anti national”. Modi was interacting with beneficiaries of the Centre’s food security scheme in Uttar Pradesh through video-conference.

At the event he even found a way to project the opposition’s action as somewhat antithesis to India’s performance in the Olympics.

While on the one hand the country was scoring goal after goal, the prime minister said in an oblique reference to Indian players winning medals in Tokyo Olympics, on the other, some were scoring self-goals to meet their political agenda.

What lies ahead

The Pegasus case has now gone to the Supreme Court and it is for the apex court to see whether the alleged scam stands the legal scrutiny. But beyond the parameters of legality, on the question of morality, it is only the citizens of India who could be the catalyst to promote privacy and data protection, say rights activists and internet freedom influencers.

Rupesh Singh strongly feels that the government would listen only when the people will collectively raise their voice.

Former MP and NCP leader Arun Srivastava admits that given the lack of awareness about matters related to individual freedom, it will be difficult to make Pegasus an electoral issue in the hinterlands of India.

But as responsible politicians, the opposition leaders could not shy away from highlighting an issue of grave concern just because it would not bring political dividends, he adds.

That, however, is easier said than done. For context, Modi has withstood a snooping storm even in the past as chief minister of Gujarat.

Srivastava understands the enormity of the task that lies ahead.

“A mass movement cannot be built on the issue of Pegasus. But that does not mean we give up on individual privacy. It’s a legal right and we will make sure to nail the government on this issue.”