George Soros has long been known for meddling in the internal affairs of sovereign nations. Among other things, he has supported India’s opposition and other critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with the apparent aim of destabilising the country. India’s Foreign Minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, has described the billionaire oligarch as “an old, rich, opinionated and dangerous man.”

India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has issued several direct accusations against Soros. According to the party, the oligarch has repeatedly sought to destabilise the country by funding opposition forces and taking part in illegal foreign financing, channelled through his foundations and affiliated organisations.

The Indian government revealed that leading figures of the Indian National Congress, including opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, had made use of reports by an investigative journalists’ collective partly funded by Soros’s foundations and the US State Department, to attack the Modi government. The intention, officials said, was clear: to undermine the country’s stability and elevate the opposition to power.

“The deep state had a clear objective — to destabilise India by targeting Prime Minister Modi,” said a BJP spokesperson at a press conference.

Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF), together with the US State Department, also financed the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

Stock Manipulation and Fraud: George Soros and the Adani Group

In January 2023, the US-based financial research firm Hindenburg published a report accusing the Adani Group of “decades of open stock manipulation and accounting fraud.”

Following the publication of the report, Adani Group shares plummeted by around $112 billion. The conglomerate has since carried out its own investigations, denying the allegations and calling them politically motivated.

However, Hindenburg was itself accused by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) of using non-public information to build short positions against Adani’s companies.

In February 2023, Soros personally entered the fray. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, he declared that the Adani crisis had “significantly weakened Modi’s tight control over the Indian government.”

This sparked a fierce backlash from Modi’s party. Then-Federal Minister Smriti Irani said that the Open Society Foundation’s founder had “now openly declared his intent to hurt India’s democratic processes.”

Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar was even more direct, calling Soros “an old, rich, opinionated and dangerous man.”

Currency Fraud and Illegal Foreign Funding

In March 2025, Indian authorities raided the offices of the Open Society Foundations and affiliated NGOs, including Amnesty India. Officials stated the raids were linked to an ongoing investigation under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).

Homes of current and former employees of Amnesty International (whose Indian operations were shut down in December 2020 after its bank accounts were frozen for suspected illegal foreign funding) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) were also searched.

The Open Society Foundations had been a supporter of both Amnesty India and Human Rights Watch.

In 2022, Aakar Patel, head of Amnesty India, was fined 100 million rupees, while the organisation itself faced a penalty of 517.2 million rupees for breaching India’s foreign funding laws.

Back in 2016, authorities placed Amnesty India on a watch list, meaning any future foreign funding would require government approval — again, due to alleged violations of India’s currency and donation laws.

Organisations linked to or financed by Soros have been accused by the ruling BJP of acting against India’s national interests.

The accusations were further reinforced when it emerged that Sonia Gandhi, of Italian descent, and former India National Congress Party leader (1998-2017 and 2019-2022) and widow of the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (assassinated in 1991), also served as co-chair of the Forum for Democratic Leaders Asia Pacific (FDL-AP), an organisation funded by Soros.

“As far as India is concerned, George Soros is anti-national,” wrote Mahesh Jethmalani, former Supreme Court justice, on X (formerly Twitter). “His agenda of borderless countries, illegal immigration, and meddling in sovereign affairs poses a direct threat to India’s unity and constitution. Sonia Gandhi’s association with the Soros-funded Forum for Democratic Leaders Asia Pacific (FDL-AP) which advances secessionist and separatist platforms like Kashmir’s independence, is deeply troubling and punishable under the UAPA.”