Remember when CIA gave ‘large sums of money’ to an RSS plotting on a Congress leader’s life?

"Here is an explosive account, unearthed by @churumuri, of how CIA was funding the Jansangh/RSS to destabilise the Congress govt," shared Pawan Khera, chairperson of the AICC’s media and publicity department, on X on the morning of 19 February, Wednesday.

The ‘explosive excerpts’ he went on to amplify included:

‘John Smith revealed the RSS’s “close ties with CIA” to overthrow the Congress government of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.

‘Smith made two more key charges:

One, that [the] CIA had provided “large sums of money” for the RSS’s anti-cow slaughter rally held in 1966

Two, the attempt to assassinate Congress president K. Kamaraj that day had been the work of [the] RSS.

‘M.S. Golwalkar was the RSS chief at the time.’

Khera’s tweet was provoked by a substack excerpt from the Net Paper titled ‘At least USAID saved Indians from starvation. Guess who conspired with CIA to bring down Nehru?’

The author of said paper references current affairs ‘As The Washington Post said in an editorial, Doland Trump's attack on USAID will be good news to “autocrats and dictators who view civil society as a threat” [emphases the author’s]‘.

However, the USAID conversation is merely the peg on which a reminder hangs. Intended for ‘review’ by the BJP–RSS ecosystem, the author presents a compilation of the ‘doublespeak of the forked Tongue Parivar‘.

Khera found it via ‘churumuri’ on X, as he says. And churumuri presents the list on X with 'Donald Trump's squeeze on USAID has sent tweetiyas into a tizzy, as their pet fantasy of a “foreign hand” trying to interfere in elections through NGOs receives the loony validation they crave. Have they heard of what a CIA spy once revealed of their puppeteers, the RSS?’

The nod, of course, is to the furore over the $21 billion in USAID, purportedly to support ‘voter turnout in elections’, that India used to receive from the US — and on which Donald Trump and Elon Musk, via DOGE, have just pulled the plug.

As soon as the news came out, the BJP and its supporters — both ‘amateur’ and professional — seemed indeed to spiral into a furious maelstrom of deflections. There was a ‘foreign hand’ looking to influence India’s electoral outcomes, they said, and it was certainly not to the benefit of the current ruling party!

Thus spake Amit Malviya (or words to that effect).

‘USD 21M for voter turnout? This definitely is external interference in India’s electoral process. Who gains from this? Not the ruling party for sure!’ the BJP’s IT department chief yelled on X.

A bunch of netizens were quick to remind Malviya that his logic, that the grant was aid to topple a ruling dispensation, would imply that the Congress-led UPA was the target in 2012–13. And then, who would the logical recipient (and beneficiary) be?

As for churumuri, they went on to tell the story of ‘John Smith’, supported by screenshots and photos of assorted source material:

‘John Smith was a US spy based in Delhi in the 1950s

‘When he defected to the Soviet Union in October 1967, he wrote a series of articles for a Russian weekly 'Literaturnaya Gazeta'

‘He revealed RSS's "close ties with CIA" to overthrow the Congress govt of Jawaharlal Nehru (2/10)’

In addition, they said, Smith had claimed that the CIA sent the RSS predecessor the Jana Sangh “large sums of money” in 1966 for its anti-cow slaughter rally — and the M.S. Golwalkar-led Sangh had attempted the assassination of erstwhile Congress president K. Kamaraj.

The accompanying snapshot highlights that ‘many officials under USIS cover were ...interfering in election campaigns‘.

Now, per Malviya’s logic, the attempt could only have been to aid the opposition and unseat the ruling party, then the Congress.

Churumuri goes on to speak of Jean A. Curran, an American sociologist who was attached to the US embassy in Delhi, was “one of the most experienced intelligence agents of the CIA in India” — and would go on to author Militant Hinduism in Indian Politics: A Study of the RSS. His wife, they say, was the one to inform Smith that Golwalkar gave Curran ‘unusual access’.

Why does this matter? Because ‘Four months before Smith spilled the beans, The New York Times reported that [the] CBI had investigated [the] CIA's role in the February 1967 elections‘ — and the CBI investigation had found these large sums of money that went from the US to the Jana Sangh.

Of course, the Sangh denied the NYT allegation and called for an independent investigation. And guess what? The Congress government concurred.

As churumuri continues, then Union home minister Y.B. Chavan said: “The methods by which foreign money is coming into this country to influence political parties should be studied and measures taken to stop such inflow.”

Not much came of it, at the time. Then, a while later, John Smith spoke up in Moscow... and CPI leader S.A. Dange tabled a motion in the Lok Sabha demanding a discussion of the “CIA activities in India as revealed by ex-CIA personnel”.

Chavan responded, “A further enquiry may be ordered into the alleged use of foreign funds in the general election after the government has arrived at some tentative conclusions on the report recently submitted by the Intelligence Bureau.”

Once again, the media frenzy — then in no way anything like our current proportions — settled down though, with little more by way of explosive revelations... Until the Communist Party of India compiled Smith’s disclosures into a booklet titled ‘I Was a CIA Agent in India’.

Published in 1967, it is still to be found in the NITI Aayog library, says churumuri. ‘But who will tell the tweetiyas that their masters were once supping with the devil they now pretend to despise?’ continues churumuri.

‘Or that USAID played a key role in administering PL-480, which saved Indians from starvation till the 1970s; saved precious dollars; and paved the way for the Green Revolution?’