Thank you dear subscribers, we are overwhelmed with your response.
Your Turn is a unique section from ThePrint featuring points of view from its subscribers. If you are a subscriber, have a point of view, please send it to us. If not, do subscribe here: https://theprint.in/subscribe/
There is a peculiar rule in the international catechism on India. When America investigates foreign influence, it is national security. When Britain does it, it is democratic resilience. When Australia does it, it is transparency.
When India does it, apparently, democracy has died.
The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026 has produced the predictable funeral procession. Congress has promised opposition. The Trinamool Congress has called the Bill “dangerous”. The NCP (SP) wants it withdrawn or sent to a Joint Parliamentary Committee. M.K. Stalin has demanded that it be scrapped or comprehensively reconsidered. Shashi Tharoor has described the proposed regime as one of control rather than transparency.
One could be forgiven for imagining that Parliament proposes to criminalise charity.
It does not.
The question beneath all the noise is embarrassingly simple: does India have the right to
know who is sending money into India, to whom, and for what purpose?
If the answer is no, we may as well remove the word sovereign from the Preamble.
The strange sanctification of foreign money needs dismantling. Money does not become
holy water when transferred through an NGO. A cheque from abroad can build a hospital. It can educate a child. It can feed the hungry.
It can also buy influence.
History is littered with corpses of countries that discovered this distinction too late.
India, of all nations, should require no tutorial on the subject. The East India Company did not arrive at Plassey flying the Union Jack from battle tanks. It came bearing balance sheets, contracts and commercial privileges. Economic penetration preceded political domination. Influence came first; sovereignty disappeared later.
The twentieth century merely industrialised the technique. During the Cold War,
Washington and Moscow financed newspapers, cultural organisations, unions, intellectual
networks and political movements beyond their borders. The recipients were sometimes
willing collaborators, sometimes useful innocents.
The principle survived the Cold War because foreign influence survived it.
That is why the United States has had the Foreign Agents Registration Act since 1938. Britain now operates its Foreign Influence Registration Scheme. Australia has a Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme. These statutes are not identical to FCRA—the Indian law reaches far more broadly into foreign contributions—but all arise from the same democratic instinct: foreign influence deserves sunlight.
So let us retire the theatrical outrage.
Nobody in Washington seriously argues that an overseas power must enjoy an unfettered
right to finance American political influence. Nobody in London considers secret foreign
direction an extension of civil liberty. Yet an American Congressman can denounce India’s
proposed law as an attack on Christians and warn of consequences for India-US relations.
How touching.
Apparently sovereignty is universal until Indians exercise it.
There is an even simpler question for our domestic opposition.
If an Indian industrialist secretly financed organisations campaigning to alter American
nuclear policy, immigration politics or elections, would Congress describe an FBI inquiry as fascism? Would the TMC demand that Washington respect philanthropic freedom? Would the DMK explain to the US Justice Department that asking where the money came from was an assault on democracy?
We know the answer.
And yet this does not mean the Government should be handed a legislative machete and
invited to swing it blindly.
The 2026 Bill contains serious questions. It allows foreign contributions and assets created wholly or partly from them to vest in a designated authority when FCRA registration ceases, subject to the statutory scheme. PRS has rightly raised concerns about the consequences of non-renewal and the treatment of assets acquired partly through foreign funds.
There must be notice. Hearing. Proportionality. Appeal. Judicial review.
That is not capitulation to NGOs. That is constitutional government.
Indeed, the Government has already signalled willingness to soften aspects of the Bill and has indicated that penalising provisions will not operate retrospectively. That is sensible politics and better law-making.
The Opposition would serve India better by fighting for those safeguards instead of
pretending that foreign funding itself is somehow beyond sovereign scrutiny.
Because this debate ultimately has nothing to do with Modi, Rahul Gandhi, Stalin or
Mamata Banerjee.
Governments are temporary.
Sovereignty is not.
Foreign philanthropy deserves gratitude when it heals. Foreign political influence deserves exposure when it meddles. And foreign money, however noble its declared purpose, has no constitutional right to travel through India wearing an invisibility cloak.
The test for Parliament is therefore brutally simple:
A Republic that cannot follow foreign money is not fully sovereign. A Republic that can
confiscate property without fairness is not fully constitutional.
India should tolerate neither condition.
And perhaps Washington, London—and our permanently outraged political class—could
learn to live with that.
Mohan Murti, FICA, Advocate & International Industry Arbitrator, Former Managing Director-Europe, Reliance Industries Ltd. Germany
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.