icg – The Commune https://thecommunemag.com Mainstreaming Alternate Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:59:45 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.5 https://thecommunemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/cropped-TC_SF-1-32x32.jpg icg – The Commune https://thecommunemag.com 32 32 Former Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao Who Has Reinvented Aman Ki Asha With A “Women’s Caucus” Of India & Pakistan Sits On Soros-Linked ICG Board https://thecommunemag.com/former-foreign-secretary-nirupama-rao-who-has-reinvented-aman-ki-asha-with-a-womens-caucus-of-india-pakistan-sits-on-soros-linked-icg-board/ Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:59:45 +0000 https://thecommunemag.com/?p=144524 India’s former Foreign Secretary Nirupama Menon Rao sat atop the Ministry of External Affairs hierarchy, handling classified diplomatic cables, bilateral security frameworks, and sensitive back-channel communications between nations has now gone fully woke with her diplomacy. She is suggesting a “women’s caucus”, another fancy term for Aman Ki Asha to engage with terror state Pakistan. […]

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India’s former Foreign Secretary Nirupama Menon Rao sat atop the Ministry of External Affairs hierarchy, handling classified diplomatic cables, bilateral security frameworks, and sensitive back-channel communications between nations has now gone fully woke with her diplomacy. She is suggesting a “women’s caucus”, another fancy term for Aman Ki Asha to engage with terror state Pakistan. She’s basically proposing that a muscular India which hits back at Pakistan furiously shouldn’t be a policy. When such a figure

Such statements from a person of such stature doesn’t come out of the blue.

It is an ecosystem that is putting this forward and amplifying.

And as expected, there is a connection to George Soros, the notorious anarchist. Nirupama is on the board of a Soros-linked organisation that has repeatedly pushed narratives indistinguishable from Pakistan’s foreign policy talking points. The question is no longer academic – it is a national security concern.

Who Is On The Board?

Nirupama Menon Rao, who served as India’s Foreign Secretary from 2009 to 2011 and previously as Ambassador to the United States, China, and Sri Lanka, formally joined the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group (ICG) in 2024. She is listed on the ICG website as “Former Foreign Secretary of India and former Indian Ambassador to the United States”.

Image Source: X

Former NSA and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon is also on the same board, meaning two of India’s most senior UPA-era diplomats with access to classified security and diplomatic intelligence now sit on the governing body of this organisation.

What Is ICG and Who Funds It?

The International Crisis Group is a Brussels-headquartered think-tank that positions itself as a conflict resolution organisation. It receives significant funding from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Soros has been openly hostile toward Prime Minister Modi and the Indian government – he called Modi “no democrat” – he said, “India is a democracy, but its leader Narendra Modi is no democrat. Inciting violence against Muslims was an important factor in his meteoric rise” and declared his intention to see a change in India’s leadership. Soros can be characterised as an “economic war criminal” who had “declared his ill intention to intervene in democratic processes of India”.

ICG’s Track Record on India

ICG’s body of work on India is not neutral academic analysis – it consistently echoes Pakistani state positions on Kashmir. In a 37-page report in August 2020, ICG:

  • Described Kashmir as being under “Indian military occupation”
  • Called on India’s allies to “pressure” New Delhi to relax its Kashmir approach
  • Used language such as “forcible suppression of Kashmiri dissent”
  • Warned of “dire consequences” of India’s actions in its own sovereign territory

The report was celebrated and republished by Pakistani state-linked media as international validation of Pakistan’s Kashmir narrative. ICG’s India-Pakistan Kashmir page continues to frame the issue as a bilateral dispute requiring Indian concessions, directly mirroring Islamabad’s stated foreign policy position.

The Conflict of Interest?

Nirupama Menon Rao was not a mid-level bureaucrat. As Foreign Secretary she was the seniormost official of India’s MEA – privy to the most sensitive details of India’s diplomatic postures, back-channels with Pakistan, intelligence-sharing frameworks, and strategic red lines. She held these positions during the period immediately following 26/11, when India-Pakistan diplomatic architecture was most fragile and consequential. She subsequently joined the board of an organisation that:

  • Is funded by a man who has publicly declared intent to destabilise India’s government
  • Produces reports that Pakistani media uses as international pressure tools against India
Image Source: Pakistani Portal The Express Tribune
  • Frames India’s sovereign decisions on Kashmir as human rights violations
No Law, But A Clear Ethical Gap

India currently has no post-retirement cooling-off or affiliation restriction for IFS officers joining foreign-funded geopolitical organisations, unlike the strict norms that apply to defence and intelligence personnel. This is the legal gap that allows a former Foreign Secretary to sit on the board of a Soros-funded body without any regulatory scrutiny. The FCRA Amendment 2026, which many in Nirupama Rao‘s circles have publicly opposed, is precisely designed to address foreign-funded influence on Indian policy discourse. The irony is stark.

India asks serving diplomats to sign secrecy oaths that bind them for life. It is a reasonable question to ask whether those oaths have any practical meaning when the officials who signed them can, upon retirement, join the governing boards of organisations funded by those openly working against India’s democratic integrity and territorial positions.

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Congress-Era NSA Shivshankar Menon, A Trustee On Soros-Linked ICG, Worried About US Going ‘Soft’ On India’s Domestic Agenda https://thecommunemag.com/congress-era-nsa-shivshankar-menon-a-trustee-on-soros-linked-icg-worried-about-us-going-soft-on-indias-domestic-agenda/ Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:31:56 +0000 https://thecommunemag.com/?p=144530 Did you know that a retired top national security official sat on the board of a George Soros organisation and used an American journal to argue the US was going too easy on India? The Man and His Affiliations Shivshankar Menon is no peripheral figure. He served as India’s Foreign Secretary (2006-2009) and National Security […]

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Did you know that a retired top national security official sat on the board of a George Soros organisation and used an American journal to argue the US was going too easy on India?

The Man and His Affiliations

Shivshankar Menon is no peripheral figure. He served as India’s Foreign Secretary (2006-2009) and National Security Adviser to PM Manmohan Singh (2010-2014) – positions carrying direct access to classified intelligence, diplomatic strategy, and military planning. After the UPA government’s electoral defeat in 2014, Menon took up international affiliations, most significantly, a seat on the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group (ICG), an organisation that counts George Soros among its fellow trustees.

This is not something miniscule. The ICG is not a neutral academic body. Soros, whose Open Society Foundations have been under active investigation by India’s Enforcement Directorate since 2025, sits at its governance level alongside Menon. The ED found that the bulk of ₹300 crore from Soros-linked funds was routed to 12 Indian entities in media, civil society, and policy advocacy. Soros has made it his life’s mission to fight nationalism especially Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Menon chose not merely an academic fellowship with this organisation, but a Trustee position – a governance-level commitment.

The Foreign Affairs Article

In August 2020, Menon published an article in Foreign Affairs, the flagship journal of the US Council on Foreign Relations, read by American policymakers, diplomats, and Congressional staffers, titled “League of Nationalists: How Trump and Modi Refashioned the U.S.-Indian Relationship”.

His central argument: that the Trump-Modi relationship was built on personal transactionalism, which had allowed Modi to pursue domestic policies the US should have challenged more firmly. Specifically, Menon characterised India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) as having “excluded Muslim immigrants from the path to citizenship” and described the revocation of Article 370 as part of a pattern that had “hyphenated India’s image with Pakistan’s in a fundamental way, as religiously driven and intolerant states”.

The implicit argument was clear: the US had been too lenient on India, and the bilateral relationship was laundering India’s domestic decisions from international scrutiny.

The Factual Distortion

Menon’s characterisation of CAA is demonstrably misleading. The law does not affect the citizenship of any existing Indian Muslim, nor does it bar any Muslim from applying for citizenship through the standard naturalisation process. What it does is provide an expedited pathway for persecuted religious minorities viz, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, and Parsis who fled Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, where they face documented state-sanctioned persecution.

The exclusion of Muslims from this specific pathway is not discrimination – it reflects the fact that Muslims are the majority community in those three countries and are not fleeing religious persecution as a class. For a former NSA and career diplomat of Menon’s calibre, this is not a distinction he could have missed. The framing he chose was the framing of India’s domestic opposition – published in an American journal, at a moment when that framing was being actively weaponised to build international pressure against India.

The Larger Pattern

Menon’s Foreign Affairs piece was not isolated. At a January 2020 public event, he declared: “India has isolated itself with CAA. We are in violation of our international commitments.” He told The Wire: “We’ve lost the ability to be a model country.”

These statements were not made within India’s domestic democratic debate. They were delivered at international fora and published in global journals feeding directly into Western diplomatic pressure frameworks, UN rapporteur reports, and Soros-funded advocacy campaigns that India’s own agencies have since documented.

The Question India Has Not Yet Asked

India currently has no cooling-off period, foreign affiliation disclosure requirement, or post-service restriction for retired senior officials. A former NSA can join a Soros-linked board, publish in American foreign policy journals misrepresenting Indian law, and face no institutional accountability whatsoever.

The facts here are not in dispute: a man who held India’s most sensitive national security position subsequently became a trustee of an organisation co-governed by George Soros, and used that platform to argue, in the American foreign policy establishment’s most influential journal, that the US had been insufficiently critical of India’s elected government.

What one concludes from those facts is a matter of judgment. That they deserve to be read together, not dismissed in isolation, is beyond question.

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