Deep state, shallow state, non-state: The rise of conspiracy theories

It’s early days in 2025 yet, but the “deep state” looks like the frontrunner for winning the “word of the year” honours. Anything goes wrong and we blame this sinister entity — the deep state.

 

Except that it isn’t so mythical. It is as much a part of our lives and system of governance as shallow state and non-state. We shall explore these definitions and how these intermesh as we go along. However, the deep state, often just called DS, has now become the engine of conspiracy theories across democracies.

 

The first thing we need to look at is the dictionary/Wikipedia definition of it: Potentially secret and unauthorised network of power operating independently of a state’s political leadership in pursuit of its own agenda and goals. Of course, it all has a negative and conspiratorial connotation. Then, let’s follow our usual three-example formula and list these specific issues/events.

 

> The regime change in Bangladesh. It was sudden, violent at street level, leaderless and dramatic. It’s been widely blamed on the US deep state (we will use DS hereon). It’s also been called a US (United States) DS success, with the insinuation that similar operations were planned in India as well. Because, of course, the Biden administration and the DS do not like Narendra Modi.

 

> Next, the series of exposés on the Adani group across two years. Many came from a shadowy short-seller Hindenburg, which vaporised as mysteriously as it had appeared on the scene. There were also many other stories that came in through organisations supported or funded by OCCRP (Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project). There is also the ICIJ, or the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Both are supported by the George Soros-founded Open Society Foundations. Mr Soros is an acknowledged Left-leaning anarchist (I won’t call him liberal) and a stock and currency markets predator. He’s the man who broke the pound and the Bank of England (1992) as well as many key East Asian countries in the 1997 financial crisis. Both these organisations supported investigations leading to stories on the Adani group. The conspiracy theory is that this was an indirect attack on the Modi government. In fact, Prime Minister Narendra Modi noted at the outset of the current Budget session of Parliament that this was the first in many years that a session was beginning without any “mischief from abroad”.

 

> And the third, two difficult and embarrassing situations India was caught in — in Canada and the US — were linked to Sikh radical operations there. In each of these cases, the American media highlighted the stories in great detail and persisted with the coverage as did the Financial Times in the case of Adani. All of this, the argument is, couldn’t be a coincidence. It must have been the work of DS. And you know what, now even Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their lieutenants are all complaining about it as they set out to drain the swamp.

 

So far so good, and we then examine each in some detail. On Bangladesh are we sure this was merely the handiwork of some “potentially secret and unauthorised” group that worked under the US government radar? If you saw the pictures of George Soros’ son flying in to meet Chief Adviser Mohammed Yunus in Dhaka last month, your suspicions will be strengthened.

 

Then also see that iconic (if I may be allowed to use just once the description I usually ban in my own newsroom for anything but a sculpture) picture of a doting Joe Biden with his arm around Yunus’ shoulders.

 

If Hasina’s downfall was really engineered by the Americans, was it by some DS working on its own? Or in conjunction with the Biden Administration? This won’t pass the conspiracy theorists’ definition of DS.

 

There are shadowy, amorphous, vaguely defined organisations that work as instruments of a regular, upfront state. A trick question follows: How will you describe the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed? As non-state actors which the Pakistanis would? Or DS? Both will give the Pakistan state plausible deniability. They are the state, and they mean enormous harm to India.

 

The Adani issue might be a bit more complex because in most of the stories from Hindenburg and OCCRP, there is no clear US government role. So, was DS at play? But then, the US Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission came up with indictments potentially and a lot more threatening than Hindenburg’s. Now, were Hindenburg and OCCRP working independent of the state, or in cahoots with it? Or vice versa?

 

And finally, the issues India faced in Canada and the US over Nijjar and Pannun. The notion of this being DS activity was brought in mostly because some in the US and Canadian media were particularly active on this. All of their stories, however, were based on briefings by their own intelligence officials.

 

One way of looking at DS is the bureaucracy, civil services, police, armed forces, judiciary, regulators, election commission and other institutions that span the tenure of multiple governments.

 

They follow the rule book, provide continuity, and protect the family silver. Between 1996 and 1999, India had six Prime Ministers. It was a brilliant set of civil servants, military leaders, and nuclear scientists who kept continuity with our strategic programme, protected it, and didn’t let a word leak.

 

The same system can act differently. If they kept the nuclear assets all so secret and defined as “peaceful” all of these decades, they made them open and military in 1998. Why?

 

That’s because the Vajpayee government asked them to do so. This DS, which provides continuity and also assurance on broad policies and sovereign commitments remaining intact, also changes when political leaders command so. Those we describe as the shallow state.

 

“Shallow” is not to denote weakness but because they’re transient. Actually, they are the ones with real power. It is used only because the political leaderships will have the deeper state apparatus at their command. It is only when the shallow state is weak that DS takes over the agenda. We saw this play out just after Manmohan Singh signed the nuclear deal.

 

Much of the opposition to it was based on leaks from his office and his Ministry of External Affairs by career civil servants, partly motivated by ingrained anti-Americanism and partly by those who found the change too drastic.

 

That is why the nuclear liability law was so poisoned as to make the entire deal fruitless. This is precisely what the Modi government’s Budget just promised to change and which the Modi-Trump joint statement has taken note of.

 

And finally, where does non-state feature? From ancient times, sovereigns have used the cover of non-state actors to take their cause forward.

 

From bhikshus of Ashokan 3rd century BC and medieval Sufis to Oxfam, Omidyar and Soros now, non-state actors have any real power only when they work in conjunction with a real state. What is the US Agency for International Development, for example? It can’t be DS because it is very much an instrument of the American state. So much so that Marco Rubio has now taken direct charge of it and moved it in the state department. The Trumpian objection is that it had been hijacked by Leftist ideologues who were using it to indulge their own fancy and not to further American interests.

 

Jump millennia to present-day India and ask what the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will say it is a non-state entity, and, in fact, the world’s largest non-government organisation. Ask the Congress, and they will call it the BJP’s DS. The exact equation will apply if you asked the BJP and the Congress what Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council was. One shallow state antagonist’s DS is the other’s non-state entity.

 

By special arrangement with ThePrint