INTERVIEW: India and Israel’s deepening ties and the implications for Southasia

Israel’s brutal bombardment of Gaza has killed over 20,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 50,000 others since the 7 October attack by Hamas. While India strongly condemned the attack and expressed solidarity with Israel, India recently voted in favour of several draft resolutions in the United Nations that criticised Israel’s conduct in Gaza and supported aid for Palestinian civilians, after initially abstaining on a resolution that had called for an immediate humanitarian truce and unhindered humanitarian access in the Gaza strip. This signifies that deeper shifts have taken place in India’s approach to Israel. For most of independent India’s history, New Delhi had no diplomatic relations with Israel. Today, Indian and Israeli flags are displayed together at rallies demonstrating solidarity with Israel. India and Israel under Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu have developed a significant military partnership and growing economic ties. In a review essay on Azad Essa’s Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance between India and Israel, for Himal Southasian, Rohan Venkat explores the ideological convergence of Hindutva and Zionism, and the consequences for Kashmir and Palestine – and argues there is much more driving India and Israel’s deepening ties. Rohan Venkat is a Non-Resident Visiting Scholar and Consulting Editor at the Centre for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania. He writes India Inside Out, a newsletter on Indian politics, foreign policy and history. In this edition of Himal Interviews, Rohan Venkat talks about how the most potent commonality between India and Israel isn’t in the trade and defence ties they have been building over the past three decades. Instead, Rohan explores how the ideological movements that lie at the core of India and Israel’s political leadership today serve to justify the excesses of both states, and the wider implications of this for Southasia. Rohan Venkat’s recommendations: Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel by Azad Essa Pluto Press (February 2023) The Evolution of India’s Israel Policy: Continuity, Change, and Compromise Since 1922 by Nicolas Blarel. Oxford University Press (January 2015) India’s Israel Policy by P R Kumaraswamy. Columbia University Press (July 2010) The Ezra Klein Show by The New York Times Minor Detail Adania Shibli. Fitzcarraldo Editions and New Directions Publishing (June 2017) The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit by Lucette Lagnado. Ecco (June 2007)