See Rupal Oza's most recent Society & Space contributions: Indian Elections: Mandate against Religious Nationalism and Neoliberal Reform, Contrapuntal Geographies of Threat and Security: The United States, India, and Israel, and The entanglements of transnational feminism and area studies

As the Israeli attack on Gaza intensified in July 2014, a large poster made an appearance in front of some hotels in Mumbai that depicted icons of prominent U.S. products and read, “Indian Hoteliers boycott Israeli and U.S. products.” Boycott has a long history and political resonance in India dating back to anti-colonial struggles from the early 20th century and also from the anti-apartheid movement when India boycotted South Africa. This most recent boycott, however, does not have the same tenor or carry the same moral or ethical weight.

Nor is India’s recent vote in support of a United Nations resolution to launch a probe into Israel’s offensive into Gaza indicative of a shift in official policy towards Israel. India’s vote at the UN needs to be read in the context of the BRICS summit that had just occurred in Fortaleza, Brazil and was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first big external summit. The Fortaleza Declaration signed by all the BRICS countries held them to the goals and principles in the declaration, including one that dealt with Arab-Israeli peace and that committed the BRICS countries to sign the UN resolution. It was this international political position rather than an ethical or moral position that led to India’s UN vote. Indeed on August 16th 2014 the Prime Minister’s party, the BJP, organized a pro-Israeli rally in the former left stronghold of Kolkata that brought out twenty thousand people in support.

There has been a tectonic shift in India’s relationship with Palestine and Israel in the last 25 years. A recently published collection of essays details a long history of the deeply principled relationship of solidarity that India had with Palestine (Hariharan 2014). That relationship began as early as 1947 when India voted against the UN’s partition plan for Palestine, standing in solidarity with the Arab League and with the 13 million Muslims in India. In 1949 India voted once again against the inclusion of Israel into the UN. Through this time Indian passports were “valid for travel to all countries except Israel and South Africa,” in effect linking the apartheid regimes in South African and Israeli states. In 1974 India was the first non-Arab state to recognize PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Then in 1975 India voted, along with 72 other countries, in support of UN resolution 3379, which “determined that Zionism is a form for racism and racial discrimination.” In 1981 India even produced a postage stamp picturing Indian and Palestinian flags and a caption that read, “India supports the inalienable rights of the Palestinian People.” And in 1988 India was the first country to recognize Palestine as a state, giving the PLO embassy status in its capital New Delhi and using the head of state protocols when hosting Yasser Arafat.

Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, there has been a decisive shift in India’s historic pro-Palestinian position. In contrast, Israel has emerged as India’s 4th largest arms trading partner andspending between the two countries reached close to $6 billion in agricultural, IT, public health and telecommunications trade.

So what accounts for this shift from Palestine towards Israel? What has changed domestically and internationally that helps makes sense of India’s shift of allegiance? I think we need to look at three factors.

The first, and perhaps most obvious, are geopolitical shifts of the mid to late twentieth century. These include the waning significance of the Non-Aligned Movement by the 1970s, with many of its leaders dead, and the firm grasp U.S. imperial ambitions had achieved around the world (see Prashad 2008). Additionally, the idealistic dreams of the post-colonial movement had by this time become somewhat tarnished within the country as, by the end of the cold war and into the 1990s India, was firmly in the grip of neo-liberal policies. Domestic capital, which had up to that point benefited from protectionist policies afforded by import substitution, had saturated the markets and was looking for new markets and new opportunities for exploitation. Gone were the heady days of rhetorical populism, except when the elections came around. This geopolitical shift needed realignment towards American and European capital – a development that meant that it was not prudent politically, or for that matter economically, for India to adopt a position that was openly hostile towards Israel. It was under these conditions that a thaw towards Israel began to occur.

Second were a series of military incursions in which India was directly engaged and Israel clandestinely supported. The earliest was India’s war with China in 1962 and then soon after with Pakistan in 1965. While I grant that Israel’s involvement in these wars was minor, these collaborations laid the groundwork for what was to come much later. The significant shift in relations came in 1999 during the conflict in the mountains of Kargil when India and Pakistan came closest to threats of a nuclear attack. It was then that Israel offered unmanned reconnaissance that helped India’s war effort. This alliance forged during the time of war was further strengthened after the September 11th2001 attacks in the US. India was quick to align its policies with Washington and declare itself to be against ‘Muslim extremists,’ going along with Bush’s doctrine of “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” The eagerness with which India sought to align itself was because by this point it was clear there would be a military response. The Soviet Union, India’s largest ally was ineffective and this moment unlike any other called for a realignment of geopolitics. It was clear that sides had to be chosen, and those who chose wrong were in peril. But, to be clear, this was by no means a difficult choice either, because by this point India was firmly in the grasp of social and electoral policies where its own Islamaphobia had been bubbling to the surface for a while. Thus making India’s choice to side with the United States to fight ‘Muslim Extremism’ opportune. My last point expands on this.

Concurrent with both the geopolitical shifts as well as Israel’s support for India’s military incursions, certain internal realignments were perhaps even more significant. Since the mid 1960s the rise of the Hindu right wing to power has played a central role in the shifting of alliances towards Israel. The shift in relations assumed particular significance when the BJP came into electoral power in the 1990s during the war with Pakistan in Kargil. The jingoism reached a fever pitch with anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan sentiments. Under these conditions Israel helped India with equipment beginning a relationship built on fear about Muslim ‘terrorist’ threat at the borders. The Kargil war solidified the relationship. So despite the fact that the BJP lost the election in 2004, it had made substantial ties with Israel. The ground was laid and there was no going back. A decade later in 2014, BJP came back with a roaring victory to take the mandate, only this time without a coalition and with the hawkish Narendra Modi at the helm. Modi, in the interim, had earned his reputation—and his heroic status among Hindutva right-wing nationalists —by orchestrating a brutal attack on Muslims that was widely acknowledged as a pogrom in his home state in Gujarat in 2002, while also taking credit for economic growth and prosperity in his state. With Modi at the helm, the ideological and political die was cast.

Clearly, many of the previous episodes of improved relations with Israel took place under Congress-led coalition governments, and the Congress Party is by no means any less guilty of profound political compromises that have dealt serious blows to secularism (Shah Bano and Babri Masjid cases for instance). However, unlike the BJP, the Congress is not committed to a Hindu fundamentalist mandate, which demands that India will be a Hindu Rashtra [Nation]. But for the BJP, this mandate that appeals to its mass base finds common cause with Israel. In particular, both India and Israel construct Muslims as a common internal enemy threatening their national security and peace. This ideological common ground has brought the two nations closer. Jason F. Isaacson of Global Jewish Advocacy, an influential lobbying group based in New York and Washington D.C., claimed that India and Israel shared common interests because both faced the threat of ‘Islamic extremist terror’ (Oza 2006).

Therefore it was not surprising that on July 15th, after several demands from the Congress and Left opposition parties that the Indian parliament take a position on the Gaza conflict, the Indian parliament refused to pass a resolution to condemn Israel’s attacks on Gaza. The Minister of External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj, said, “we have diplomatic ties with both nations. Any discourteous reference to any friendly country can impact our relations with them.” Although the BJP government suggests that it maintains a friendly relationship with ‘both nations,’ the material reality of trade and weapons as well as ideological common ground indicate a more dangerous and worrisome future. 

References

Hariharan G (2014) From India to Palestine: Essays in Solidarity. New Delhi: Leftword.

Oza R (2006) The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender and the Paradoxes of Globalization. New York: Routledge.

Prashad V (2008) The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World. New York: The New Press.