Why is India’s Hindu Right Pro-Israel?

By Akhilesh Pillalamarri


https://thediplomat.com/2024/06/why-is-indias-hindu-right-pro-israel/


As a result of this thawing, several economic and military factors have drawn India and Israel closer together. The two countries engage in robust trade and India’s defense industry has developed strong ties to Israel; India is the largest buyer of Israeli weapons, which are vital to its national security. Almost half — 42.1 percent — of Israel’s arms exports went to India since 2014. Since 2022, India has been a participant in the I2U2 group of four countries — India, Israel, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — that is aiming, among other things, to build a transport corridor linking India and Europe through Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

However, as beneficial and positive as all these developments are, they are not strictly unique, from India’s perspective, to Israel. India, after all, enjoys robust military, trade, political, and social ties with a variety of other countries, ranging from Japan to France. What really lies behind much of India’s love for Israel today is the affinity that the Hindu-right has for Israel as an ideological and political model.

In the past, many Indian nationalists, whether secular or Hindu, had some affinity for imperial Japan, a model of a well-managed, technologically efficient, ethnostate. Imperial Japan was the model for Asian nationalists, from India to China to Thailand to Indonesia, throughout the early 20th century. Japan was, after all, the first non-Western, Asian country to successfully industrialize and hold its own against the European colonial powers of the 19th century, and the purpose of nationalism is to strengthen the nation’s culture and military vis-à-vis other nations.

In contemporary India, Israel occupies such a role of emulation for Hindu nationalists, that it is often said that they seek to create a Hindu Israel in India. Israel is what they envision for India, and indeed, what nationalists throughout the world envision for their countries: a well-ordered state that stands against adversaries, modern — technologically and legally advanced — but also traditional at the same time, as well as supporting a society that gives the pride of place to its dominant cultural group and its norms, where minorities are managed.

Indeed, just as there is a gulf within the Israeli right between secular Zionists and the ultra-Orthodox, Hindu nationalists are rarely theocrats. Their goals are more aligned with shepherding India away from its constitutionally-mandated neutrality between different confessional communities toward something more akin to Israel’s Jewish state model wherein all groups have equal civic rights but the titular group has preferential treatment.

On top of this ideological convergence, Hindu nationalists see much in common with Israel and India’s specific situations. Both are countries that serve as the primary home of a religious (and some would say, ethnoreligious) group that does not have other homelands, unlike say Arab Muslims or Western Christians.

Both neighbor hostile powers, some of which seek to deprive them of land or destroy them altogether. Finally, nationalists see Jews and Hindus as being similar in that both groups had to struggle for political power for centuries before finally attaining it, in the form of their own states, during the 20th century, either through the independence of India in 1947, or the creation of Israel in 1948.

In short, a major factor in the upsurge of Indian favorability to Israel is that Israel is a contemporary example of a modern ethnostate, one that combines ancient culture with modern prosperity, technological prowess, and military success, all factors that appeal to the Hindu right. More generally, and less ideologically, Indians feel a shared sense of empathy with Israel in its struggle against terrorism, while three decades of increased economic and people-to-people ties have drawn Indian and Israeli societies closer together.

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Anand Ranganathan, a right wing hate monger who is close to the ruling establishment in India, has called for an “Israel-like solution in Kashmir”. An open call for a genocide of Muslims in Kashmir while appearing on India’s official news agency.

https://x.com/tequieremos/status/1800406972757672032


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Indian commentator advocates for Israel-like genocidal solution in Kashmir - Muslim Mirror



https://muslimmirror.com/eng/indian-commentator-advocates-for-israe...

On Sunday Indian right-wing commentator Anand Ranganathan called for an Israel-like solution in Kashmir during The Samosa Caucus Podcast hosted by Smita Prakash. Other co-panelists included Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, Sushant, and Tahseen.

“You need an Israel-like solution to Kashmir. The fact that Israel has not been able to ‘solve it’ is not because Israel is not acting to solve it, or Israel is not doing things that should be done. If, for example, seven lakh (700,000) Israelis were driven out of their homes, and Israel had not acted, you would have said ‘Yes, they didn’t solve it,’” Ranganathan stated.



He continued, “Israel has catered for its people who were hard done by, we haven’t! It’s as simple as that. Despite that, yes, there may never be a solution because of the ideology of the people who hate Israelis, and the ideology of the people who hate Hindus. That’s irrespective. What I’m saying is, have we taken the right decisions; we haven’t.”

This is not the first time right-wing Hindu nationalists have invoked the “Israeli-model” as the go-to solution for Indian-occupied Kashmir. In 2019, a former Indian envoy to New York City suggested at a private gathering that India should follow the Israeli settler model in Kashmir.

Anand Ranganathan, an Indian scientist and political commentator known for his crass Islamophobic remarks, is the Consulting Editor of the Hindu nationalist publication Swarajya. He has more than a million followers on X and is known for his vehemently anti-Muslim rhetoric. His remarks on the podcast followed dehumanizing commentary about Kashmir’s “fertility rates” by Abhijit Iyer-Mitra.

“The fertility rates [in Kashmir] cannot support an insurgency,” Iyer-Mitra said casually. The concern over “Muslim fertility” is a deeply ingrained Zionist and Hindu nationalist talking point. In their view, Muslims are not seen as human beings but as “terrorists” or “demographic threats.”

The discussion’s shift from “fertility” to the adoption of Israeli genocidal tactics in Kashmir highlights the troubling nature of such rhetoric. The invocation of Israel’s tactics, which have been widely criticized for their human rights violations, as a model for Kashmir underscores the dangerous and dehumanizing ideologies driving these conversations.

#India exports rockets, explosives to #Israel amid #Gaza war, documents reveal. A ship containing explosives loaded in India and was en route to Israel’s port of Ashdod, some 30km (18 miles) from the Gaza Strip. #Palestine #genocide #Hindutva #Zionism
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/6/26/india-exports-rockets-...

In the early morning hours of May 15, the cargo vessel Borkum stopped off the Spanish coast, lingering in the waters a short distance from Cartagena. At the port, protesters waved Palestinian flags and called on authorities to inspect the ship based on suspicions that it carried weapons bound for Israel.

Leftist members of the European Parliament sent a letter to Spanish President Pedro Sánchez requesting that the ship be prevented from docking. “Allowing a ship loaded with weapons destined for Israel is to allow the transit of arms to a country currently under investigation for genocide against the Palestinian people,” the group of nine MEPs warned.

Before the Spanish government could take a stand, the Borkum cancelled its planned stopover and continued to the Slovenian port of Koper. “We were right,” Inigo Errejon, the spokesperson for the hard-left Sumar party wrote on X, arguing that the Borkum’s decision to skip Cartagena confirmed the suspicions.

But missed in the debate over whether the ship ought to be allowed to dock in Spain were the unlikely origins of the Borkum’s cargo.

According to documents seen by Al Jazeera, the ship contained explosives loaded in India and was en route to Israel’s port of Ashdod, some 30km (18 miles) from the Gaza Strip. Marine tracking sites show it departed Chennai in southeast India on April 2 and circumnavigated Africa to avoid transiting through the Red Sea, where Yemen’s Houthis have been attacking vessels in reprisal for Israel’s war.

The identification codes specified in the documentation, obtained unofficially by the Solidarity Network Against the Palestinian Occupation (RESCOP), suggest the Borkum contained 20 tonnes of rocket engines, 12.5 tonnes of rockets with explosive charges, 1,500kg (3,300 pounds) of explosive substances and 740kg (1,630 pounds) of charges and propellants for cannons.

A paragraph on confidentiality specified that all employees, consultants or other relevant parties were mandated that “under no circumstances” were they to name IMI Systems or Israel. IMI Systems, a defence firm, was bought by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, in 2018.

The commercial manager of the ship, the German company MLB Manfred Lauterjung Befrachtung, told Al Jazeera in a statement that “the vessel did not load any weapons or any other cargo for the destination Israel”.

A second cargo ship that had departed India was denied entry on May 21 to the port of Cartagena. Spanish newspaper El Pais reported that the Marianne Danica left from India’s port of Chennai and was en route to Israel’s port of Haifa with a cargo of 27 tonnes of explosives. Minister of Foreign Affairs Jose Manuel Albares confirmed in a news conference that the vessel was denied entry on the grounds that it was shipping military cargo to Israel.

These incidents add to mounting evidence that weapon parts from India, a country that has long advocated dialogue over military action in resolving conflicts, are quietly making their way to Israel, including during the ongoing months-long war in Gaza. A lack of transparency on India’s transfers helps them slip under the radar, say analysts.