India
Updated 2024-08-26
2024-08-02 Arundhati Roy: India Must Stop Arming Israel or ‘Forever Be Linked to Genocide’ Acclaimed Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy this week joined prominent jurists, diplomats, artists, and others in urging their government to stop selling weapons to Israel, which they called “abominable” and “a serious violation of India’s obligations under international law and our Constitution.”
Speaking Thursday at an event organized by the Press Club of India, Roy—winner of the 1997 Booker Prize for her debut novel The God of Small Things—said that Indians must “at least show that we do not support that murder in Gaza, we do not support our government’s support of that.”
“What is happening in Gaza, it is not just the murder… of tens of thousands of women and children,” she continued. “It is the bombing of hospitals, the destruction of universities… the attempt to erase the very memory people have of that place. It is a genocide like no other because it’s taking place on live TV.” https://www.commondreams.org/search/?q=Israel+Palestine
2024-01-12 India’s history of terror makes it sympathetic toward Israel’s war Within hours of Hamas’s barbaric October 7 attacks, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to social media to express his support for Israel. “Deeply shocked by the news of terrorist attacks in Israel,” he posted on X to his 94 million followers. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the innocent victims and their families. We stand in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour.”
Opposition parties, including the Congress Party, claimed that India was swinging too far toward Israel’s side and was ditching its historical backing for the Palestinian cause, and various academics were quoted in the Indian press saying that these tweets could harm India’s relations with key partners in the Middle East.
India’s Foreign Ministry was aware of all this and tried to “balance” the picture. So on October 12, its spokesman Arindam Bagchi stressed, “Our policy has been long-standing and consistent. India always advocated the resumption of direct negotiations towards establishing a sovereign, independent and viable state of Palestine, living within secure and recognized borders, side by side at peace with Israel. I think that position remains the same.”
The pollsters wrote that the attitude of “ordinary Indians” shifted toward Israel not because of geopolitical shifts in the world or Hindu nationalism. Rather, “the reason is the repeated terror attacks on Indian cities and civilians orchestrated by the ‘deep state’ of Pakistan using soldiers of terror outfits like LeT and JeM as perpetrators.” There is another explanation for this support: Many of India’s Hindu majority – the base of support for Modi – identify with Israel because, like Israel, they see themselves surrounded by enemies: by Muslim countries to their west and east, and by China to their north. As such, they respect “scrappy” Israel for its ability to fight and thrive – something they wish for themselves and want to emulate. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/india-s-history-of-terror-makes-it-sympathetic-toward-israel-s-war/ar-AA1mRYsP
2023-12-26 Indian navy to deploy guided missile destroyer ships after strike off its coast India’s navy will deploy guided missile destroyer ships in the Arabian Sea after an Israel-affiliated merchant vessel was struck off the Indian coast over the weekend, in an effort to “maintain a deterrent presence,” it said late on Monday. The Indian navy was investigating the nature of the attack on the vessel, MV Chem Pluto, which docked in Mumbai on Monday, and initial reports pointed to a drone attack, the statement said.
“Further forensic and technical analysis will be required to establish the vector of attack, including type and amount of explosive used,” the statement added. A spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry on Monday called a U.S. claim that Iran had attacked the ship near India “baseless”. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/indian-navy-to-deploy-guided-missile-destroyer-ships-after-strike-off-its-coast/ar-AA1m28CW
2023-12-03 The Israel-India-U.S. Triangle In 1981, India’s post office issued a stamp showing the flags of India and occupied Palestine flying side by side above the phrase “Solidarity with the Palestinian people.” That now seems like ancient history. Today, Hindu nationalists are flying the flags of India and Israel side by side as a demonstration of their support for that country’s catastrophic war on Gaza.
It’s a match made in heaven (or do we mean hell?), because the two nations have similar “problems” they’re trying to “solve.” Israel has long been engaged in the violent suppression of Palestinians whose lands they occupy (including the current devastation of Gaza, an assault that 34 U.N. experts have labeled a “genocide in the making”). Meanwhile, India’s Hindu nationalist government continues the harsh oppression of its non-Hindu minorities: Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and indigenous people.
About the time Zionist settlers were beginning their occupation of Palestine in the early 1920s, an Indian right-wing figure, V.D. Savarkar, fashioned the ideology of Hindutva (Hindu-ness). Today, right-wing Hindu nationalists employ Hindutva and physical violence to further its vision of India as a nation for Hindus and Hindus only. Similarly, Zionism views historic Palestine as a land for Jews and Jews only. These parallel visions, along with the two governments’ increasingly authoritarian tendencies and ready use of violence, have drawn them into a dark alliance the consequences of which are unpredictable.
The Republic of India and the State of Israel were born nine months apart in 1947 and 1948, each an offspring of partition. The British-ruled Indian subcontinent was then split into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, while Israel was carved out of a portion of the British Mandate Palestine.
Today, the Israeli weapons-robotics firm Elbit Systems has even established a drone factory in India and now has a $300 million contract to supply drones to the Indian army occupying Kashmir. Meanwhile, Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have established a mutual-admiration society, dubbed by the media of both countries the “Modi-Bibi bromance.” And New Delhi has all but abandoned the Palestinians.
Economic, political, and diplomatic relations between New Delhi, Tel Aviv, and Washington (all nuclear powers, by the way) had been strengthening even before the current conflict. Last year, for instance, India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States formed the “I2U2 Group” to attract corporate investment for their mutual benefit. https://tomdispatch.com/the-israel-india-u-s-triangle/
2023-11-28 Israel’s Brutality Is Stoking the Imagination of India’s Far Right As the genocide in Gaza continues, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is taking notes. Within hours of the Hamas attack, Narendra Modi, India’s far-right prime minister, expressed solidarity with Israel, and ministers throughout his party echoed him, many proclaiming that India and Israel share a common struggle against “terrorism.” Meanwhile, Indian media has inundated hundreds of millions of viewers with relentless pro-Israel coverage, and India’s social media users have created such a flood of anti-Palestinian fake news that the cofounder of an Indian fact-checking nonprofit declared India “the disinformation capital of the world.”
This fever pitch of pro-Israel sentiment among right-wing Indians has deep historical roots. As journalist Azad Essa explains in his new book, Hostile Homelands, the movement to establish India as a Hindu-supremacist homeland—known as Hindutva—has long seen Israeli Zionism as a kindred struggle. Both ethno-nationalist movements draw inspiration from 20th-century European fascism, as well as each other. In a 1923 tract, Hindutva cofounder Vinayak Savarkar wrote, “if the Zionists’ dreams are ever realized—if Palestine becomes a Jewish state—it will gladden us almost as much as our Jewish friends.” https://prospect.org/world/2023-11-28-israels-brutality-indias-far-right/
2023-09-00 India, Israel and the Coordination of Control Although India and Israel only established formal relations in 1992, the link between the two states predates their respective establishments in 1947 and 1948. Both states were connected to one another by the British Empire, which previously ruled over both historic Palestine and the majority of South Asia. A striking example of this shared legacy can be found in their legal systems. For instance, both Israel and India adapted British wartime laws to take control over dispossessed refugees’ property through implementing the Israeli Absentee Property Law and the analogous Indian Evacuee Property Law.
In the early twentieth century, a fascination with Zionism emerged among Hindu nationalist figures such as V.D. Savarkar and M.S. Golwalkar. They regarded the settler colonial project in Palestine as a source of inspiration for Akhand Bharat, their vision of an undivided South Asia (and some surrounding regions) under Hindu supremacy. This affinity for Zionism still exists within the most powerful Hindu nationalist institutions, such as Modi’s ruling Indian People’s Party (BJP). Through these influential institutions, it continues to inform both India’s domestic and foreign policy today, as well as popular opinion in large parts of BJP’s stronghold states. https://merip.org/2023/09/india-israel-and-the-coordination-of-control-2/
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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict
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