India, Israel, Palestine New equations demand new solidarities

That three staunch allies of Israel – the UK, France and Canada – would threaten “concrete actions” against it for its genocidal campaign in Gaza while India continues to supply arms and drones will only surprise those who have accepted too unquestioningly the official pronouncements of unshaking support for the Palestinian cause by successive Indian governments since independence.

While India as a new postcolonial state started from a position of deeply felt anti-imperialist solidarity for the Palestinian liberation struggle, it simultaneously contained from its inception the seeds of partial recognition of – and even on occasion advocacy for – the Zionist entity. Realpolitik considerations about improving relations with the West or countering Pakistan through obtaining greater influence with and support from countries in the Middle East were also at play and became more important over time. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the liberalisation of the Indian economy, this contradictory relationship developed into more open collaboration with Israel well before the arrival of the Modi government. However, with the advancement of neoliberal Hindutva in the last few decades even the symbolic denouncement of Israeli crimes is fast becoming a thing of the past, as the Indian and Zionist states become more ideologically aligned and economically and militarily collaborative.

Admittedly, this Western trio (the UK, France and Germany) has also not ended its material support, which includes arms sales to Israel. But what a contrast between the respective official statements! While their joint statement released on 19 May 2025 did not accuse Israel of breaking international law, it did state that Israel’s military operations in Gaza were “wholly disproportionate” and that “We will not stand by while the Netanyahu Government pursues these egregious actions”. Furthermore, their statement added “We will not hesitate to take further action, including targeted sanctions”.1

Israel had signed a ceasefire deal with Hamas on 17 January 2025 but on 18 March 2025 it renewed air strikes, breaking that ceasefire. Netanyahu declared hours later that Israel had “resumed combat in full force”. An official Indian statement two days later said nothing about this rupture of Israel’s earlier agreement with Hamas and apart from a host of anodyne proclamations was extremely careful never to say anything that might imply criticism (forget condemnation) of Israel by name. The closest it came to a reference to what was happening to Gaza was to say “India welcomed the January 2025 agreement for the release of hostages and ceasefire in Gaza. India has emphasized the need for safe, timely, and sustained delivery of humanitarian assistance”.2 India’s permanent representative to the UN, P. Harish, in a Security Council debate on 30 April 2025, again repeated the usual platitudes about the need for a ceasefire, the release of hostages and unhindered humanitarian assistance, but made sure to again condemn the terrorist attack of 7 October 2023 (although 20 months had passed since that event). What reveals the ugly moral double standards of the current Modi government is that not once since then has it ever called any act of Israel in Gaza a terrorist act; nor its deliberate killings of civilians en masse a terrorist campaign – let alone being prepared to call it genocidal. Indeed, although India has signed and ratified the Genocide Convention the Modi government has refused to approve or even comment on South Africa’s initiative in calling on the International Court of Justice (of which India is a member) to investigate and rule on Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

This is not all. In Canada, the US and many European countries, including Germany, there have been significant public demonstrations in support of Palestinians, and Gazans in particular. In what is supposed to be the world’s largest democracy, the response of civil society in India has been much more limited. This is partly due to fear of coercion in some form – in Bharatiya Janata Party- (BJP-) ruled states and in Delhi there have been police clampdowns when action has taken place. The weak civil society response is also testimony to the success of Hindu nationalist forces (or Hindutva, meaning ‘Hindu-ness’) in cultivating Islamophobia by presenting the cause of Palestine as a supposedly anti-Hindu and therefore ‘anti-national’ issue. So much so that of the around 41 parties and electoral bodies represented in today’s lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, 31 have not uttered a word about what has been happening in Israel and Gaza since 7 October 2023. Why bother to take up a foreign policy issue especially one which might be seen by many sections of the majority Hindu community and voters as ‘Muslim appeasement’? That this should be the view among so many political groupings, is itself indicative of how widely and deeply Hindutva sentiments have percolated across civil society. Even in non-BJP-ruled states such as Congress-ruled Karnataka, efforts to hold public demonstrations in support of Palestine have been curtailed, though never as brutally as in the BJP-ruled state of Uttar Pradesh (which has a population that would place it fifth in a ranking of the world’s most populous countries).3

What has happened to the India that was supposed to be a leading country of the South, known for its supposedly longstanding and consistent support for the Palestinian cause? In fact, while the India of the past did support the Palestinian cause, it never did so as consistently or in as principled a way as its governments and its lobby of supporters have often tried to make out. Even before the BJP achieved governmental power (from 1998 to 2004 and from 2014 onwards), other governments were prepared, in some measure or other, to sell out Palestinian interests in order to achieve closer relations with Israel. Nevertheless, it is true that the BJP-led governments have significantly increased relations between India and Israel, in part because the Hindutva that lies at the heart of the BJP, of its cadre-based father organisation the Rashtriya Sevak Sangh (RSS) (or National Volunteer Corps), and of its numerous affiliate bodies, has always assumed a certain ideological kinship with Zionism.4 This trend is set to continue as in June 2024 the BJP, under Narendra Modi as prime minister, won the general elections, entering its third five-year term in power.

This chapter traces the evolution of India–Israel–Palestine relations in rough parallel to the shifts in central governance in India since independence. It also examines the nature of the relations between Israel and India’s four South Asian neighbours: Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh.

After the end of the First World War the Indian National Movement began its campaign against British colonial rule. The movement’s leaders, including Gandhi and Nehru, naturally identified with struggles elsewhere against British imperialism. Support for Palestinian resistance was therefore to be expected, especially after the great 1936 Palestinian uprising, which lasted until 1939.5 Additionally, Gandhi saw the creation of Hindu–Muslim popular unity as key to his strategy for confronting the British and it was in this context that the Congress Party joined leading Muslim organisations like the All-India Muslim League in their support for Palestine.

But what about the rise of Jewish nationalism and the Zionist ambition to secure a Jewish majority state in Palestine? Many leading advocates of Zionism sought to win Gandhi’s support for this goal. Moreover, during his South African sojourn (1893–1914), Gandhi had had close political and personal relations with many Jews who were subsequently won over to the Zionist cause, like Herman Kallenbach and Henry Polak. These figures became informal ambassadors for Zionism who sought to recruit Gandhi to that cause.

In 1931 in London, Ghandi attended the Second Round Table Conference to discuss possible political reforms in India. During this event, he gave an interview to the weekly Jewish Chronicle in which he highlighted that he saw Zionism or the return to Zion as a search for inner spiritual fulfilment that could take place anywhere and that was separate from the geographical claim to “reoccupy Palestine”; and he pointed out that Jewish migration to Palestine required Arab assent. However, Herman Kallenbach’s month-long visit to Gandhi at an ashram outside Bombay in mid-1937 persuaded Gandhi that Zionist spiritual fulfilment could not be disconnected from settlement in Palestine. This development introduced an ambivalence into Gandhi’s thinking that was to remain even as he reasserted that the Balfour Declaration could not justify Jewish settlement in Palestine, which he argued should only take place when “Arab opinion is ripe for it”.6

Those in India like the left parties and associated intellectuals today who claim that Gandhi was never ambivalent on this issue always quote in support of this view his editorial of 26 November 1938 in his own Harijan paper, where he states that Palestine belongs to Arabs as much as England belongs to the English and France to the French. Until recently, this was the dominant and basically uncontested view of the overwhelming majority of Indian intellectuals who have commented and written on the historical trajectory of India–Israel–Palestine relations. However, with the rise to political power of the BJP, a few intellectuals aligned with that party have sought to reinterpret the legacy of the ‘father of the nation’ in relation to Zionism, as a way of giving more credibility to India’s current strongly pro-Israel policy.7

In March 1946, Gandhi received Mr Honick, a member of the World Jewish Congress and S. Silverman, a Jewish Labour Party MP from the UK. In the ensuing discussion the following question was posed to Gandhi and was duly recorded by his personal secretary, Pyarelal Nayyar: “May we take it that you sympathise with our aspiration to establish a national home for the Jews?” Gandhi's reply was not recorded (indeed, after Gandhi's death in 1948, Pyarelal selectively destroyed some papers on Palestine), but Silverman later reported it to the American journalist Louis Fischer, who some three months after this discussion contacted Gandhi and confirmed the veracity of the report. According to Fischer, Gandhi said: “I told Silverman that the Jews have a good case in Palestine. If the Arabs have a claim, the Jews have a prior claim.” Later, in the 21 July 1946 issue of the Harijan Gandhi states: “It is true I did say some such thing in the course of a long conversation with Mr. Louis Fischer on the subject.”8 He then goes on to say of the Zionists that they should abjure terrorism and be completely non-violent. “Why should they resort to terrorism to make good their forcible landing in Palestine? If they were to adopt the matchless weapon of non-violence ... their case would be the world's ... this would be the best and brightest.” Nevertheless, the most balanced assessment of Gandhi’s overall position is that he combined support for Palestine becoming a sovereign and independent state under Arab control while also seeing Jewish desire to migrate there as natural and that Jewish cultural rights in Palestine should be protected. Whether he would have later opposed continuous Jewish migration to Palestine we cannot know but it is possible that he might have added the proviso that any such flows should be subject to Arab consent.

Nehru, like Gandhi, had considerable sympathy for Jews, given how they had been treated before and during the Second World War. But this did not extend to supporting the effort to establish a Zionist state in collaboration with imperial Britain. India was one of the 11 members of the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) set up in May 1947 to report to the General Assembly on Britain’s handover of its mandate responsibility. India (along with Iran and Yugoslavia) put forward a plan for federal unity across the territory, and voted against the majority Partition Plan to divide Palestine. The latter would have given 55 per cent of the territory to Jews (then around 30 per cent of the population), demarcated in such a manner that while Jews would not be seriously displaced from where they were settled while the Palestinians would have faced mass displacement. In any case the Partition Plan was only a recommendation and was not imposed. Furthermore, this whole exercise was repudiated by the Palestinian side since it violated the mandate’s commitment to giving Palestine full independence.

However, notwithstanding these earlier positions, in 1950 Nehru recognised the State of Israel, even as, contrary to the Partition Plan, it had by then forcibly secured 78 per cent of the territory. In September 1950, the Jewish Agency set up an immigrations office in Bombay (now Mumbai), in light of the presence of around 60,000 (Bene and Baghdadi) Jews in India. These were people who were said to have migrated to India or to have converted to Judaism in the 18th and 19th centuries.9 This office was later converted into a trade office; in 1953 it became a small consulate.

What explains independent India’s recognition of Israel? First, in the aftermath of the 1947–49 Nakba there was no genuinely independent and representative political entity that could speak for and prioritise Palestinian interests.10 Second, post-Partition India had recognised Pakistan so why not Israel? Third, the two Muslim-majority countries of Iran and Turkey had already recognised Israel. Fourth, Israel was accepted as a member of the UN in May 1949 and as a condition of its entry it had accepted Resolution 194 on the ‘right of return’ of Palestinians displaced during the Nakba (of course it never accepted or permitted that return in reality). Fifth, the Soviet Union was the first country to legally recognise Israel in May 1948 so the Communist Party of India (CPI), then the main opposition force, posed no objection to Nehru in this regard.

However, despite formal recognition, in partial deference to Arab sentiment, Nehru refrained from establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel. It was realpolitik pragmatism that pushed Nehru to confer recognition but to hold back from establishing such relations. War over Kashmir had broken out between India and Pakistan in 1948 and while Nehru’s India sought to pursue a non-aligned posture and to remain aloof from US–Soviet rivalry, Pakistan was more open to US political-military overtures. In this context, by keeping relations with Israel in limbo, Nehru sought not to disturb existing Muslim support for his government and, more importantly, he sought to cultivate an ally in the form of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, who came to power in 1952. Nasser, who advocated Arab nationalism, was, like Nehru, inclined to pursue non-alignment. He was also more sympathetic to India than to Pakistan. Besides, improving Indian relations with the Arab governments, in relation to trade and diplomatic support, was seen as more beneficial than fast-tracking relations with the nascent Israel.

On the other hand, indicative of the fact that Palestinian suffering was of little or no consequence in India’s foreign policy thinking in this period, Nehru was simultaneously keen to get Israel into the Bandung Conference of 1955, which was the prelude to the subsequent formation of the non-aligned group of countries. Indeed, in December 1954, the leaders of Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon met in Bogor, Java, to prepare for the conference. During the meeting, Nehru pressed for the inclusion of Israel at Bandung. Fortunately, this was blocked by Pakistan, which was concerned about the sentiment within the Arab countries, given their conflict with Israel.11

In 1955, Pakistan joined the Baghdad Pact, thereby formally aligning itself militarily with the US. This Pact, which also included Iran, Iraq, Turkey and the UK (and which was later renamed the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO)), was opposed by both Egypt and India, which signed their own Friendship Treaty that year. After the 1956 invasion of Suez, launched by Israel, the UK and France, there was no question of India moving towards deeper relations with Israel.

While Nehru passed away in May 1964, the freeze in diplomatic relations between India and Israel extended beyond Nehru’s reign to cover the whole of the 1964–84 period, during which the Israeli–Arab wars of 1967 and 1973 and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 took place. However, despite this freeze, there were significant behind-the-scenes interactions between India and Israel. For example, during the 1962 war with China, India received heavy mortars and munitions from Israel, and it purchased more arms from it during the Indo-Pakistan wars of 1965 and 1971.12

As for Israel, it believed that Pakistani army officers were providing training to Libyan and Iranians on how to handle Chinese and North Korean military equipment.13 Neither India nor Israel made this public at the time.

Despite this ongoing intelligence collaboration between India and Israel, in 1974, India publicly proclaimed its recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and in 1975, it co-sponsored UN Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism.14 Meanwhile, in June 1975, Mrs Gandhi imposed emergency rule, only restoring general elections in March 1977, when she was defeated. In January 1980, Gandhi and her Congress Party faction was re-elected to central power, and certain developments soon brought India and Israel closer together. However, the interregnum of 1977–79, when a coalition government under the Janata Party was in power, was important in its own right.

The Janata Party was a loose alliance of different parties and political groups that had agreed to work together. Its strongest component was the Hindu nationalist Jan Sangh (the forerunner of the BJP, which was formed after the collapse of the Janata Party in 1980), which had always been pro-Israel, seeing it as an important bulwark against the Muslim-majority countries of the Middle East. Jan Sangh’s principal leader A.B. Vajpayee was the foreign minister in this period. Vajpayee facilitated a secret visit by Israel’s then Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan to India in August 1977, during which Dayan met Vajpayee and the then Prime Minister Morarji Desai. Though these meetings did not result in any policy change by India, the very fact of the visit was indicative of where the new winds (however gentle) were blowing.

As stated above, collaboration between RAW and Mossad had been set in motion earlier, and no doubt played a part in arranging Dayan’s 1977 visit. It is said that Dayan again visited the vicinity in 1978 to meet top Indian counterparts and perhaps senior members of RAW, possibly in Nepal.15 It appears that among the matters discussed during this period was an Israeli offer to collaborate in a joint strike on Pakistan’s Kahuta uranium enrichment plant to forestall the making of a Pakistani nuclear bomb. Only a future opening up of secret government papers will make it possible to confirm if Dayan took part in these discussions. Nevertheless, other sources make it clear there was such a plan for a joint operation sometime between 1982–84, though it was later called off.16 After all, in 1981, Israel had done just that when it destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor.

Following Mrs Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, the Congress swept the polls and her son Rajiv Gandhi, who previously had shown no interest in his family’s political heritage, became the prime minister. On 1 October 1985, Israel carried out an air assault on the PLO headquarters in Tunis killing 60 men, women and children. The attack was quickly condemned by the UN Security Council. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi arrived in New York City later that month for the fortieth anniversary of the UN’s founding. Despite this brutal assault, he had no qualms about holding a private meeting with his counterpart premier Shimon Peres on the sidelines of the UN meeting. This was the first ever meeting of the topmost leaders of the two countries, in itself indicating a new Indian insensitivity to the Palestinian cause.

This Indian drift was further facilitated by the shifting perspectives of the PLO itself. After the 1982 Israeli war on Lebanon, the Fatah leadership of the PLO had been ejected from the country, and set up its headquarters in the more distant Tunisia. Moreover, it had become much clearer to its leadership that its guerrilla strategy was not leading to victory. Indeed, in 1987, the First Intifada in the Occupied Territories was locally led. While Fatah in exile played a role in supporting the Intifada, the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) comprised predominantly local community councils and their leaders, as well as representatives and veterans affiliated not only with Fatah but also with other Palestinian factions like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the left-wing Popular Front, the Democratic Front and the Communist Party.

After the First Intifada, the PLO under Arafat carried out a fundamental strategic shift towards accepting a two-state solution with a claim on just the 22 per cent of the total land that had been taken over by Israel, namely the part that Israel had occupied after the 1967 war. A new political dynamic was established which would eventually lead to the Oslo Accords of 1993–95, whose key outcome was the beginning of the transformation of Fatah, as the ruler of the newly established Palestinian Authority (PA), into a sub-contractor responsible for maintaining Israel’s occupation.

These developments cleared the path for India under the Congress-led government of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao (1991–96) to move towards full recognition of Israel, which it did in 1992, opening embassies in Delhi and Tel Aviv. Subsequently, every successive government in New Delhi would, on the one hand, pay lip service – and even pay money – to the Palestinian cause, while, on the other hand, it steadily deepened its political, economic, military, ‘cyber-security’ and ‘counter-terrorism’ ties with Israel.

A non-Congress and non-BJP coalition government, the United Front, comprising some 13 parties, emerged in June 1996, before falling in March 1998. During its term, India concluded deals to obtain Israeli supplies of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the Green Pine Radar system, and long-range surface-to-air missiles. This was followed by the first BJP-led governments of 1998–99 and then the BJP’s re-election for a full five-year term from 1999 to 2004, both under Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee. It was during his term, in 2003, that the first ever official visit to India by an Israeli premier, Ariel Sharon, took place. Earlier, in the 1999 Kargil war with Pakistan, Israel gave military support to India while Washington put successful pressure on Islamabad to withdraw its forces. In this period, the initial US anger at India’s nuclear tests in May 1998 soon subsided and a new India–Israel–US strategic alignment was forged. However, the bigger breakthroughs in this alignment would come a little over a decade later, under Modi.

Between Vajpayee and Modi, there was a 10-year interregnum (2004–14), when a Congress-led coalition, led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, won two consecutive elections. This period saw the end of the Congress Party’s previous moral and political sympathy and support for the Palestinian cause (despite realpolitik considerations). Now relations with Israel were reinforced while genuine concern for the Palestinian cause largely evaporated. A proper Palestinian state had not emerged, while Israel was a powerful and fairly developed capitalist state with which lucrative economic relations could be forged by businesses on both sides. Moreover, apart from being a source of top-quality military hardware Isreal was something of a conduit to the US. Closer relations with it increased the prospect of closer relations between India and the US economically and politically. Thus, under the Congress-led coalition of Manmohan Sing, only occasional rhetorical pronouncements about the ‘need for a two-state solution’, plus funding for it, remained.

After the 26 November 2008 terror attack in Mumbai by two Islamist groups with bases in Pakistan, Israel helped set up surveillance infrastructure in India under a designated Central Monitoring System that created the capacity to move from targeted to mass surveillance.17 At the time of the November 2008 attacks and immediately after, besides regular political communication at higher levels, Israel sent intelligence officers, paramedics, a team of reservists, and some volunteers to India. These operatives offered advice, material support and criticisms of how inadequate India’s prior preparations were when it came to dealing with such terrorist threats. The presence of Israeli actors at this juncture helped to craft a broad consensus view that there were serious Indian failings and that Israel’s special expertise was required. A qualitatively new and closer nexus was now established between the two countries.18

Between 2003 and 2013, India became Israel’s top arms customer. In February 2014, when general elections were still a few months away and the Congress was still in power, a formal agreement was reached (though it was only put into practice after Modi’s electoral victory in May that year) on sending Indian police and security personnel for training in Israel in ‘counter-terrorism’, ‘crowd control’ and ‘border management’, i.e. to receive lessons on how to deal with trouble back home, especially in the insurgency-hit regions of the northeast and in Kashmir. In addition to Kashmiris (like Palestinians) being denied any right to political self-determination, the huge presence of armed personnel makes Kashmir a site of sustained military occupation and control, just as is the case in the Occupied Territories. Again, for both Palestinians and Kashmiri Muslims, violence is routine and legally justified by the use of the most anti-democratic and authoritarian of laws. Other parallels between the two territories include the construction of settlements for Hindus (particularly upper caste Kashmiri Pandits) in the Indian part of Kashmir, involving the capture of land for state use and for Hindu settlers, and the establishment of infrastructure for segregating Hindus from Muslims, all of which is broadly similar to Israeli policy in the West Bank.19

But it was in the Modi era that the ideological kinship between Hindutva and Zionism would lead to a more unequivocal admiration for – and indeed emulation of – Israel’s approach to the Palestinian ‘enemy’ in the Occupied Territories.

Before turning my attention to what can be described as the significant (and even in certain respects qualitative) change in India–Israel relations since mid-2014, I turn my attention to India’s four South Asian neighbours and their respective historical and contemporary ties with Israel. This is important for a number of reasons. The political significance of the India–Pakistan–Israel nexus is obvious. For a Hindutva-ised India, Israel is an important ally against its primary enemy, Pakistan. Bangladesh broke away from Pakistan to become an independent state in December 1971. Since then, Bangladesh, alongside Sri Lanka and Nepal, have had reason to fear India’s sub-imperial ambitions for regional dominance, and this shapes their foreign policy behaviour. In the case of Bangladesh, the Muslim factor explains its diplomatic-political opposition to Israel and its unease with the deepening alignment of India and Israel at the political and ideological levels. The much smaller and weaker nations of Sri Lanka and Nepal have from their inception been basically uninterested in the Palestinian cause and, unlike India in the early post-independence period, have had little compunction about developing better relations with Israel, though in Sri Lanka this has had a topsy-turvy character because of the occasional pressures from its domestic left. In Nepal, governmental compromises with the left came only in the new millennium and this left was quickly tamed. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal have also formed stronger ties with China as an important counterweight to India, while the latter two, for straightforward political-diplomatic reasons, do not want India to have a South Asian monopoly over ties with Israel.

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, (known as Ceylon till 1972, when it changed its name) achieved formal independence on 4 February 1948. Its first prime minister, from the ruling United National Party (UNP), was D. S. Senanayake. Sri Lanka was the first Asian country to initiate ties with Israel. In the early 1950s, it bought arms and even a frigate from Israel. This was not to the liking of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), the left-wing social democratic opposition party, which preferred a non-aligned foreign policy position. The SLFP achieved periodic electoral success, first in 1956 under the leadership of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike as premier and then again between 1960 and 1964 under his widow Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the first woman to be elected head of government in the world. Bandaranaike and the SLFP were keen to develop relations with the PLO, and faced with resistance from parties and groups further to the left of her party, during the election campaign in 1971, she promised to close down the Israeli embassy, which she did after her victory.

By the mid- and late-1970s, there was growing resistance by the Tamil population to discrimination against them, especially in the northern Jaffna region of the country, and a more militant force, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) emerged. The UNP returned to power in 1977 and its head J. R. Jayewardene became prime minister for a year and then, through an amendment to the constitution, the more powerful executive president, a position he held from 1978 to 1989. Seeking military support for the conflict with the LTTE, Jayewardene restored relations with Israel in 1984. However, Israeli military support to Sri Lanka was soon replaced by support from India under the 1987 India–Sri Lanka Accords, under which, for the first time ever, India sent its armed forces to another country to intervene in the country’s civil war against the Tamils. (This was despite the fact that New Delhi, sensitive as it was to the sentiments of its own Tamil population in the south of the country, had earlier actually supported the LTTE). When it failed to succeed in weakening the LTTE, Gandhi was asked by the new Sri Lankan President R. Premadasa (1989–93) to pull out all Indian troops, which he did by March 1990.20

Erratic policy positions towards Israel continued in the 1990s. To try to win over the political support of the country’s Muslims (who constitute around 10 per cent of the population, mostly residing in the northeast) and to distance them from the LTTE (which was only finally militarily defeated in 2009), Premadasa suspended relations with Israel in 1992. Relations were restored again in 2000 when Sri Lanka was once again keen to receive military support, and since Israel was willing to defy the Western arms embargo on Sri Lanka that operated from the 1980s to 2009.

Since 2000, there have been no serious disruptions in the bilateral ties between Sri Lanka and Israel. After 7 October 2023, Sri Lanka did not hesitate to help Israel by enabling labour migration to the country to replace Palestinians expelled from Israel. However, the domestic political turbulence in recent years finally led to a popular upheaval that overturned the previous government and saw the formation of the National People’s Power (NPP), a new more left-wing party that in November 2024 achieved a two-thirds majority in parliamentary elections and won the presidential election, with the NPP’s A.K. Dissanayake, who has a left-wing history, becoming president. This new government has been more vociferous in supporting a ceasefire in Gaza and in calling for Palestinian self-determination. However, labour migration to Israel continues and there have been recent agreements to send workers in specific sectors, with Colombo justifying this as beneficial and arguing that other countries are also maintaining economic ties with Israel.21

Pakistan

Pakistan is among those countries that have never to date opened diplomatic relations with Israel. Officially, it does not trade with Israel but it engages in indirect trade via third countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Even so, such trade is very limited and consists mostly of clothing exports to Israel estimated to be worth $37 million in 2023. In 2022, Pakistan imported mainly medical equipment from Israel, worth only $39,000.22 Contrast this with the levels of indirect trade between Israel and Saudi Arabia – or with Israel–UAE trade, which now, after the Abraham Accords, is more direct, currently amounting to several billions of dollars annually.

At the same time, all governments in Islamabad have been consistent in their formal and material support to Palestine. In the 1967 and 1973 wars, Pakistani fighter pilots fought for Jordan and Iraq, in support of Palestine, and during the 1982 Israel–Lebanon war, the country sent volunteers to fight with the PLO. Unlike in India, there is little internal pressure to adopt an alternative approach. Pakistan has repeatedly declared that only after the emergence of a ‘viable’, ‘independent’ and ‘contiguous’ Palestinian state on the pre-1967 borders would it consider moving towards closer relations with Israel. It cautiously welcomed the Oslo Accords and it distanced itself from any endorsement of the Abraham Accords, re-stating that its own position on the need for a two-state solution to be applied before any overtures to Israel can take place remained unchanged.

However, this does not mean that Palestinian interests are paramount and shape government thinking and practice, or that realpolitik considerations are absent among government decision-makers. For example, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979–89), under the US-organised ‘Operation Cyclone’, funds and arms were funnelled into Pakistan to help the Mujahideen resistance against Kabul and Moscow, and this included arms from Israel. However, this admittedly had more to do with the US–Pakistan relationship than with any warming of ties with Israel.

Tel Aviv, of course, would like to open diplomatic relations with Islamabad. During his 2018 visit to India, Netanyahu stated that his country did not see itself as an enemy of Pakistan and that Pakistan should not treat Israel as an enemy. However, several factors make any shift in Islamabad’s position quite difficult to anticipate for some time to come. First, as stated earlier, in the early 1980s Israel plotted with India to bomb Kahuta. Second, to the dismay of Pakistan, both US and Israeli ties with India have become much stronger. Third, unlike in India, there is also much stronger support domestically for Palestine, not just by religious and political Islamist groups but also by the general public. This restricts the government’s room for manoeuvre in regard to Israel. Furthermore, Islamabad, for its own benefit, from time to time compares Israel’s brutal occupation of the Palestinians with India’s occupation of the province of Jammu and Kashmir. To then soften criticism of what Israel is doing, especially after its current ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza, would detract from the humanitarian case it tries to make against the Indian occupation. Finally, a number of Muslim-majority countries with whom Pakistan has close relations, like Turkey and Iran, would be disturbed by any shift towards a more pro-Israel stance.

Bangladesh and Nepal

Bangladesh became independent in 1971 and was promptly recognised by Israel. However, the country did not reciprocate and it hosts a Palestinian Embassy, while advocating for a two-state solution. Like other Muslim-majority countries, it engages in indirect trade with Israel via a growing number of third countries in Asia and the Middle East and, more recently, through Europe and the US. It has a healthy trade surplus, with its exports (mainly textiles, footwear and leather goods) to Israel reaching $205 million in 2023, while its imports of plastics and therapeutic appliances reached $148,000 in 2022.23 Moreover, there are reasonable grounds for believing that Bangladesh has bought surveillance equipment from Israel, as well as receiving security personnel training by Israeli forces in third countries such as Hungary and Thailand.24 As a result of a popular upsurge the earlier Hasina Sheikh government fell in August 2024 (when Sheikh fled to India), parliament was dissolved and an interim government headed by a former Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus came to power promising constitutional changes that would reform the electoral system and deepen democracy. So far, there has been no shift from the prior pattern of bilateral relations with Israel.

Of all the South Asian states, Nepal has had the friendliest and least troubled relationship with Israel. Britain recognised Nepal as an independent monarchical state in 1923. The 1951 democratic movement finally led to the first general elections in 1959, after which the leader of the Nepali Congress, Prime Minister B.P. Koirala, was the first Nepalese leader to visit Israel. The following year, Nepal became the first country in South Asia to grant Israel full diplomatic recognition. Israel set up its embassy in Kathmandu in 1961, though Nepal only reciprocated much later. Ever since, and even when the Maoists were in power between 2008 and 2012, bilateral relations have been consistent. To be sure, Nepal dutifully echoes the general call for peace in the Middle East, and for a two-state solution, with both Israel and Palestine existing side by side, and it declares its support for all measures promoting peace in the region. But it has been careful all the while not to forge formal diplomatic relations with the PLO.

Unlike its neighbours, Nepal opposed the 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with racism and economic cooperation has been regular. This includes some military training provided by Israel, while growing Israeli tourism helps Nepal to partly compensate for its large bilateral trade deficit. Nepal largely exports woollens, tobacco, jute and vegetable products to Israel, and imports items such as agricultural equipment and electronic machinery. Nepali female caregivers are welcomed in Israel, but most migrant remittances are from Nepalis working in the Arab Middle East which explains why Kathmandu on occasions mildly irritates Tel Aviv when it comes to voting with the majority on certain UN General Assembly resolutions on the Israel–Palestine conflict.

Nepal’s government strongly condemned the Hamas action of 7 October 2023, when 10 Nepali agricultural students were killed at kibbutz Alumim. Moreover, like India, Nepal does not use the word genocide or genocidal to describe Israel’s assault on Gaza, nor did it join South Africa in support of that country’s case before the International Court of Justice. When Israel attacked the peacekeeping forces of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in October 2024, Nepal did join the other 33 countries which had contributed personnel to UNIFIL in a joint statement which, while condemning the assault, was careful not to mention Israel by name. In May 2025, despite what Israel was doing in Gaza, there were formal diplomatic assurances of continued diplomatic and material support and cooperation between Israel and Nepal.

CAfter coming to power in June 2014, it did not take Modi long to show that he would treat Israel differently. Note the following contrast. On 31 May 2010, Israel attacked a flotilla of six ships carrying aid to Gaza from Turkey. Fifteen international activists were killed and many more injured. The then Congress-led government came out with an official statement condemning the attack and saying there was no justification for “such indiscriminate use of force”, though it was careful not to mention Israel by name. By contrast, India’s response to Israel’s war crimes in Gaza in July and August 2014 was to shield it from criticism. in July 2014, allegedly in retaliation to Hamas rockets that killed one soldier and six civilians, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge – a ground and air invasion over 50 days which flattened large parts of Gaza and (not counting the injuries inflicted) killed 2,251 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians. When days later the opposition in the Lok Sabha tried to pass a resolution condemning Israel’s disproportionate response, Modi blocked any condemnation! Moreover, where once, for form’s sake, India tended to go along with United Nations General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel, it now more frequently abstains.

In 2017, Modi became the first Indian prime minister to officially visit Israel, in a stay that lasted for three days, during which the relationship between the two countries was formally upgraded to a ‘strategic partnership’. Modi also broke an established tradition, in earlier Indian official visits, by not also visiting the Palestinian leadership in the Occupied Territories. A deliberate message was thus being sent that the Palestinian question is now essentially irrelevant as far as Indo–Israeli ties are concerned. According to the New York Times, it was during this visit that the Modi government struck a deal for the purchase of Pegasus – the military-grade spyware supplied by an Israeli firm, NSO, that is sold only to governments. In 2018, Toronto University’s Citizen Lab detected that Pegasus was being used to install malware and carry out surveillance in 45 countries, including India. In 2021, it was found to be being used illegally in relation to at least 300 Indians, including human rights activists, journalists critical of the Modi regime, and Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Congress party.25 The Pegasus purchase was never denied nor confirmed by the Indian government, and the Supreme Court has abnegated its responsibility to demand a clear answer on the question.

On 10 February 2018, Modi visited Ramallah for three hours, where he met with Mahmoud Abbas, President of the PA and repeated the longstanding standard official Indian declaration supporting a ‘sovereign and independent’ Palestinian state. However, for the first time, this statement dropped all references to a ‘united’ Palestinian state and also to East Jerusalem as its capital. The implication was clear. New Delhi would comfortably accept a future Bantustan-type two-state resolution on whatever terms Israel prefers, should that ever come about. The message was also sent that India was no longer morally or politically bothered by Israeli violence against civilians, be it the brutal siege of Gaza or the way illegal settlements were expanding in the West Bank.

The Abraham Accords of 2020 were welcomed by New Delhi as a positive step forward to further normalisation of relations in the Middle East, and on 14 July 2022, an India–Israel–UAE–US group, also known as I2U2, was officially established for joint economic purposes. Hours later, Haifa port (Israel’s most important port) was sold to India’s Adani Ports, which operates it jointly with the Israeli company Gadot.26 The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) was launched at the G20 summit in New Delhi on 9 September 2023 when a memorandum of understanding was signed by India, the US, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, France, Germany, Italy and the European Union. However, IMEC is not yet in operation and its further development has been held back by the subsequent war on Gaza.

After the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, the Modi government waxed eloquent on its “horror” and assured Israel of its full support. As the genocide has dragged on, New Delhi has occasionally voiced, in the vaguest and feeblest language, platitudes about welcoming a ceasefire and humanitarian aid. On the more material level, Indian companies, with full government acquiescence, have provided Hermes 900 drones and munitions to Israel, as well as sending thousands of migrant workers to replace Palestinian labour, especially in the construction sector.27

Since the end of the Cold War, previous non-BJP governments have sought to strengthen ties with the US (sometimes looking to the Indian diaspora there to help in this effort). Israel has been seen as a conduit in this respect, given how close and enduring Israel–US ties have been. But the Modi government has invested much more effort and resources in this approach, including by using its own civil society Hindutva organisations, which have branches in the US and UK, to generate a wider support base there. The growth and influence of Hindu nationalist lobbying groups has been greater in the US than elsewhere. Many such groups, including the supposedly bi-partisan United States India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) and the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), see the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as the model to emulate in this regard. Relations between such groups and AIPAC and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) have grown in recent years, encouraged as they have been by both the Modi government and Israel under the political umbrella of a Capitol Hill that has grown more conservative and Islamophobic over time.28

The sudden end of the Cold War, with the collapse of the Communist bloc and the transformation of Communist countries into capitalist countries with varying degrees of state control and guidance of the economy, was a major global turning point. In the aftermath of this event, from the 1990s onwards and up until the present more and more governments worldwide have shifted towards ever greater accommodation with Israel, even as Tel Aviv has consistently betrayed, in letter and spirit, what it was supposed to do under the Oslo Accords and later agreements. In this time, Gaza was turned into the world’s largest open-air prison; settlements expanded in the West Bank; the Fatah leadership and security structure of the PA turned into a sub-contractor of the illegal occupation; and the PA’s economic reproduction became dependent on Western largesse.

Even member countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and certainly the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, where dictatorships and monarchical rule of one kind or the other have survived longer than elsewhere, have done little to disturb Israel’s ‘management’ of the Palestine issue – an ugly euphemism for the brutal manner in which it has sustained its control of, and expansion in, the Occupied Territories. In addition to the Iran-led Axis of Resistance, the only other counter-trend to this steady drift by governments towards more accommodation with Israel has been the rise of greater civil society support for the Palestinian cause, especially in the UK, Western Europe, and North America, as well as in parts of Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa – especially South Africa, after it overcame its Apartheid past.

What then is the story in India? As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, civil society protests in India in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have been comparatively weaker than in other countries that are considered democratic. To move in a more positive direction and to chart a way forward, we need to understand why this has been the case, the better to be able to change it. One part of the story is repression and legal actions by the Hindutva government and by its vigilante groups, who engage in nasty social trolling, register false cases with colluding police and lower courts, and even on occasions physically attack Palestine supporters who are deemed ‘anti-national’.29 The other part of the story lies in the socio-economic character of Indian society.

Though India’s current population is around 1.4 billion, the working population is around 640 million, with over half being in the primary agricultural / fishing / mining sectors. Only around 7 per cent work in the formal sector and receive regular wages, paid leave, social security benefits and job security. The rest are in the informal sector: they have none of the protections of the formal sector, are lower paid and do not have the formal right to form unions.30 As it is, only an estimated 7 per cent of the work force are in trade unions and the overwhelming majority of these belong to larger federations, which themselves are under the control of different political parties and are obedient to their respective political lines. The biggest such federation today comes under the BJP, while the next biggest comes under the Congress, with smaller ones under left-wing and other regional parties.

What all of this means is that the vast majority of the public are preoccupied with basic livelihood issues and with concerns relating to democratic freedoms and rights. Yet this is also the reason why social movements have emerged that are independent of political parties. These movements have focused on specific development policy concerns that cause economic suffering, on violations of particular freedoms and on forms of discrimination – both social and regional. For the general public, foreign policy issues have been seen as remote from weightier domestic preoccupations and problems. So, for the most part they go along with what the organisations they feel affiliated to say, be these political parties, trade unions or the socio-religious bodies they identify with and which provide emotional support and some degree of material support.

Until more recently, pro-Palestine protests and larger-scale demonstrations have over the years taken place very sporadically in the main metropolises of Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Hyderabad, occasionally extending to other urban centres. These mobilisations are invariably organised by the mainstream parliamentary left parties, who rely on their trade union – and more so on their student – wings to achieve a reasonable turnout. Also willing to express their public solidarity on occasion are Muslim political parties, religious organisations and Muslim student bodies, though they look at the Palestinian issue more through a religious prism, rather than through a universal humanist one.31 Not surprisingly, one place where the majority Muslim community feels a particular affinity with the plight of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is in the Kashmir Valley, where for decades there has been a huge presence of Indian military armed personnel of all kinds. Shortly after 7 October 2023, in the face of the Israeli assault, there were congregational prayers and protests in and around several mosques in Kashmir.32 Official authorities subsequently imposed restrictions to bar all forms of solidarity with Palestine in Kashmir, including sending warnings to Muslim clerics that they must not mention Palestine in their sermons. Despite this, there have continued to be outbreaks of solidarity action, most recently in March and June 2025.33

Until more recently, pro-Palestinian solidarity action by organisations that are both secular and independent from political control from above has not been a significant feature or presence in India, unlike in the West. In Western liberal democracies, it is the more comfortably placed middle class (income-wise), who are freer from worries about basic livelihood needs, that have been more preoccupied with foreign policy issues and with the stances taken by their respective governments. The problem with the so-called Indian middle class, which over the last two decades has been growing, is that on average its political orientation has been more reactionary than progressive, hence the growing support for the BJP and Hindutva more generally not just among the elite but also among the upper, middle and lower layers of what is termed the middle class.

Some are connected to existing cultural, political or (Muslim) religious bodies. Others are more standalone solidarity groupings that are progressive and therefore more generally critical of Hindutva and the Modi government. These groups join in the different actions organised by the big left parties and their affiliated women, student and union wings that mobilise numbers in the range of several hundred to several thousands.34 They also separately carry out their own actions individually or sometimes in collaboration with other such groups. They have provided information, analysis and videos about Palestine on social media in English, Hindi and in regional languages. They have also carried out small-scale street actions to distribute leaflets about the issue, usually in states not ruled by the BJP – but even in those standalone states there are frequently sudden ‘flash’ protests at particular crowded market spaces or junctions, which quickly move away before the police arrive. Furthermore, between May and mid-July 2025, McDonald’s and Domino’s Pizza outlets faced boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) protests. These took place in different cities, such as Hyderabad, Pune, Delhi, Mumbai, and Chandigarh.

One must also mention the formation of the Indian Dancers for Gaza’s Children (IDGC), which through its performances raises money for humanitarian aid and which is connected to the Princess Basma Centre in Gaza for children with disabilities. All of this is quite new and is an indication of how Palestine has caught the imagination of a growing number of Indians, particularly the young.35 Increasing Indian solidarity with Palestine is still an uphill battle against the Indian state, but advances are being made.

What then is the way forward? Almost all governments in their official positions say they are for a two-state solution to resolve the Israel–Palestine imbroglio. This has long been a convenient mask to cover up these governments’ own failures, indeed their lack of interest and their unwillingness to do anything meaningful, whether individually or collectively, to help bring it about.

Leaving aside Gaza, Israeli settlement expansion and armed attacks in the West Bank, often with the permission and sometimes collusion of Fatah, has effectively destroyed any chance of Palestinians getting at best anything more than a truncated and resource-poor slice of territory – a Bantustan, and perhaps not even that. Eradicating all the illegal Jewish settlements in what they call Judea and Samara is tantamount to asking Israel to risk nothing less than a civil war. In fact, the Hamas assault in 2023 has served as an excuse for openly advocating for, and for a systematic practical pursuit of, what many on the political right and far right, and even some centrists in Israel, consider their ‘final solution’. This admittedly is a longer-term process but one which has now been put in motion. In Gaza it involves territorially taking over much or all of the north of the Gaza Strip. It means encouraging greater de-population through imposed starvation, malnutrition, and disease, military assaults, and further displacement to even worse prison-like confinement in restricted parts of the south. The aim is to make life unliveable for most, if not all.

The longstanding Israeli plan is to keep key UN institutions like the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) out of Gaza and to disburse minimal aid at only a few distribution points. This plan does not aim to address the basic food, health and shelter needs of Gazans but to assuage Israel’s allies, who can then keep quiet with a clearer conscience while the process of ethnic cleansing carries on. In this way, the conditions will be created for more and more Palestinians in Gaza to opt for ‘voluntary transfer’ to other countries. In this context, the latest Trump peace plan has reduced but not ended Israel’s military assaults on Gazans. Neither the International Stabilisation Force nor the governing body that is to carry out the day-to-day administration and control of Palestinians under this plan have yet to be established. Even when (or if) they are, they will of course remain subordinated to the overarching power and interests of the Board of Peace headed by Trump and his cronies. It is also clear that while every effort will be made to disarm Hamas and other Palestinian factions, Israel will be allowed to militarily control a substantial slice of Gaza and, if it wants, to re-establish new Jewish settlements there.

The Trump administration is playing a role in Israel’s process of ethnic cleansing, contacting various countries – Sudan, Somalia, Somaliland (a breakaway region), Libya and Indonesia – to whom financial and other offers may have been given to induce them to accept Palestinians. In the West Bank, the illegal settlements will be expanded and control over Palestinians be made ‘manageable’ through a stronger combination of repression and bribery for Palestinian leaders. Tel Aviv and Washington are also considering a particular version of the ‘Jordanian option’ to consider. This would apply a similar strategy of using sticks and carrots against that country’s leaders to make Jordan, in large part or in its entirety, the Palestinian homeland, i.e. re-settling West Bank Palestinians there. However, both with respect to Gaza and the West Bank, there still remains a huge gap between intentions and the fulfilment of these Israeli ambitions.

In order to completely nullify this Israeli project, the key question is how we can change the political relationship of forces and power in favour of the Palestinian struggle and against Israel. For a start the focus should not be on the ultimate goal, whether of a two-state or one-state solution – that must be left to Palestinians to decide. However, political pressure must centre the character of Israel as the world’s only settler colonial, apartheid state. Israel denies equal rights to non-Jews and Palestinians within Israel. It denies, even as an illegal occupier, the rights that are owed by international law to the occupied. It denies the right of return of the families and descendants of the Palestinians who were forcibly displaced in the past and which it formally accepted as a condition for becoming a member of the UN. The discourse of equality, rights, justice and democracy can unify three important terrains of struggle. In the Indian case, a focus on apartheid can appeal to a broader base.

The focus on the settler colonial and apartheid nature of Israel also opens up the possibility of talking about Palestinians who are second-class citizens within Israel, and about the Palestinian diaspora, which has become a more important external source of support given their growing influence on populations and governments, particularly in the West. Focusing on the struggle for democratic rights also allows the conversation to include neighbouring Arab countries that for the most part continue to suffer under dictatorships of one kind or another. There is a reciprocal and feedback relationship between progressive advances and successful resistance, whether in the Occupied Territories or in the wider Arab world.

Ruling autocracies in the Middle East and North Africa have more reason to fear these developments than Israel itself. If one of these dictatorships were to fall and be replaced by a stable and enduring democratic setup, the whole regional – and even global – picture would change for the better. It would provide a serious fillip to the Palestinian struggle; would have a genuine domino effect on other dictatorships; and would force major outside powers to re-evaluate existing patterns of alliances and the thinking behind them. A stable democratic regime has still to emerge in this region, but one can be sure that the first and second waves of Arab uprisings (in the early 2010s and in 2018–2024) will be followed by a third, with yet again the possibility of achieving the desired change.

There remains much truth in the aphoristic slogan that the road to Jerusalem (meaning liberation and justice for Palestine) may have to pass through Cairo and Amman. As for greater unification of purpose and practice among the different Palestinian factions and greater democratic accountability of the leaderships to the Palestinian public in and outside the Occupied Territories let us hope that the promise made in March 2025 to hold elections for the Palestine Legislative Assembly and for a new president of the PA takes place. Furthermore, let us also hope that the Palestinian National Council (the world parliament for the PLO, which is the umbrella body for all Palestinian political groups and which has over 700 representatives), which last met in 2018 and which elects the Executive Council of the PLO, convenes soon. The Palestinian people deserve no less.36

Irrespective of when and whether this strategic shift happens, the pathway for strengthening solidarity work in India is clear. Israel is the only remaining settler colonial, apartheid state in the world today. All parties in India, including the Hindu nationalist forerunner of the BJP, the Jan Sangh, opposed South African Apartheid and supported the stand of all Indian governments that imposed a complete – diplomatic, commercial, cultural and sports – embargo against it. This is a history that now can, and should, be used against the current government and the wider array of Hindutva organisations. It is something of a surprise that the mainstream Indian left parties have not made more of this fact.37 Given their relatively greater size and resources as compared to the range of smaller left groups, they have at times been in the forefront in organising public protests for Palestine. But they have not yet been prepared, despite the ongoing genocide, to call for India to sever its diplomatic relations with apartheid Israel and to impose an arms embargo and other sanctions, including calling for the return of all Indian migrant workers.

Of course, this Indian government will not do this, nor will the other non-left parties that are opposed to the BJP. But it is a stand that the left parties and other progressive civil society organisations must now take as part of the effort to win more public hearts and minds to the cause of Palestine, to put pressure on New Delhi to take some steps back from its alliance with Israel, and to create wider appeal and a broader constituency for the politics of the left domestically.

That there are crucial similarities between this Hindutva-inspired government and Zionist Israel should be obvious. Israel is an apartheid state, not a democracy (nor even an ‘ethnocracy’, which implies an ‘ethnic democracy’). India under Modi is not yet an apartheid state, but it is well on the way to becoming one.38 However, the position of most Jews in Israel and in the settlements is very different from that of the majority of Indians. They are nowhere near as poverty stricken or materially insecure as the majority of Hindus. India also still retains the pernicious caste system, affecting mostly – but not only – Hindus. There is far more everyday violence and routinised corruption in India and class and caste power erodes democratic rights and manipulates the law to the detriment of the poor far more than is the case for Jews in Israel, despite racial discrimination and unequal power relations among them.

For the organisations and movements that have been specifically focused on promoting solidarity with Palestine the lesson is clear. They must join up with those other forces resisting Hindutva on the political-democratic, economic and cultural fronts. That is to say, to succeed in advancing the Palestinian cause in India, it is necessary to do more than simply focus on solidarity. This is also the way to create a wider arena of human and institutional sympathy and support for the Palestinian cause.

What would this kind of an approach entail in practical terms? There are a range of organisations that are involved in activities to defend civil liberties and peoples’ livelihoods. Among these are bodies that try to operate at an extra-regional and national level, like the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), which have now taken up the issue of the Israeli genocide. There is also the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), a three-decade-old network of various popular and progressive struggles.

To the dismay and anger of the Indian government the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has repeatedly affirmed that caste falls under the Race Convention since it is an institutionalised form of discrimination based on descent and occupation. While the Indian Constitution bans ‘untouchability’, it does not outlaw the caste system itself. Here again, is where solidarity work for Palestine can align with not just forces fighting Islamophobia but with Dalits, other lower castes and groups opposing the caste system itself. Nor should one forget that India’s neoliberal agricultural and mining policies are displacing middle and small peasants in the pursuit of corporatised farming, as well as Indigenous populations in the central forest belt and in the northeast.

Given existing class relations in India, Israeli technological cooperation in agriculture and its military knowhow will likely promote this corporatisation process. Its military and cyber surveillance skills and equipment are already being deployed to overcome opponents of such forced displacement. More reason then to recognise the patterns of similarities faced by so many Indian and Palestinians. Building these collective solidarities at home must take place and can give greater weight to the ongoing efforts to make links across countries with other Palestine solidarity groups and networks to exchange information as well as to forge common statements and programmes for action.

There is a lot to do and we must get on with it!

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of TNI.