On September 8, India received Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich in Delhi. He was received with, like any minister is, all the plush trappings typical of state diplomacy. This would be regulation, except Smotrich is one of modern history’s most documented war criminals. Through the banal but extreme act of normalising him over an investments agreement, the BJP government has, on the international front, completed its long-running Nehruvian erasure.   

A day after arriving in India, Smotrich was banned from entering Spain. This followed similar bans instituted by Slovenia, The Netherlands, Australia, Britain, Norway and New Zealand. These bans were placed because, for nearly two years, Smotrich, alongside his cabinet colleague Itamar Ben-Gvir, has been the most clear-worded mascot for genocide.

He has expressed sentiments so odious and deeply colonial that hosting him makes for very ugly optics—a fact recognised by former colonial superpowers (Spain, Britain, The Netherlands) and settler colonies (Australia, New Zealand), but not by former colony India.  

Smotrich, like Ben-Gvir, lives illegally in a settlement inside the occupied West Bank. He has expanded the settler project and repeatedly called for the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians. In terms of elimination, Smotrich concedes that they are a grouping. Otherwise, he denies the existence of any ‘Palestinian’ identity and advocates the expansion of Israel’s undefined borders in multiple directions. His Mafdal-Religious Zionism Party, along with Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power, aligns with the Kahane strain of Zionism, whose figurehead Meir Kahane founded the Jewish Defence League—a terrorist organisation, according to the FBI.     

He was arrested by Israeli security forces in 2005 for what former Shin Bet deputy chief Yitzhak Ilan described as a plot to blow up a highway with 700 litres of gasoline. Smotrich wanted to protest the settler withdrawal from Gaza. He was released without charge.    

He has called for “wiping out” Arab villages and the complete annihilation of Gaza. Most notably, he defined the total starvation of two million Gazans as a “justified and moral” act that, regrettably, the international community would not let Israel commit.   

India has deployed its tax rupees to provide Delhi’s highest VIP comforts to a proven genocidaire whose government has created the largest cohort of pediatric amputees in history—that is to say, the Narendra Modi government sees as compatible with national interest the public validation of an individual who has de-limbed so many minors that recorded history fails to provide an equivalent.

Israel is currently completing its second year of a genocide that has killed, by the lowest estimate, over 64,000 people, overwhelmingly civilians. The real, eventual figure is estimated to be significantly higher. India has signalled its tolerance for this. It has upscaled economic relations with Israel. In Modi’s realpolitik calculus, which is mired in both his ideology and superideology—Islamophobia and neoliberalism, respectively—it is not politically damaging to host someone involved in an active genocide against your historical ally.       

In 1981, the Indian government issued a one-rupee stamp depicting Indians and Palestinians huddled beneath their flags. This act of solidarity was consistent on two levels. Firstly, it spoke to India’s anticolonial antecedents. It extended Jawaharlal Nehru’s view on supporting Palestine, giving it strong optics and visually codifying its political continuation. 

While the moral catharsis accompanying the newly-decolonised supporting the newly-colonised was of importance, the practical value of Indian support to Palestine was equally so. It was an opportunity to consolidate a novel position within the global bodypolitic. India was possibly the only decolonised country which could simultaneously claim a large size, no military coups, teeming manpower potential, the soft power of a massive cultural-civilizational resume and a secular-democratic political model.

It was positioned to provide unique solidarity and leadership to decolonised and still-colonised countries. With the Non-Aligned Movement, it had famously shown geopolitical spine, defying dangerous superpower courtship and giving the idea of independence a defiant and practical edge—a far cry from, for example, a Garhwal Rifles troop dying in the servitude of a British war.                 

It was in the Indian interest to place itself as a respectable aggregation and amplification point for the experience of colonial oppression. Such a place was a natural extension of India’s own experience and elevated its status within what is today the Global South. In this light, the issuing of the stamp was consistent with hard Indian interests and built on far-sighted Nehruvian ideology.

It was also consistent with any halfway objective glance at Palestine, which was under settler colonialism—a mode of rule described by American scholar Noam Chomsky as the “most extreme and vicious form of imperialism”.  

Though reflecting international law and India’s colonial history, the stamp’s creation, like the Nehruvian pro-Palestine stance it was rooted in, was nothing remarkable. Both were quite straightforward and unremarkable, unlike a situation where a stamp or Prime Minister would normalise or support the most extreme and vicious form of imperialism, which would surely be remarkable. 

Therefore, the traditional Indian position on Palestine did not really need an empathy-arousing shared colonial experience. It could simply stem from elementary ethics—from plain observation. Needless to say, India was abundantly motivated to support Palestine. 

And it did. In 1947, as a freshly-partitioned new republic, it voted against the partition of Palestine at the UN General Assembly. In 1974, India was the first non-Arab country to recognise the Palestine Liberation Organisation as the sole and legitimate voice of the Palestinians. When the PLO declared a Palestinian state in 1988, India was again the first non-Arab country to recognise it. India has been against Israeli expansion beyond ‘green line Israel’ and only opened a mission in Tel Aviv in 1992—not doing so for the first 44 years of the settler colony’s existence.

In fact, the history of Indian support for Palestine predates India’s own independence. Writing about the situation in 1938, Gandhi observed, “My sympathies are all with the Jews… But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice… Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct… There are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard the help of the British bayonet…”

“The Jews who claim to be the chosen race prove their title by choosing the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth. Given the will, the Jew can refuse to be treated as the outcast of the West, to be despised or patronised. He can command the attention and respect of the world by being the chosen creation of God, instead of sinking to the brute who is forsaken by God.”

Gandhi was being consistent with elementary ethics: settler colonialism is morally repugnant. That is proven by an unremarkable and straightforward process: a bare observation of its main motive and core features. This was echoed by a June 13, 1936 press statement by Nehru:   

“Palestine was not an empty land fit for colonisation by outsiders. It was a well-populated and full land with little room for large numbers of colonists from abroad. Is it any wonder that the Arabs objected to this intrusion? And their objection grew as they realised that the aim of British imperialism was to make the Arab-Jew problem a permanent obstacle to their independence. We in India have sufficient experience of similar obstacles being placed in the way of our freedom by British imperialism.”

“The problem of Palestine is thus essentially a nationalist one—a people struggling for independence against imperialist control and exploitation. It is not a racial or religious one… The Jews, if they are wise, will accept the teaching of history, and make friends with the Arabs and throw their weight on the side of the independence of Palestine, and not seek a position of advantage and dominance with the help of the imperialist power.”

Neither Nehru or Gandhi ever received the Grand Collar of the state of Palestine, the highest state honour Palestine confers. Only one Indian has ever received it, who diverges with them on Palestine:    

On several levels, Modi has annihilated India-Palestine ties. This is not consistent with Indian political tradition but, if observed more closely, is fully consistent with his own political moorings.

Indian solidarity with Palestine is essentially an anticolonial solidarity, with the British being a common imperialist in both cases. Gandhi and Nehru were well-positioned to set this solidarity in motion as their antecedents were in the Congress—in the anti-British freedom struggle. Modi would find it harder to appreciate this solidarity as he, a dyed-in-the-wool product of the RSS, is without the luxury of anticolonial antecedents. And thus, he may have been theoretically blameless if, at the start of his first tenure, he displayed a lack of interest in Palestine.

After all, among contemporary political entities, the RSS is hardly unique in this respect. Most political organisations currently operating in India were not part of the organised anti-British resistance. Reasons range from being too provincial or pressured to not existing at the time. There are parties with no known positions on colonialism or Palestine at all. It would be unfair to expect every PM to enter office fully versed in history—to expect them to psychologically identify with foreign resistance movements through the benefit of their political clan’s participation in a domestic one (a benefit, for example, Indira Gandhi had when her government issued the stamp). That is objectively outside his control.

Yet, he is not blameless. India’s attitude towards Palestine has only worsened over 11 years of his rule. While Modi might be from the RSS, he is still the Indian head of state. Having strived to attain this position thrice and lay claim to the public exchequer, it would serve him well, as the Prime Minister of a decolonised country with a history of supporting Palestine, to develop an interest in colonial history and Indian resistance movements.     

He cannot be blameless because he decided against giving Palestine a halfway objective glance, which would lead to the naturally-occurring revulsion caused by witnessing occupation, apartheid and genocide. Instead, he has inarguably become independent India’s first major Zionist.  

Under his far-right government, Hindutva has shown a deep kinship with Zionism. This synergy is crude and simple: neither likes Muslims. Indeed, it is both ideologies’ definitive trait and both tie it to land. Hindutva and Zionism share a nationalist communalism which operates from the lens of security. Both believe in religious supremacy and hierarchy of belonging within the land they govern. Over Palestine and Kashmir, this synergy achieves its perfect form as it offers a bigoted, mutually agreeable space for violent fantasies dressed up in a ‘zero tolerance for terror’ argument which neatly evades all questions of occupation, apartheid, state atrocities or genocide.          

In 2017, Modi became the first Indian PM to visit Israel, declaring an unprecedented “strategic partnership”. His trip did not include meeting the Palestinian leadership. In 2024, he turned his back on the Palestinians by abstaining from multiple UN ceasefire resolutions, alienating India within the Global South and giving wind to the embarrassing idea that India is under the American thumb. He has also ushered in an era of “cultural exchange”, joint military drills, police training and cyber training programmes between India and Israel.  

As the Gaza genocide commenced in October 2023, Israel cancelled the work permits of over 70,000 Palestinian labourers, creating a labour shortage. India facilitated the transfer of tens of thousands of its labourers to Israel to help overcome this deficit. It sent its citizens to work for an active genocidal entity—on their land, which is at constant risk of retaliatory attacks by the numerous states and non-state actors Israel has attacked. Protests by Indian trade unions made no difference to the government.

The most disturbing aspect of India’s Zionist pivot concerns weapons. While the India-Israel defence relationship predates Modi’s rule, his government has the unique distinction of maintaining deep defence ties during an Israeli genocide of Palestinians.

Soon after Modi came to power, India became the world’s biggest importer of Israeli weapons, with arms trade between the countries increasing 33-fold in 10 years. It has invited Israeli firms to manufacture their weapons collaboratively on Indian soil, resulting in bilateral operations like PLR Systems and KRAS running factories in India. 

Gautam Adani, India’s second-wealthiest man who is extremely close to Modi, has multiple arms deals with Israel. Adani Aero Defence has an agreement with Israel’s Elbit-ISTAR for producing unmanned aircraft. Adani formed a joint venture with Elbit Systems to manufacture such aircraft in India. They produce Hermes 900 drones in Hyderabad, which have allegedly been used on the civilian population of Gaza.       

A special note can be taken of the digital Zionism of Modi’s supporters, which is one of the biggest pieces of proof about his true messaging. Modi’s career is fundamentally built on being anti-Muslim. His rise to power would be nonexistent without it. For fans of his cult of personality, there is no more natural an idea than a Zionist version of Modi—they appreciate their strongman supporting another country with a “Muslim problem”; moreover, a country which can actually do what, in their eyes, Indians have been too squeamish to do.

Since October 2023, Modi’s online supporters and the pro-Modi establishment media have kept up a largescale, incendiary barrage of pro-Israel propaganda during the genocide, attracting much international attention. India’s reputation amongst younger internet users has tanked globally, with many aghast at the second-hand joyous gravedancing over a genocide. While it is globally visible that the Indians supporting Israeli atrocities also happen to support Modi, most foreign observers, in the fast, nuance-free social media environment, naturally extend their negative assessments to India as a whole.

There is even a clamour from some Global South analysts for replacing the ‘I’ for India in BRICS with an ‘I’ for Iran. India is losing its legitimacy as a Global South player—a reality far removed from when anti-settler colonial leader Bharat Ratna Nelson Mandela used to seek inspiration in India.  

Bezalel Smotrich landed in India and sealed this disastrous trajectory.  

To extend Chomsky’s position, while settler colonialism is the most vicious form of imperialism, a case can be made for Zionism being the most vicious form of settler colonialism. Within it, it could be further and plausibly stated that Smotrich is the most vicious form of Zionism. This triple extremity is why he is banned by nations like Britain, which otherwise heavily support Israel.

India, however, has welcomed him—an act alien to Indian history and bare minimum ethics but consistent with “New India”, a fictional country Narendra Modi is actualising one Smotrich at a time.    

His decision to host an internationally-sanctioned coloniser and genocidaire who complains about being prevented from starving children will age terribly. It has stamped out any residual Nehruvianism from Indian foreign policy.  

The successors of Nehru, currently with zero seats in the city hosting Smotrich, can only watch.

No ads. No paywalls. No corporate control.
Just free articles for serious readers.
Support the fight against hegemony & oligarchy: