Extreme Ideological Soulmates: Israel And India

At one level there is no similarity between Israel and India. They are fundamentally different in geographic size; even greater in population size.

The latter fought a successful struggle to overthrow colonialism while the former was created as a colonial settler economy and remains so today.

Both do have dominant religions but not the same one – Judaism in the former and Hinduism in the latter.

Only Israel actively practices genocide. However, India actively practices brutal repression, particularly towards Muslims.

Both do practice ethnic cleansing although only since 2014 in India compared with since 1948 in Israel.

A “deep ideological affinity between Hindu nationalism and Zionism”

But there is something that they do share; something that is stronger than their differences. They are both extreme ideological soulmates.

This is discussed in an interesting article (paywalled for non-subscribers) by journalist Camille Auvray in Le Monde Diplomatique (July 2026): Nationalist ideology binds India to Israel.

Particularly since 2014, this nationalist ideology is a shared project of ethnic cleansing, internal colonisation and state-backed Islamophobia through “…a deep ideological affinity between Hindu nationalism and Zionism.”

It wasn’t always like this

It was not always like this. India was once staunchly pro-Palestinian. In 1938 the father of India’s independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi, said that:

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Palestine belongs to the [Palestinian] Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.

In 1947 India under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru voted against the partition of Palestine (in order to create the original Israeli state) at the United Nations General Assembly.

Further, Camille Auvray observes:

India was also the first non-Arab country to recognise the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the representative of the Palestinian people and to receive Yasser Arafat with the honours normally accorded to a head of state. Although it recognised Israel in 1950, it permitted it only an immigration office in Mumbai, over 1,000km from New Delhi’s diplomatic district; Tel Aviv did not obtain an embassy there until 1992.

Over the years, from the early 1960s under Nehru, India did soften its position on Israel but not on the basis of a shared extreme nationalist ideology.

But now it is like this

Fast-forward to February 2026, just before the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran, which India elected not to condemn.

By now both Israel and India were led by blended the politics of blended repressive far right and fascist governments.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi made an official visit to Tel Aviv to conclude a bilateral ‘special strategic partnership for peace, innovation and prosperity’.

Auvray describes the Modi generated response within India to Israel’s war in Gaza:

The supremacist world linked to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) soon took up the cause, organising numerous pro-Israel rallies at which crowds chanted ‘Long live India, long live Israel!’ Social media was flooded with messages of support for Israel: a large majority of posts on X with the hashtags #IsraelUnderAttack and #IStandWithIsrael are believed to have come from India.

Later on she notes:

Today New Delhi is the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons, buying nearly $2bn-worth each year – more than 40% of Israel’s arms exports. And Israel is India’s third-largest military supplier, after Russia and France. The trade in military equipment now goes both ways, as revealed by a video of the remains of a missile marked ‘Made in India’ fired by an Israeli aircraft at a refugee camp in Gaza.

Understanding Narendra Modi and Hinduism

So how did it get to this? To understand this transformation it is hard to go past French political scientist Professor Christophe Jaffrelot: Modi, Hinduism and rise of ethnic democracy.

In his words:

Modi’s government has moved India toward a new form of democracy, an ethnic democracy that equates the majoritarian community with the nation and relegates Muslims and Christians to second-class citizens who are harassed by vigilante groups. …Hindu nationalism has resulted in attacks against secularists, intellectuals, universities, and NGOs…the political system of India has acquired authoritarian features for other reasons, too.

Eager to govern not only in New Delhi, but also in the states, the government has centralized power at the expense of federalism and undermined institutions that were part of the checks and balances, including India’s Supreme Court.

In 2002, when Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi launched a murderous state-wide attack by Hindu extremists that killed around 1,000 Muslims

Ideological allies

Extreme nationalist Ideology is the main driving force for the alliance between India and Israel. In Camille Auvray’s words:

It stems from the affinity between Hindutva – the political current personified by the Indian prime minister – and Zionism. Hindutva promotes an India reserved for Hindus; Zionism an Israel reserved for Jews. Both use ethnic cleansing, internal colonisation and state-backed Islamophobia in pursuit of their goals.

…The two states have a shared vocabulary that glorifies the prestige of their ‘ancient civilisations … linked by ties that go back more than two thousand years’…

In commenting that “To Hindu nationalists, Zionism excels in its ability to cast Muslims as both an internal and external enemy” she quotes Rohit K Vyasmaan, leader of the US branch of the international fascist organisation Bajrang Dal and founder of the Hindu-Jewish Unity movement:

We are fighting the same war . . . Whether you call them Palestinians, Afghans or Pakistanis, the root of the problem for Hindus and Jews is Islam.

Auvray refers to India’s many reactionary private television channels whose presenters regularly declare their support for Israel and quotes on presenter as saying:

We too are victims of the same radical Islamist terrorists as Israel. Israel is fighting this war on behalf of all of us. Israel is fighting this war for you and me.

The final word

Camille Auvray concludes her revealing article as follows:

Yet whether at solidarity rallies for Palestinians outside the Israeli embassy in New Delhi or on university campuses, demonstrators have been detained in their hundreds on charges of disturbing public order or undermining national unity and territorial integrity. Prayers for Gaza are banned in mosques.

Palestinian flags have been regularly confiscated, and supremacist groups have reported those displaying them to the police, who promptly launch investigations into an alleged offence – ‘raising and displaying the flag of a foreign country on Indian soil’ – which does not exist under Indian law. Nothing similar has happened over the flags waved at pro-Israeli demonstrations.

To put it another way and in my words:

This is what happens when the far right and fascists unite; they have nothing to lose except their brutal bigotry!

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