There was a time when India’s voice carried moral gravity in the world — a time when it dared to speak against empires, racial domination, and foreign occupation. The cause of Palestine was then more than a diplomatic line; it was part of India’s own story of emancipation from colonial rule. When Jawaharlal Nehru condemned imperialism or when Indira Gandhi stood beside Yasser Arafat, it was not a gesture of convenience but of conviction. In those days, India did not simply vote at the United Nations — it led with conscience, even at the cost of alienating powerful friends.
That moral India no longer exists. What has taken its place is a transactional state that has learned to trade empathy for influence, principle for partnership, and history for expediency. The transformation is not subtle; it is systemic. The same nation that once denounced apartheid now shakes hands with a government accused of practicing it. The same India that once spoke of self-determination for Palestinians now finds profit in their dispossession.
From Solidarity to Silence
For decades, India stood shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinians, not as charity but as a reflection of shared memory — two peoples emerging from the long night of colonial rule. New Delhi was among the first to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and supported its observer status at the UN. In the age of the Non-Aligned Movement, India’s voice resonated as a defender of the oppressed, not a broker of arms.
Today, that moral lineage has been disowned. Under Narendra Modi, India’s foreign policy towards Palestine has undergone an unmistakable mutation — from solidarity to silence, from empathy to endorsement. The transformation began quietly, with gestures that seemed pragmatic: abstentions at UN resolutions calling for ceasefires, joint statements that omitted the word “occupation,” trade delegations to Tel Aviv even as bombs fell on Gaza. But the pattern soon became clear. India’s neutrality was not neutrality at all — it was alignment disguised as balance.
When New Delhi recently voted for a two-state solution, many hailed it as a return to balance. In reality, it was a diplomatic fig leaf, a carefully choreographed move to preserve optics while deepening complicity. For three consecutive years, India abstained on resolutions demanding an end to the Gaza bombardment. Then, as international outrage peaked, it cast a token vote — a gesture meant to reassure critics without offending partners in Washington or Jerusalem. It was a performance, not a principle.
The Smotrich Moment
The true measure of India’s shift was on display when Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, one of the most extreme figures in Netanyahu’s coalition, was welcomed in New Delhi with all the honors of state. Smotrich is not a marginal figure — he is the ideological architect of Israel’s expansionist right, a man who once called for wiping out Palestinian villages. That India chose this moment — as Gaza burned, as international courts investigated Israel for war crimes — to sign a bilateral trade deal speaks volumes.
The symbolism was unmistakable: the land of Gandhi opening its doors to a man who embodies the antithesis of everything Gandhi stood for. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s handshake with Smotrich was more than diplomacy; it was moral abdication wrapped in economic pragmatism. The new agreement, heralded as a boost for investment and commerce, was in truth a political statement — an announcement that profit now outweighs principle.
The Economics of Occupation
Behind this ideological intimacy lies a lucrative industry: arms, surveillance, and technology. Israel has become one of India’s top defense suppliers, providing drones, missiles, and intelligence systems often marketed as “combat proven” — a euphemism for weapons tested on Palestinians. Every airstrike on Gaza doubles as a live advertisement for Israeli military innovation, and India is one of the biggest buyers.
The cycle is grotesque but simple: Palestinian suffering becomes a sales pitch, India purchases the weapons, and the revenue sustains Israel’s military machine — which, in turn, perpetuates the occupation. It is a feedback loop of violence monetized, where moral outrage is replaced by market logic.
When India signs deals with Israel amid war crimes allegations, it signals not indifference but endorsement. It suggests that occupation, so long as it yields profit, is acceptable. And in doing so, it dismantles decades of its own anti-colonial philosophy.
The Ideological Convergence
But this transformation is not driven by economics alone. It is also ideological — a convergence of two nationalist projects bound by majoritarianism and fear. For the Hindu nationalist movement that underpins Modi’s rule, Israel’s Zionism is less a foreign ideology than a mirror image. The vision of a nation defined by religion, secured through militarization, and legitimized by perpetual threats resonates deeply in the corridors of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
In this worldview, Israel is not just a partner; it is a prototype. Its policies toward Palestinians — the surveillance regimes, the curfews, the walls, the demographic engineering — are not condemned but studied. Kashmir, in this sense, has become India’s laboratory for its own version of controlled occupation. From biometric control to narrative warfare, the parallels are too precise to ignore.
What Israel perfected in Gaza — siege as security, dispossession as defense — India is adapting for its domestic frontiers. The admiration is not covert; it is celebrated. Pro-government commentators openly hail Israel as a model of “strong governance.” The Hindu Right views Tel Aviv not as an ally of convenience but as an ideological companion in the global struggle against Islam.
A Global Badge of Alignment
Modi’s government has another motivation — the craving for Western approval. As India seeks to consolidate its image as a rising global power, alignment with Israel has become a symbolic pledge of loyalty to the U.S.-led bloc. Within the logic of Washington’s alliances, unconditional support for Israel has become a test of ideological conformity. By standing with Tel Aviv, India signals its readiness to belong to the “responsible” club of nations — those who privilege order over justice, partnership over principle.
In this sense, Palestine becomes collateral damage in India’s quest for global legitimacy. The moral language of the Non-Aligned era — sovereignty, justice, liberation — has been replaced by the vocabulary of investment, security, and counterterrorism. The shift is not accidental; it is structural. The state that once defied Western hegemony now echoes it.
The Death of Moral Authority
This transformation carries a deeper cost. India’s global moral capital — once earned through sacrifice and solidarity — is rapidly depleting. When a country that fought British imperialism now funds a settler-colonial project, it forfeits the right to speak of freedom. When it sells itself as the voice of the Global South yet remains silent as Gaza is turned into rubble, it exposes its double standard.
For years, Indian diplomats prided themselves on being the heirs of Nehru’s internationalism. Today, that inheritance lies in ruins. What remains is a hollow rhetoric of “strategic autonomy” that masks a profound dependence on Western and Israeli approval. The transformation is not only diplomatic — it is civilizational.
India’s support for Israel is not just a foreign policy pivot; it reflects an inward descent. The same impulses that justify collective punishment in Gaza now animate India’s domestic politics — the surveillance of minorities, the criminalization of dissent, the normalization of hate. Every drone sold by Israel becomes a metaphor for India’s own drift toward authoritarian control. Gaza, in this sense, is not far from Delhi; it is a warning written in fire.
When Memory Betrays Itself
It is worth remembering that India’s founders saw anti-colonial solidarity not as charity but as destiny. Nehru once wrote that “freedom is indivisible.” If it is denied to one people, it is threatened for all. That conviction animated India’s support for Palestine, Vietnam, and South Africa. It gave moral coherence to its place in the world.
But somewhere along the line, that memory was traded for access — to arms, to markets, to recognition. Today’s India prefers the applause of the powerful to the gratitude of the oppressed. Its diplomacy has become the language of denial wrapped in the theater of democracy. It votes for peace while financing war, invokes Gandhi while embracing Smotrich, and speaks of sovereignty while eroding it.
What Next?
The question now is not merely about Palestine — it is about what kind of India the world will face in the decades ahead. When a democracy aligns with occupation, it normalizes oppression both abroad and at home. When a nation built on pluralism glorifies ethno-nationalism, it paves the way for its own internal fractures.
Will India continue to trade its anti-colonial legacy for a seat at the imperial table? Will it keep financing the very wars it once condemned? Or will a new generation reclaim the moral clarity that once defined its place in the world?
History’s verdict will not be kind. Just as the apartheid regime of South Africa once found itself isolated by the collective conscience of humanity, so too will Israel — and by extension, those who enabled it. When that reckoning arrives, India will have to answer not only to the world but to its own past.
The choice before India is stark and inescapable. It can continue down the path of cynical realpolitik, trading moral authority for economic and strategic leverage. Or it can remember the ideals that once made it more than a rising power — a nation that inspired others to believe that justice and freedom were not bargaining chips but universal rights.
Palestine does not need India’s pity; it needs its courage. It needs the India that stood up against empire, not the one that imitates it. Until New Delhi breaks its silence, ends its complicity, and reclaims its moral compass, it cannot claim to speak for the oppressed — in Gaza or anywhere else.
And perhaps, that is the greatest tragedy of all: that the world’s largest democracy, born in defiance of empire, now finds itself on the wrong side of history — applauding the very forces it once fought to overcome.
Sajibur Rahman... |
