round TheMembership

Gift Scroll India Fix Eco India The Latest The Reel The Field Magazine Video
Gift nowTrendin

Subscribe Sign in

MEET THE WRITER

‘If India said it was pro-Palestine it

was in self-interest’: Writer and
journalist Azad Essa
As early as 1975, India became the first non-Arab country to
recognise the PLO.

Saudamini Jain  
Nov 18, 2023 · 09:45 am
round The India Fix Eco India The Latest The Reel The Field Magazine Video Trendin

Journalist Azad Essa. | Middle East Eye

In 2019, Sandeep Chakravorty, India’s consul-general to the United States at that time,
said India could follow the Israeli model of building settlements in Kashmir. He was
speaking in the aftermath of the Indian government’s abrogation of Article 370,
stripping away the special autonomy granted to Jammu and Kashmir under the
Constitution.

“I believe the security situation will improve, it will allow the refugees to go back
because we already have a model in the world. It has happened in the Middle East. If
the Israeli people can do it, we can also do it,” he had said, at an event organised by
filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri to discuss his upcoming controversial film The Kashmir
Files (2022) about the displacement of Kashmiri Hindus from the valley in the 1990s.

ADVERTISEMENT
round The India Fix Eco India The Latest The Reel The Field Magazine Video Trendin

When a video capturing Chakravorty’s comments circulated widely online, Azad Essa,
a journalist based between Johannesburg and New York, had been thinking about
India’s growing closeness with Israel.

Essa grew up in South Africa and travelled to India every year to visit his family in
parts of Mumbai and Gujarat where his grandparents came from. He is a journalist at
Middle East Eye – and has previously covered Africa for Al Jazeera English. He has also
reported from Kashmir.

When he visited the Palestinian Territories a few years after first visiting Kashmir in
2004, he was startled by similarities between the two, he says. After Prime Minister
Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, he began to pay attention to India’s growing
closeness with Israel. “Chakravorty’s remarks kind of sealed it for me. A month later, I
submitted my proposal,” Essa says.

The resulting book, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, has
been widely written about in the international press. There are surprisingly few
accessible books on the subject but for “those familiar with the partnership may not
find much that is especially novel,” a review in Foreign Policy points out, adding, “It
covers much of what is already known about the evolution of the relationship.”

ADVERTISEMENT
round The India Fix Eco India The Latest The Reel The Field Magazine Video Trendin

The review also criticises the book for making “especially flawed” assertions about
India. The Hindu Frontline found faults with the book’s “over-reliance on its own
ideological conclusions and the omission of the other possible factors that shape the
behaviour of nation-states. The book overlooks India’s self-interest and the role of
realism in its foreign policy choices.”

What Hostile Homelands does well is setting the historical context of this relationship.
Scroll spoke to Essa about his book:

Your book Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel shows
that from the beginning, the relations between the two countries were deeper
than India let on. You write about Mahatma Gandhi’s position on Israel-Palestine
being inconsistent – that he said that the Jews could settle in Palestine “only by
the goodwill of the Arabs,” but also that “if the Arabs have a claim to Palestine,
the Jews have a prior claim. And that Rabindranath Tagore was “an enthusiastic
proponent of Zionism.” Were you surprised by your research?
I was very surprised by the extent to which there was contestation on India’s
approach to Palestine within the country. The Non-Aligned Movement, of which India
was a founder and major leader, rejected Israel at Bandung [in 1955]. But when you
read some of the earlier sources discussing what happened, you find that Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was open to Israel joining, even though India barely had
recognised Israel [as a state] a couple of years earlier [in 1950]. It was only until the
Indonesians and the Arab countries refused to have Israel that India accepted.
I was
round also
Thesurprised
India Fix by
Ecothe
Indiaduplicity of someone
The Latest The Reellike The
Nehru
Field when it came Video
Magazine to the 1962
Trendin

India-China war. He told [David] Ben-Gurion, the Israeli Prime Minister, to send India
weapons, but asked him to put them on ships without the Israeli flag. That’s really
crazy to me.

ADVERTISEMENT

Just over a decade earlier, when India decided to recognise Israel, there were a bunch
of letters between Delhi and its ambassadors in the Middle East focused on India’s
interest in recognising Israel. But there was no discussion about what it would mean
for the Palestinians, which was what India said publicly was the reason for not
recognising Israel. And so, if India said it was pro-Palestine over the next several
decades, you best believe it was also in their self-interest to do so. They wanted oil
from the Arab world and knew they had to be seen as pro-Palestine if they wanted to
be a leader of the third world.

So, there was a difference in the public and private face regarding the decision. It was
very, very methodical and very, very deliberate – that was also surprising to me.
round The India Fix Eco India The Latest
indianhistorypics The Reel The Field Magazine Video Trendin
@IndiaHistorypic · Follow

1960 :: PM Jawaharlal Nehru Visits Gaza

But In 1962 During India China War Jawaharlal Nehru

Requested Israeli PM Ben Gurion to Supply Arms to India
In Ships Without Them Bearing Israeli Flag

10:25 PM · Oct 7, 2023

4.8K Reply Share

Read 68 replies

You seem critical of India’s strategic choices. I thought the main thrust of your
book was to show a lack of morality in India’s foreign policy. What made you
write this book?
I wouldn’t say this is a look at India in an exceptional light. This project was about
trying to understand how a country that positions itself using a moral compass and is
perceived as having exceptional moral values and moral foreign policy as presented
by like people
round The Indialike
Nehru
Fix and Gandhi.
Eco India (AndThe
The Latest Gandhi,
Reel to a Field
The large extent, is one
Magazine of India’s
Video Trendin
biggest exports – this idea of a non-violent freedom fighter.)

And then it has a policy that’s very outwardly pro-Palestine for a long. In 1975, India
called Zionism racism and became the first non-Arab country to recognise the PLO
[Palestine Liberation Organisation]. These are big steps. How does a country that
positioned itself in that way change to become a strategic partner of a nation it had
morally condemned? This project was to try and figure that out.

ADVERTISEMENT

And what did you find out? How did the India-Israel relationship evolve to its
present closeness?
India has had, for the longest time, even under the Nehruvian period, this ambition to
be self-reliant. When Israel helped India in 1962, even though India lost that war
against China, it saw Israel as a country it could rely on. And there were not many
countries in the world that it could rely on, especially for military hardware. But
Israel was quite happy to extend itself militarily in the hope that it would improve
diplomatic ties in the future.

In the 1980s, India saw Israel as a way to enter the global economy and become close
to the US. They could see that the Soviet Union was collapsing and they looked for
options.The
round Interestingly,
India Fix Rajiv
Eco IndiaGandhi played The
The Latest a substantial
Reel role
in Magazine
building these
The Field Video ties.Trendin
He
was greatly influenced by Subramanium Swamy in this regard.

I don’t think enough attention has been given to Swamy’s role in nurturing and
promoting India-Israel ties. He had been pushing for it since the early 1980s. It’s not
surprising that the rise of Hindutva, neo-liberalism, and India-Israel ties took place at
the same time.

But, in the 1990s and the 2000s, a huge alignment took place and that had to do with
India wanting to build its own military-industrial complex, wanting to be a powerful
force and also buying into this War on Terror discourse so much so that between 2000
and 2010, it bought like $10 billion worth of arms from Israel.

ADVERTISEMENT

AD

But the Indian government still had a commitment that started several decades
earlier. It wanted to be (and still wants to be) a leader of the Global South. And to be
the leader of the Global South, your credentials were predicated on your stance on
Palestine to a large extent, and India didn’t want to tamper with that. And [India did
not want to be seen by] the developing world as well as the Arab world or the Muslim
world as such, as being too provocative in being close to Israel publicly.
But whatThechanges
round with
India Fix EcoPrime
India Minister
The LatestNarendra
The ReelModi
TheisField
that Modi looks at
Magazine Israel Trendin
Video and
sees a country that’s proud of its military might and proud about its Jewish ethnic
identity. Whereas, according to Hindu nationalists, India has been hesitant to assert its
Hinduness and its strength and in Israel, they see a model to replicate.

But Modi too is not as risk-taking as we think he is. What he does is that before he
builds his relationships, he goes and checks up with the Arab world. He goes to several
Arab countries and checks up with them first and gets their tacit approval and then he
goes to Tel Aviv and makes this grand entry [becoming the first Indian prime minister
to visit Israel, in 2017]. I think that’s really important because it also shows the careful
deliberation behind Indian foreign policy.
round The India Fix Eco India The Latest The Reel The Field Magazine Video Trendin
round The India Fix Eco India The Latest The Reel The Field Magazine Video Trendin

So is that where the book started?

[Growing up,] I travelled to India every other year or so and spent a lot of time in
Bombay and parts of Gujarat with our family there. My understanding of India
however changed when I was introduced to the story of Kashmir as a graduate
student. And it surprised me that a country that spoke of itself as anti-colonial and
was such an important player in the anti-apartheid movement, could be holding an
entire population hostage in Kashmir. And so I was invariably drawn to find out more
because at first I couldn’t believe it.

ADVERTISEMENT

AD

I also observed how a “new” India was beginning to take shape during my short stint
as an exchange student at Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2004. I also returned to JNU
as a visiting research scholar to conduct economic research. When I travelled to
Palestine some years later, I immediately saw similarities between the occupations as
well as in the resilience of both peoples.
India
round has changed
The India Fix even more dramatically
Eco India The Latest as Reel
The it became a bigger
The Field economicVideo
Magazine powerTrendin
and
a more assertive global player. And as someone who understands how the stories of
Gandhi’s “non-violence” and Nehru’s “internationalism” and “Indian values” have
been used for years (and continue to be used) as a way to disguise and justify their
actions and convince the world that India is a “force of good”, I have felt a certain
responsibility to speak and write honestly about it.

When Modi came to power, the mask fell off and India totally embraced Israel. And it
made complete sense. So, I went back to try and understand how the Indian
independence movement and then the Indian state actually felt about Palestine and
Israel. And that’s how the book came about.

I guess there’s one last point: in 2019, India’s now-former consul-general in New York
[Sandeep Chakravorty] said that India could follow Israel to build settlements. And
that kind of sealed it for me. A month later I submitted my proposal.

ADVERTISEMENT

AD

One of the most significant stories on the subject is how Israel entered India’s
public consciousness. Why did you decide not to write about it?
There are some gaps in the book and one of them is this. Another one is culture,
because I think they’re linked.
That
round wasThemarked
India Fix as aEco
chapter
India but
The the bookThe
Latest was becoming
Reel too long.
The Field I had to
Magazine cut 12,000
Video Trendin

words already. The second reason was that for that chapter, I needed more fieldwork.
But I will say that the culture thing is a major topic. I also think that a lot of what you
are talking about, a lot of it is forced and exaggerated.

Part of that chapter was supposed to be talking about how Israelis have been
travelling to India for several decades – somewhere I think in Himachal there’s a Little
Israel. So that’s what I mean by fieldwork, I needed to see that stuff. Although in
Kashmir, I have seen things like this in Ladakh, restaurants with Hebrew menus and
all kinds of things. But I needed to get to the ground.

This mass sort of approval has not been explored on a public consciousness level. But
I do suspect that it’s been forced. There’s some kind of troll army that’s pushing it and
the mainstream corporate media is very much on board. Also, Israel has made a
deliberate effort to encourage television and media, so this points to me that this is
very much a state-driven project to create that impression.

ADVERTISEMENT

AD

I don’t know the extent to which the ordinary Indian on the street cares that much.
And so that’s why I couldn’t write about it. It was only going to be based primarily on
social media.
The book
round Thehasn’t
India Fixbeen
Ecopublished
India Thein India.The
Latest You saidThe
Reel you suspect
Field it has
Magazine toVideo
do with
Trendin

the section on Kashmir and Palestine.

Every English-language Indian publisher has basically turned down partnering with
Pluto on the book. I can’t speak for all of them, but the general consensus is that they
didn’t want to touch it because they felt that they were going to be in trouble. And it
was mostly on Kashmir. Although a Tamil publisher has bought the rights to translate
and publish.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. | Image credits:
IANS/Ministry of External Affairs.

Buy an annual Scroll Membership to support independent journalism and

get special benefits.

PICK AN AMOUNT
 $50 $100 $250 $1,000 Other
round The India Fix Eco India The Latest The Reel The Field Magazine Video Trendin

No ads Evening Edition newsletter

Members-only events Weekly Edition newsletter

Merchandise

Continue to payment Already a member? Sign in

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.

Palestine Israel India Interview

     

Related
round Interview: Vikramajit
The India Fix Ram,The
Eco India author
Latestof ‘Mansur’,
The Reel The Field Magazine Video Trendin
shortlisted for the 2023 JCB Prize for Literature

Trending

How an American activist
helped make Indian
standards available for
free
Watch: Comedian India’s small wild cats are How Ai
hilariously mimics Jaggi dying because of a case of cast in t
Vasudev as HR manager mistaken identity ad film
talking about Diwali
bonus