Reading Modi’s Visit to Israel

Phases of Relations

The evolution of the Indo-Israeli relations has been too well articulated to be repeated here (Blarel, 2014; Kumaraswamy, 2010) and suffice to say that trajectory of the relations can be framed within four large timeframes. The first phase began in the closing stages of World War I. Coinciding with the Khilafat struggle in the early 1920s, the Indian nationalists led by Mahatma Gandhi viewed the Arab-Jewish struggle through an Islamic prism and identified themselves with the Arabs of Palestine. Since the early 1930s, the Palestine issue became a domestic political contest between the inclusive nationalism represented by the Indian National Congress and the Pakistani nationalism championed by the Muslim League. In India as well as in Palestine the Congress party rejected ‘religion’ being the basis for nationhood. Despite accepting partition as the solution for the subcontinent, India advocated a federal Palestine while the majority members of the UN Committee were advocating partition as the solution (Agwani, 1971). The Indian plan, however, was rejected by both the contending parties; the Arabs felt it offered too many concessions to immigrant Jews while the latter felt it promised civil and religious rights when they were demanding political rights and sovereignty. Despite this, on 29 November 1947 India voted against the partition plan in the UN General Assembly and later on even opposed Israel’s admission into the UN.

At the same time, Israel’s emergence in May 1948, its recognition by major powers of the world, including the USA and USSR, its admission into the UN in May 1949 and India’s willingness to accept partition in the subcontinent and come to terms with Pakistan, resulted in Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru accepting Israel (Kumaraswamy, 1995). On 17 September 1950, incidentally the day future Prime Minister Modi was born, India communicated its decision to recognise Israel, which came into effect the following day. Though normalisation was visualised and promised, in their biographies on the Indian prime minister, both Michael Brecher and S Gopal suggest that senior member of the Cabinet Abul Kalam Azad flagged the Kashmir issue and domestic Muslim population to oppose normalisation (Brecher, 1968; Gopal, 1980). Nehru settled for a zero-sum approach towards Israel whereby even a modicum of relations with the Jewish state was seen as a dilution of India’s commitments to the Palestinian cause. However, writing in the wake of Modi’s visit to Israel, one veteran journalist observed: ‘Archival disclosures have demolished these myths sedulously fostered by the Jana Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the decades’ (Noorani, 2017) but offered no supporting evidence. Hence, non-relations became the hallmark of India policy vis-à-vis Israel.

The second phase began in January 1992 when Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao opted to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel. The end of the Cold War, the emergence of a world order dominated by the USA and the willingness of the Palestinians to attend the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference towards seeking a political settlement enabled him to end the four-decade-old recognition-without-relations policy of Nehru. He had to signal to the outside world that India recognised the transformation of the international order and was ready and willing charter a new course of action. Normalisation of relations with Israel was the easiest, effective and least costly option. Though the Cold War was not responsible for the prolonged absence of relations, its ending facilitated normalisation.

Not everyone, however, was happy with the shift (Agwani, 1993; Aiyar, 1993; Dasgupta, 1992; Pradhan, 1998). ‘Betrayal’, ‘immoral’ and ‘unGandhian’ were some of the expressions used by the critics of normalisation. Though relations were established more than four decades after Nehru’s recognition, some felt it to be ‘hasty’ and argued that India should have waited until the realisation of Palestinian statehood. While some attributed the shift to the end of the Cold War and disappearance of the USSR, others accused Rao of succumbing to the American pressures. Some of these arguments were revised, resurrected and updated during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Israel. As would be discussed, some of the moral arguments are partisan, and others reflect selective amnesia. Despite these, during the next decade, roughly coinciding with the 1990s and the first NDA rule (1998–2004), India was balancing its traditional policy towards the Palestinians with the newly found relations with Israel.

The third phase roughly coincided with the return of the Congress party to power in 2004 under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Though relations were progressing since the early 1990s, the Left Parties were demanding a ‘course correction’ and distancing from Israel (Kumaraswamy, 2010). The outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000 was partly responsible for the rapture in the bonhomie towards Israel in both India and elsewhere. Though the UPA government was unable to accept a lowering or dilution of relations, contacts with Israel became minimal and were largely confined to defence and security issues. Towards managing the domestic pressures and to expand the diplomatic space, India began separating bilateral interests with Israel from its multilateral disagreements over the Palestinian issue and Middle East peace process. Thus, its criticisms of Israeli policies over a host of issues were accompanied by its willingness to launch an Israeli spy satellite in January 2008.

The fourth and the current phase of the Indo-Israeli relations coincided with the election of Modi as prime minister in May 2014. In the initial months, his government largely followed the policies of his predecessors but gradually a new pattern can be noticed. Israel became integral to Modi’s ‘constructive engagement’ with the Middle East. Rather than keeping Israel ‘separate’ or treating it as a ‘special’ case, India appeared to be seeking its integration in its policy towards the wider region. Some have been a continuation of the policies of the Congress, some came with slight modifications and some signal a departure from the past.

Salient Patterns

During the quarter of a century of Indo-Israeli normalisation, one could notice certain trends and patterns in the bilateral relations. At the national level, a consensus has emerged vis-à-vis Israel and the two mainstream parties, namely, the Congress and BJP, have been favourably disposed towards maintaining and improving the relations. If the former abandoned the Nehruvian ‘legacy’ and established diplomatic relations, the latter has been more outspoken in dealing with Israel. Though he declined from establishing relations, Nehru was inclined towards establishing formal ties with Israel, including reciprocal resident missions. Moreover, the absence of ties did not prevent him from seeking and securing critical military supplies during the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 (Bhattacharya, 2017). His successors followed this precedents and Israel assisted India during the Kargil conflict of 1999 (Blarel, 2015; Haidar, 2014).

Second, there are subtle differences between the two mainstream parties. The Congress Prime Ministers—Rao and Manmohan Singh—were more circumspect and sought to ‘balance’ their engagements with Israel with pro-Palestinians pronouncements or meetings. The BJP leaders were less enamoured by this style of functioning and were more vocal in their engagements. For example, two out of the three visits by External Affairs Ministers to Israel since normalisation took place when the BJP was in power; namely, Jaswant Singh (July–August 2000) and Sushma Swaraj (January 2016), while S M Krishna visited in January 2012 when the Congress-led UPA was in power. Until now, both the prime ministerial visits—Ariel Sharon to India in September 2003 and Modi to Israel—took place under the BJP rule. As one former Indian diplomat reminded, ‘Under pressures from its Communist allies, Dr. Manmohan Singh’s UPA (1) Government avoided visits by Cabinet Ministers to Israel’ (Parthasarathy, 2012).

Third, despite the normalisation, the Congress party took time for the relations with Israel to become ‘normal’ and India’s disagreements over the Palestine question and the peace process have been too huge to be sidestepped let alone overcome. At the same time, security requirements compelled India to cooperate with Israel on sensitive issues, such as counterterrorism, intelligence sharing and technological requirements. Hence, New Delhi did not allow political differences over the peace process to impede defence procurement and even offer strategic assistance to Israel in the form of launching the latter’s satellite in January 2008. As K Subramanyam observed:

India does not approve of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. But this satellite is not meant to be used against the Palestinians. Israel has enough capabilities to collect intelligence on the Palestinians without using any satellite. These satellites are meant to collect intelligence over the areas East of Palestinian, the volatile region from Iraq to Pakistan and beyond, including India, China and Russia, if necessary but primarily the area between Israel and Pakistan. (Subrahmanyam, 2008)

During the decade-long UPA rule, India was trying to delink bilateral gains from the multilateral differences.

Fourth, while the Congress party has been cautious, the positions of smaller and regional parties were mixed. Whenever they were in power, either in New Delhi or in the states, they have been pursuing an economy-centric agenda vis-à-vis Israel. Regional parties or region-based parties, such as Janata Dal (U) and NCP have no qualms about seeking assistance from Israel in fields, such as agriculture, water management, and so on. The position of other parties has been different and been driven by local or electoral considerations. The most visible example for this has been the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), which was part of both the UPA governments headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The party won one seat in the 543-member Lok Sabha in 2004 and it could not retain it five years later. Because it was a key ally of the Congress party in Kerala, the IUML became a part of both the UPA governments. During much of this period, its leader E Ahamed was the Minister of State for External Affairs and looked after the Middle Eastern region. The electoral considerations in Kerala and the larger Keralite diasporic presence in the Gulf region resulted in Ahamed avoiding Israel. Despite flouring bilateral relations, he was not known to have carried out any official engagements with the Israeli diplomats posted in India and skipped Israel while visiting Ramallah to meet President Yasser Arafat or his successor Abbas.

The position of the Samajwadi Party (SP) is complex. The territorial proximity to Delhi and its social engineering strategy that included the Muslim electorates prevented the party from actively engaging with Israel when it was in power in Uttar Pradesh. At the same time, A P J Abdul Kalam visited Israel in 1996 when he was the Scientific Advisor to Mulayam Singh, the patriarch of the SP and the union defence minister at that time.

This dichotomy was more pronounced in the case of the Left parties. As the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu visited Israel in the summer of 2000 and his senior party colleague and later Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee led a delegation to attract Israeli investments. At the same time, when they extended ‘outside’ support to the UPA government headed by Manmohan Singh, the Left parties changed their tune (Parthasarathy, 2012). Accusing the previous Vajpayee government of ideological convergence with the Likud, they demanded a ‘course correction’ vis-à-vis Israel and in the wake of the Second Lebanon War of 2006, some demanded the ending of military procurements from Israel and even the withdrawal of Indian ambassador from Tel Aviv.

Fifth, the balancing strategy of the Union Government, especially when the Congress party was in power, meant that the Israeli engagements in New Delhi were largely symbolic and hence limited. From the beginning, the Ministry of Defence has been a major player in the bilateral relations but there was little scope for Israel to expand its contacts in the capital. This resulted in Israel shifting its focus to the state governments with whom it found a common agenda, namely, economic development. Moving away from contentious political issues, Israel began exploiting its expertise in agriculture, horticulture, aquaculture, water management, dairy and farming in furthering its relations with various state governments.

The de-centralisation of the bilateral relations has been the hallmark of the Indo-Israeli relations and has a dual impact (Kumaraswamy, 2017). The federal structure facilitates in state governments seeking external expertise and assistance in furthering the developmental agenda and they could collaborate with foreign powers without embroiling in political issues. In the Israeli case, this means that the state governments could seek economic assistance and investments without being entangled in the messier Middle East peace process. Their prime focus is agriculture and allied areas of development and not the controversial issues, such as settlements, borders or Palestinian statelessness. This largely explains the growing and greater engagements between Israel and various states of India.

Furthermore, state-level interactions could enable a better understanding of Israel and its technological expertise while a Delhi-centric approach tends to be political and judgemental. Higher crop yields and better management of scare water resources, for example, are pertinent for the state government than the non-righteousness of the Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. The state-centric approach thus has the potential to be a game changer in the bilateral relations and enhance the support base for Israel in the country. Interestingly, some Western countries are better placed than Israel regarding personnel, technology and sources but they appear to lack the drive in capitalising the federal structure in furthering their relations with India.

Sixth, despite the lack of visible political contacts between the two, there has been continuous and growing military-security cooperation between the two. There were limited contacts and cooperation between the two even before 1992 but diplomatic ties provided the political context and framework for a wide range of cooperation (Browne, 2017; Inbar, 2004; Inbar & Ningthoujam, 2012; Kumaraswamy, 1998). Counterterrorism, intelligence sharing, border management, homeland security, avionics, surveillance, radars, unmanned aerial vehicles, missile defence, small arms and ammunitions are some of the areas where India has been benefitting from this cooperation. The chiefs of both the military-security establishments have been visiting and meeting one another and there have been on-going contacts between the two national security establishments. Indian naval vessels have been making friendly visits to Haifa and senior military officials have been enrolling in the military academies of the other. Indeed, Israel has emerged as the prime supplier of some of the key weapons and systems and India has become the largest market for Israeli defence exports.

Capitalising on these historical trends, Modi has been charting a distinct path vis-à-vis the wider Middle East. Though he assumed office in May 2014, Prime Minister Modi’s first bilateral visit to the Middle East had to wait until August 2015 when he visited the small but resourceful UAE. This was followed by the visit to Turkey in November that year for the G-20 summit and to Saudi Arabia (April), Iran (May) and Qatar (June) in 2016. Even though Indian leaders tend to visit more than one country due to scheduling and logistical constraints, all the visits of Modi to the region have been stand-alone visit. This pattern was followed in Israel.

The Visit

As with all his foreign trips, since landing at Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv on the afternoon of 4 July, Prime Minister Modi had a hectic schedule of official, semi-official, social and diasporic engagements until he departed on 6 July for the G-20 Summit in Hamburg. Recognising the significance of the occasion, Israel went an extra mile to make Modi feel home and breaking the usual protocol requirements Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was with the Indian leader for almost the entire trip. Though he had visited Israel earlier as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, this visit had greater symbolism for both sides and he began his tour with an unscheduled visit to Mount Herzl to pay his respects to the founder of modern political Zionism, Theodore Herzl.

Both sides indulged in a charm offensive; a new fast-growing Israeli Chrysanthemum flower was named after the Indian leader and the latter took time to meet Moshe Holtzberg, who was two years old, when his parents were killed in the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008. In line with his practice, Modi addressed the overseas Indian community in a public event in Tel Aviv and hours before leaving Israel, he visited the military cemetery in Haifa where Indian soldiers who were killed during World War I were buried. For its part, Israel demonstrated its advanced mobile desalination technology during the Modi-Netanyahu walkabout along the Mediterranean Sea.

Contrary to earlier expectations, Modi did not announce any major agreements or declarations. Before the visit, there were speculations that India would conclude big-ticket defence deals and there would even be live demonstrations of Israeli inventories. The joint statement issued on 5 July was too general and deliberately vague. Pledging to take ‘initiatives and policies’, it visualised close partnerships in ‘development, technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, defence and security’ (Prime Minister’s Office India, 2017). As with its engagements in other Middle Eastern countries, fighting terrorism figured prominently but no specific mechanism was identified.

On the question of the Middle East peace process, the statement said that both the leaders ‘discussed the developments pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process’ and that they ‘underlined the need for the establishment of a just and durable peace in the region. They reaffirmed their support for an early negotiated solution between the sides based on mutual recognition and security arrangements’. This reflects the Indian position since the early 1990s but sensitive towards the growing opposition of the Netanyahu government, the statement eschewed any direct reference to the two-state solution. Though phrased differently, it is a roundabout way of reiterating India’s support for Israel and Palestine coexisting in peace and security.

The vagueness of the Indo-Israeli joint statement could not be ignored. For example, the statement issued at the end of Modi’s visit to the UAE in August 2015 listed as many as 31 specific issues that both Modi and Crown Prince al-Nahyan had agreed (India, MEA, 2015). Even on terrorism, an area where India and Israel have been cooperating even before normalisation, the leaders settled for generalities. The statement claimed that the visit ‘raised the bilateral relationship to that of a strategic partnership’ but does not specify any interest convergence, details or mechanism. Above all, ‘strategic partnership’ has become a new trend in India’s foreign engagements and one media report had identified, as of July 2017, New Delhi has ‘strategic’ partnership with as many as 31 countries, often with conflicting compositions, such as China-Japan and Iran-Saudi matrix (The Wire, 2017).

However, the unprecedented development was his decision to skip the Palestine National Authority based in Ramallah. Since the Indo-Israeli normalisation, New Delhi has been balancing between the two and periodically rolled out red carpet welcomes to Palestinian leaders. Since he succeeded Yasser Arafat as President in January 2005, Mahmoud Abbas had visited India as many as five times. Most Indian leaders have been visiting Palestinian National Authority (PNA) while going to Israel. Initially they visited the Gaza city but once Arafat shifted his headquarters to the West Bank after the deterioration of security situation in the Gaza Strip, they went to Ramallah.

However, since mid-2015 there were signs that there would be shifts in India’s Palestine policy. The first signs came in July that year when India abstained during a vote in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) over a resolution that accused Israel of having committed ‘war crimes’ during the Gaza conflict of 2014, or Operation Protective Edge as it was called by Israel. ¹ Just a year earlier, the Modi government voted with the majority on a resolution that was critical of Israel. Likewise, India has changed its position vis-à-vis Jerusalem in the UNESCO. In April 2016, it sided with the majority and voted in favour of an Arab-sponsored relation that explicitly recognised the Islamic claims to Jerusalem city without any reference to the city’s Jewish history or the presence of two Jewish temples before the birth of Islam. In the two subsequent votes held on 13 October 2016 and 2 May 2017, New Delhi abstained.

The gradual move towards de-hyphenating the Israeli-Palestinian equation should not be surprising (Malhotra, 2017). In the words of one former diplomat who served in the region:

We are de-hyphenating our relations with Israel from our commitment to the Palestinian cause. It does not, in any way, indicates that our commitment to the Palestinian interests has been diluted… Our relationship has been de-hyphenated because we are pursuing the two interests separately. When Mahmoud Abbas visited India, there was absolutely no indication whatsoever we have diluted our commitment to the Palestinian cause. (PTI, 2017, June 30)

Hence, for quite some time it was clear that Prime Minister Modi would be skipping Ramallah while visiting Israel.

Furthermore, the extensive foreign trips undertaken by Modi have a strong economic agenda and if one excludes the summit meetings, he visited only those countries, which would be helpful in his developmental agenda. This is especially true for the Middle East. He only visited those countries that could contribute to his economic plans and his engagements primarily focus on economic issues and not political angles. Seen within this cost-benefit analysis, a visit to Ramallah could only offer a limited political let along economic gains.

Above all, the Palestinians are in a precarious situation. There is a greater instability not only in the region but also within the Palestinian society. In recent years, especially in the wake of the popular protests in many countries, the Arab world is preoccupied with far more serious issues, such as state survival, territorial integrity and political stability than the Palestinian cause. Not that the Arab states and societies have become indifferent or numb but the Palestinian statelessness is a lower priority for key countries, such as Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia or Syria. Under such circumstances, political gains accruing due to Modi’s visit to Ramallah are negligible. The Islamic countries of the region would not determine the shape and substance of their relations with India by Modi going or not going to Palestine. The Arab countries no longer view the outside world through the Palestinian prism and some have been making pro-Israeli statements or clandestinely reaching out to Israel.

Impacts and Fallouts

Prime Minister Modi’s visit brought the bilateral relations out in the open. Though relations were established in 1992, various Indian governments have been coy in dealing with the Jewish State. Political visits and engagements have been limited (Sarkar, 2017) and until the Modi-Netanyahu meeting in the UN in September 2014, for example, there were only two prime ministerial meetings since 1948. The first was between Rajiv Gandhi and Shimon Peres in September 1985 during the annual session of the UN General Assembly and the other between Deve Gowda and Netanyahu in February 1997 at the World Economic Forum in Devos. While Prime Minister Gowda hosted President Ezer Weizman in December 1996–January 1997, a reciprocal visit to Israel had to wait until October 2015. Though relations were established by a Congress government, in 2000 Jaswant Singh became the first Indian External Affairs Minister to visit Israel and the second one had to wait until Krishna went to Israel, Palestine, Jordan and the UAE in January 2012. Moreover, unlike other countries, Israel is not a member of many multilateral forums and hence, bilateral visits often become the only means of direct personal contacts. For example, since becoming Prime Minister, Modi has been bilaterally meeting the Saudi leaders during G-20 summits in Brisbane, Antalya and Hangzhou.

Second, the absence of visible political contacts but continuous cooperation between the two security establishments has added mystery and secrecy around in the Indo-Israeli ties. Over the years, military-security cooperation has come to symbolise the bilateral relations and marginalised other areas which are equally, if not more, important. While the Israeli military technology in certain key areas is well recognised, its expertise in non-military sectors, such as agriculture, innovation, desalination, environment protection, waste management and recycling do not figure prominently or were dismissed as marginal. This had changed in the wake of Modi’s visit and the exclusion of military-security issues in the joint statement forced many to pay greater attention to Israel’s soft power and its usefulness to India (Cabinet India, 2017; PTI, 2017, August 2; The Wire, 2017).

Third, agriculture and water management, the areas identified during Modi’s visit play a key role India’s food security challenges as its annual production of basic food items excessively depends upon the monsoon and vagaries of nature. For quite some time, some oil-rich Gulf Arab countries have been seeking India’s help to meet their food requirements. Allowing these countries to own or buy fertile lands in the country may be politically sensitive and meeting their food requirements through exports is not feasible due to the unpredictable nature of India’s food productions. Thus, India’s ability to meet its domestic requirements and contemplate stable agricultural exports would mean greater cooperation with Israel in these ‘soft’ areas. Until now, the bilateral relations have been located only within the context of military-security but Modi’s visit forced to look at the benefits accruing to India in the food security arena.

Fourth, the Palestinians have been forced to come to terms with their shrinking diplomatic space vis-à-vis India. A few weeks earlier while hosting President Abbas, Modi reiterated India’s commitments to Palestinian statehood but the erstwhile warmth was considerably absent. Modi dropping any references to East Jerusalem being the capital of a future Palestinian State was a significant departure. (Kumaraswamy, 2017, May 18) The Indian Prime Minister made these remarks with Abbas standing next to him indicated the precarious position of the Palestinians. In January 1992, Arafat came to New Delhi to accept Rao’s decision to normalise relations with Israel and in May 2017, Abbas came to recognise Modi’s impending standalone visit to India (Haidar, 2017b). However, when Modi skipped Ramallah, the Palestinian leadership felt slighted and one official observed that if India were to play an important role in the peace process ‘one should visit both’ and the general sentiments were more a question of ‘surprise rather than outright criticism’ (Agencies, 2017, July 5, Cohen, 2017).

Fifth, there were other voices of dissent over Modi’s visit and came primarily from Iran and Pakistan. The day Modi landed in Israel, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei was expressing support for ‘oppressed Muslims’ in different parts of the world including Kashmir (Agencies, 2017a; Chaubey, 2017; TNN, 2017). This led to Pakistani commentators joining the criticism of Modi’s visit (Editorial, 2017, July 6, August 12; Shahid, 2017, April 4, July 11). One American observer called the visit a ‘costly embrace’ (Jenkins, 2017). Expressing ‘disappointment’ over Modi’s visit, Bouthaina Shaaban, one of the closest aides of Assad, lamented ‘We never expected India will move from its righteous and moral stand and pay that huge courtesy to Israel’, and observed that Syria would hence would be ‘very hesitant to call for a role for India’ in the rebuilding of her country (Vohra, 2017).

However, the reaction of the Arab states was more nuanced and mainstream Arab media merely reported the visit and its highlights without passing any judgements (Agencies, 2017b; AP, 2017; Reuters, 2017, July 6). Modi having visited the UAE and Saudi Arabia and forging closer ties with them could be the reason. The comments by Ghassan Charbel, the editor-in-chief of influential Ashraq al-Awsat was perhaps reflective of the thinking of the Arab leadership. Writing a couple of days after Modi’s visit, he observed:

when reading in-between the lines and closely reviewing the Middle East, Arabs discovered that in recent years, Israel had achieved a series of victories without firing a bullet.

States, armies and economies around the occupying state have eroded to its benefit. Waves of extremism in the Arab world have caused untold calamities, creating a long bullet-list of issues and conflicts in which the Palestinian cause is a mere one of many. (Charbel, 2017)

In an unusual candidness, he captured the diminishing influence of the Palestinians in regional politics. The domestic debates over Modi’s visit were more pronounced and diverse.

Domestic debates

There has been considerable buzz over Israel since Modi’s election. Prime Minister Netanyahu was the first world leader to call and congratulate Modi as the Lok Sabha results were trickling in. Both leaders met in September that year during the annual session of the UN General Assembly and have been greeting, tweeting and congratulating one another at regular intervals. Bilateral visits have also increased since May 2014 and they include visits by Home Minister Rajnath Singh (November 2014), President Pranab Mukherjee (October 2015) and External Affairs Minister Swaraj (January 2016) from India and Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon (February 2015) and President Reuven Rivlin (November 2016) from Israel. At least since mid-2015, there were speculations about Modi visiting Israel. Above all, on a few occasions he drew parallels with Israel; for example, addressing an election rally in Himachal Pradesh in October 2016, he reflected on the surgical strike into Pakistan across the Line of Control the previous month and remarked: ‘Today the entire nation is talking of the valour of our Army. Earlier, we used to hear of Israel having done something like this. But the country has seen that the Indian Army is no less than anyone else’ (Bodhi, 2016).

As a result, Modi’s visit was widely covered by the Indian media and a number of them had sent senior journalists to cover the event and many television channels ran live programme during his stay in Israel. While there were no protests, (Chaudhuri, 2017; Ghosh, 2017) some prominent observers attributed Modi’s bonhomie towards Israel to ideological convergence between Hindutva and Zionism. Such arguments are not new and were flagged when Atal Behari Vajpayee headed the first NDA government during 1998–2004. The spate of Indo-Israeli political exchanges in recent years resulted in critics viewing the bilateral relations as a BJP-Likud alliance. Attributing the ‘admiration’ of the Hindu right-wing for Israel for its share ‘antipathy to Muslims’, one veteran journalist remarked:

It is perfectly correct for India to have good relations with the state of Israel. It is demeaning for any Indian to endorse the creed of Zionism. Judaism is an ancient and noble religion. Zionism is a modern political and divisive creed espoused by Theodore Herzl in 1895. To give an analogy, Hinduism is an ancient and noble religion. Hindutva is a poisonous political ideology espoused by V.D. Savarkar in 1923. Devout Hindus denounce Hindutva. Devout Jews denounce Zionism. (Noorani, 2017)

In similar veins, one suggested that Israel symbolises ‘everything the RSS, wants India to be’ (Mahajan, 2017) and another felt Modi’s visit was ‘ill-advised’ and admonished the government for making it into ‘a love fest’ (G. Gandhi, 2017; R. Gandhi, 2017). A section of the opposition also joined the chorus against Modi’s visit (Aiyar, 2017; News18, 2017; SputnikNews, 2017; The Financial Express, 2017).

Writing in Saudi Gazette, the Hyderabad-based Indian journalist Aijaz Zaka Syed drew a parallel between Hindutva and Zionism and called it ‘an unholy nexus between the two ideologies of hate’ and accused Modi of given an ‘elaborate burial to the Palestinian cause’ (Syed, 2017). Likewise, writing in The Hindu, a Carnegie scholar observed that historically ‘India has projected Israel as an apartheid regime’ and reflecting the Iranian angel, suggested that the Indian Prime Minister ‘would not have made the visit to Israel had he calculated that such a trip would antagonise the Sunni Arab leaders who have shown concrete interest in India’s growing market and improving regulatory environment’ (Baloch, 2017). Castigating Modi for ‘not going to Ramallah’, People’s Democracy, the official organ of the Communist Part of India, described the bilateral relations as a ‘pernicious alliance’ (Editorial, 2017, July 9).

If Modi’s engagements with Israel were driven by the Hindutva ideology alone, then how does one explain his interactions with leaders of Saudi Arabia and Iran since 2014? By their own definition, both are ideological states where Islam plays a critical role; if the puritanical Wahhabi Islam governs the former, the clergy domination in statecraft makes the latter just a step away from theocracy. In both countries, religion plays a substantial role in determining individual as well as collective identities. On the question of minorities—religious or ethnic—both these states have been anything but exemplary; the Shias in Saudi Arabia and Baha’is in Iran face institutionalised discriminations. The status of women in both the countries is problematic; Saudi Arabia figures badly on women empowerment index and senior positions in Iran, such as the supreme leader, president, members of the Guardian Council and Assembly of Experts are exclusively male.

During his visits, Prime Minister Modi expressed India’s desire to develop ‘strategic partnership’ with both these countries. Does it mean that there could be Hindutva-Wahhabi or Hindutva-Ayatollah alliance? These are not rhetorical questions but an extension of arguments of Hindutva-Zionism alliance that some fear is developing under Modi. It is forgotten that even when he abandoned the earlier Indian position of East Jerusalem being the capital of the future Palestinian state, he did not imply India acceding to the Israeli claims of Jerusalem being its ‘undivided and eternal capital’ (Haidar, 2017a). It merely signals India’s desire to see a settlement to the question of Jerusalem that recognised its shared importance to all the three Abrahamic faiths and accommodates the conflicting Jewish, Christian and Islamic claims.

Conclusion

In a sense, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Israel visit had demystified the bilateral relations and brought them out of the tradition military-security paradigm and the accompanying secrecy. The generalities of the joint statement resulted in the focus being shifted to non-political and developmental dimension of the relations. Modi’s economic-centric approach towards the wider Middle East continued in Israel and this would be a major step towards the ‘normalisation’ of Israel in India’s engagements with the wider region. As it seeks closer ties with Iran and Saudi Arabia—the two rival and antagonistic powers in the Gulf region—India is also seeking closer ties with Israel as well as its Arab and Islamic neighbours. While much of the attention has been on the de-hyphenation of Israel and Palestine, the de-politicisation of the bilateral relations would be major outcome of Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Israel.