This is apropos a letter to the Editor “The new Indo-Israel relationship” carried by the newspaper yesterday. Although the writer, N.M. Rind, has presented some key facts that characterize the new relationship between a far right-ruled India and a far right-ruled Israel, he seems to have ignored a very important truth in his argument that a vast majority of India, including of course Hindus, will never abandon the ideals of justice, democracy and human rights.
The present RSS-BJP combine’s approach to the Middle East conflict largely stems from its desperation and nervousness ahead of the 2024 general election in the country.
Prime minister Narendra Modi’s tweet expressing solidarity with Israel only adds to BJP-RSS combine’s anti-Muslim agenda that the party has been vigorously pursuing ever since Modi came to power in 2014. No doubt, the BJP’s ideology-driven rhetoric is decidedly pro-Israel, although India had always successfully maintained its Israel-Palestine balancing act.
In other words, for most of the period since Independence India has identified itself with the Palestinian struggle. But Modi’s remark on the Israel-Palestine conflict is nothing but India’s historic departure from its consistent stance on the Palestine issue, which has been assailed at home and abroad.
Last but not least, one of India’s former ambassadors, MK Bhadrakumar, in an article for NewsClick in which he gave ten reasons why India’s stance on Gaza is unsustainable, has concluded his argument by saying, among other things, that “The BJP leadership should educate its provincial leaders with tunnel vision on international affairs that Islamism is not to be equated with terrorism in the global commons, especially the politics of the Muslim Brotherhood to which Hamas belongs.”
S.K. Pillai
Dubai
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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