Hours after India abstained from voting for a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for a humanitarian truce in the war on Gaza, the external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, offered what amounted to a rationale for India’s decision. “Right judgements are necessary abroad. We take a strong position on terrorism because we are big victims of terrorism,” he said while addressing an election campaign gathering in Bhopal. “We will have no credibility if we say that when terrorism impacts us, it’s very serious; when it happens to somebody else, it’s not serious.”
Hypocrisy never looks good, and consistent positions command respect. But there’s a slippery slope here, and India is already on it.
The UN vote saw almost all developing nations vote in favour of a humanitarian truce in Gaza with the aim of pushing towards a ceasefire. India stuck out like a sore thumb by abstaining from the vote. New Delhi argued that the draft didn’t openly condemn the Hamas attack on southern Israel which set in motion Israel’s retributive bombing campaign that has killed more than 8,000 Palestinians, including over 3,000 children.
Attacks on innocent civilians must be condemned and perpetrators punished. There can be no justification for terrorism. Yet India must be careful about how far it goes in pushing parallels between its reality and that of Israel. That’s important because while Israel is an important partner, it isn’t a model that India should look to emulate in its approach to its own civilians and to its neighbours.
Since Independence, India — unlike Israel — has never occupied territories of its neighbours, blockaded enclaves over which it has no legal claim, and bombed civilian populations that live beyond its borders. That has given India the moral, political and military justification to defend itself when terrorists sponsored by Pakistan have attacked its territory. That is the reason why India’s position against Pakistan-backed terrorism enjoys broad support across the Global South, while Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and its attacks on and siege of the Gaza Strip draw condemnation across much of Asia, Africa and Latin America. While attacks on civilians in Israel and Palestine must be condemned, portraying India and Israel as shared victims of terrorism is dangerous.
All of this is worrying because, sadly, the Indian State is already employing many of the same policies and approaches domestically as Israel does at home.
For 36 hours starting last Friday evening, Israel cut off all communication networks over Gaza, plunging the enclave into informational darkness.
India enforced a similar communications blackout in Kashmir for several months from August 2020 when Article 370 was scrapped. Full internet services were restored only in early 2022. Imagine, if you can, spending the worst period of the Covid-19 crisis amid a military crackdown unable to check on loved ones in other parts of the country or the world. Just as Israeli forces routinely demolish Palestinian homes to pave the way for illegal settlements, the Indian police has, in recent years, taken to using bulldozers to pull down homes of Muslims who protest against the government or are accused of crimes, the legal process be damned. Palestinians in Israel face daily humiliations and discrimination much as religious minorities in India — especially Muslims — are increasingly subject to.
There is plenty India can and should learn from Israel, from its hi-tech and agriculture sectors to its spirit of innovation and a democratic system in which hundreds of thousands of Israelis can and do challenge their government without being called anti-national. Occupation and settler-led violence are not among the lessons India needs to pick up.
It took India more than two decades to convince much of the world to align with it in the fight against cross-border terrorism. Risking some of that goodwill by conflating India’s challenge with that of Israel would be a mistake.
India is not Israel. It should not want to be Israel.
Charu Sudan Kasturi is a senior journalist who writes on foreign policy and international relations