The Thawing of Israel’s Relationship with India

Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power has caused consternation in some parts of the Western world. The Biden administration has expressed its concern about several of Netanyahu’s coalition partners, and Britain admonished the new government to respect minorities, implying that it suspects it will do the opposite. While most European countries have been quieter about the new Israeli cabinet, Netanyahu’s unpopularity in the western half of the continent is well known.

India, by contrast, has greeted Netanyahu with equanimity. For a country that once stood out for its frosty attitude toward the Jewish state, this is a remarkable turnaround. That attitude dates back to the 1950s, when India became a founding member of the Nonaligned Movement that claimed neutrality during the cold war. Israelis and Westerners alike noticed, however, that the only sound more deafening than India’s condemnation of Britain and Israel in the 1956 Suez war was its silence as the Soviets crushed the Hungarian uprising at the same time. The nadir of Indo-Israeli relations came in 1975, when New Delhi voted in favor of the infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution in the United Nations General Assembly. Relations have since improved, particularly under India’s nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s and Netanyahu’s hardnosed politics and close personal relationship led many commentators to see the two leaders as foundational members of a nationalist, anti-liberal alignment that in some fevered imaginations includes Vladimir Putin.

These concerns are overblown, to a sometimes absurd degree, but there are important and revealing similarities between Zionism and Hindu nationalism that merit attention. Neither movement sees the world precisely the way that most Americans do, and both will strongly affect American prosperity and security in the years to come. Israel is already one of the closest of U.S. allies, and its significance to American foreign policy is likely to increase as the Middle East becomes more unsettled. Of equal importance is its tech sector, which plays an outsized role in the global economy. India is part of the Quad partnership—along with the U.S., Japan, and Australia—in the Indo-Pacific, and is among the major powers that can contribute to maintaining stability in Asia and constraining Chinese ambitions. In both Israel and India, moreover, nationalism has emerged as a major political force, and Americans who understand their versions of nationalism will be better prepared for the world around them.