New Delhi, India – At a non-public occasion in November 2019, Sandeep Chakravorty, India’s then consul common in New York, was caught on digital camera calling for New Delhi to undertake an “Israeli mannequin” in Indian-administered Kashmir.
On the time, thousands and thousands in Kashmir had been already reeling beneath a crippling army lockdown and communication blackout: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu majoritarian authorities had stripped the area of its semi-autonomous standing months earlier, jailing 1000’s of individuals, together with the area’s political leaders – even those that are pro-India.
The senior Indian diplomat was musing about Israel’s far-right settlements within the occupied Palestinian territory, in reference to the resettling of 1000’s of Kashmiri Hindus, who needed to flee their homeland in a 1989 exodus after an armed insurrection towards Indian rule began within the Himalayan area.
“It has occurred within the Center East. If the Israeli individuals can do it, we are able to additionally do it,” Chakravorty informed the gathering, including that the Modi authorities was “decided” to take action.
Six years later, Chakravorty’s phrases ring more true than ever. As Modi prepares for his second go to to Israel beginning on February 25, the 2 international locations are certain by extra than simply friendship, commerce and army partnerships – they’re more and more, say some analysts, additionally joined on the hip in sure aspects of their fashions of governance.
Below Modi, India has overtly embraced Israel – on the expense of its longstanding assist for the Palestinian trigger, say analysts. However New Delhi, they add, additionally seems to have imported a number of components of Israel’s safety and administrative method to Palestinians, and unleashed them into its home insurance policies since Modi took energy in 2014.
‘Hostile topics beneath occupation’
On the coronary heart of those deepening ties, say analysts, is a shared ideological imaginative and prescient.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Celebration (BJP) has roots in a philosophy, Hindutva, that seeks to show India right into a Hindu nation and a pure homeland for Hindus anyplace on the planet – just like Israel’s view of itself as a Jewish homeland.
“The India-Israel relationship beneath Modi is a bond between two ideologies that see themselves as civilisational initiatives and Muslims as demographic and safety threats,” stated Azad Essa, creator of the 2023 ebook Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel.
“The friendship works as a result of they’ve related supremacist ends,” Essa informed Al Jazeera. “Below Modi, India and Israel turned strategic companions, and Delhi started to see Israel as a template and as key to India’s transfer towards turning into an important energy.”
One of the obvious examples of India borrowing from Israel is the so-called “bulldozer justice” coverage of Modi’s get together.
Over the previous decade, authorities in a number of BJP-ruled states have demolished the houses and retailers of lots of of Muslims and in addition razed a number of mosques. These demolitions have been carried out, for probably the most half, with out authorized notices being issued to occupants or homeowners of the institutions. They’ve often adopted spiritual tensions within the specific neighbourhood, or protests towards Modi authorities insurance policies – and generally, after only a native argument that had taken on spiritual overtones.
One of many BJP’s high leaders, Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, is now identified by his supporters as “Bulldozer Baba” (Daddy Bulldozer).
It’s a leaf straight out of Israel’s playbook. Israel has demolished 1000’s of Palestinian houses within the occupied West Financial institution and East Jerusalem and displaced their residents, making approach for unlawful Israeli settlements. And through Israel’s genocidal warfare on Gaza, nearly all the Palestinian territory’s houses, places of work, hospitals, faculties, universities and locations of worship have been destroyed or badly broken.
“The Hindu nationalist perception system is steeped in affinity for Zionism and Israel,” stated Sumantra Bose, a political scientist whose work focuses on the intersection of nationalism and battle in South Asia. “Generations of [Rashtriya SwayamSevak Sangh, the ideological fountainhead of the BJP] cadres, Modi included, have been indoctrinated on this ideology and have imbibed the love of Israel.”
The nation-state of Israel, which Bose characterised as majoritarian and supremacist, is the mannequin Hindu nationalists are implementing in India within the Modi period, he argued. “The Israeli splendid finds reflection in lots of insurance policies and measures of Modi’s authorities.”
Muslims in India have confronted a spread of social boycotts lately. It’s more and more tough to lease a house, Muslim kids typically face bullying and harassment at college, and the neighborhood has principally fled numerous villages after assaults.
In November 2024, India’s high courtroom dominated that authorities authorities can’t demolish any property – even when belonging to individuals accused of a criminal offense – with out following due authorized course of. Nonetheless, on the bottom, such demolitions proceed.
Essa, the creator of Hostile Homelands, stated each India and Israel use the bulldozing of houses and properties “to focus on and punish sure populations and underscore a political message to communities, together with who might belong to the nation and who’s an outsider”.
Overarching shadows of safety doctrine
On the forefront of India-Israel bilateral ties are their defence relations and an overlapping safety doctrine. India is the most important purchaser of Israeli weapons, pumping in billions of {dollars} in purchases.
India has additionally equipped weapons to Israel amid its ongoing genocidal warfare on Gaza. Israel has offered joint coaching periods for Indian troopers with the Israeli military, alongside a big selection of Israeli programs, together with UAVs, air defence programs, and superior radar and surveillance know-how.
However amongst advocates of a deeply securitised Indian state, Israel has lengthy had an enchantment that extends far past its provide of superior weapons.
After gunmen killed 26 civilians within the vacationer city of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22, 2025, India bombed a number of areas in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, accusing Islamabad of being behind the assault on vacationers.
Pakistan, which denied any position, hit again, firing missiles and drones because the nuclear-armed neighbours engaged in an intense four-day air warfare.
Throughout that interval, debates and exhibits on a number of Indian TV information channels had been rife with references to Israel after the assault in Kashmir. Arnab Goswami, an anchor, said: “22 April is to India what 7 October was to the Israelis,” referring to the day when Hamas fighters attacked southern Israel in 2023. A visitor on the programme stated, “We demand we flip Pakistan into Gaza.”
A retired high policeman, who was posted in Indian-administered Kashmir, informed a Hindi newspaper that “we should reply like Israel.”
Amongst Israel’s most controversial safety exports to India is the subtle spyware and adware, Pegasus, made by the Israeli software program agency NSO Group.
Siddharth Varadarajan, cofounder of The Wire, a nonprofit information web site publishing from New Delhi, was one of many journalists focused by the spyware and adware that an Israeli agency reportedly bought to the Modi authorities beneath an undisclosed defence deal.
“[The Israeli spyware] turns an iPhone into a private spying gadget,” Varadarajan informed Al Jazeera, recounting his expertise, including that it might secretly report and transmit video and pictures.
“This Israeli mannequin of utilizing spyware and adware to regulate any attainable enviornment of opposition or criticism is one thing that the Modi authorities has adopted and embraced wholeheartedly,” he stated.
India’s Supreme Court docket appointed an knowledgeable committee, which discovered malware in some telephones however stated it couldn’t conclusively attribute it to Pegasus, citing restricted cooperation from the Modi authorities.
Varadarajan stated that even when some repressive concepts should not solely Israeli, the Indian authorities has been “a cheerful adopter”. India ranks on the high amongst democracies that impose web restrictions, and the nation has slid in a number of democracy indices lately.
Referring to the overlapping patterns in India and Israel’s insurance policies, Varadarajan stated, “It’s a nice pity that strategies that the Israelis use towards occupied persons are being utilized by the Modi authorities towards its personal residents.”
‘Deal with populations like exterior threats’
To make certain, India has lengthy battled a sequence of inner safety challenges of its personal, because it has tried to unify and maintain collectively a big and numerous landmass: Separatist actions have ranged from its northeast to Kashmir. In 1966, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered helicopter gunships to bomb elements of the northeastern state of Mizoram to quell a insurgent motion.
Different areas, particularly India’s deep south, have lengthy frightened in regards to the Hindi-speaking north making an attempt to dominate them culturally – this has led to sporadic tussles over language and sources.
However amid all of that, “what Israel has achieved is assist present India with the know-how and experience to grow to be extra oppressive, authoritarian, and militarised, like Israel,” Essa informed Al Jazeera. “And these strategies are all-encompassing: They deal with populations as exterior threats.”
Nowhere is that clearer than in Indian-administered Kashmir.
One of many world’s most militarised zones, Kashmir has since August 2019 been stripped of not simply its earlier semi-autonomous standing, however of most democratic energy – as a area – that different provincial authorities have. The Modi authorities’s transfer to kill political dialogue or diplomatic engagement with regards to Kashmir additionally mirrors Israel’s method, stated Bose, additionally a professor of worldwide politics at Krea College, in India.
“It echoes Netanyahu’s method of rejection and non-engagement with the Palestinians and the unique reliance on army energy,” he added.
To make certain, Kashmir and Palestine have a really distinct previous and current. Nonetheless, India’s method to Kashmir more and more carries parallels with Israel’s therapy of the West Financial institution, stated Essa.
“There’s the militarisation, inhabitants administration, and the authorized regimes that permit each India and Israel to conduct their occupations and keep each day management over the individuals – from checkpoints to raids and communication blackouts,” Essa informed Al Jazeera.
“Just like the occupied West Financial institution, India maintains Kashmir in a state of just about everlasting emergency, the place army presence, surveillance, and extraordinary authorized powers form on a regular basis life,” he argued. “And just like the West Financial institution, each day governance in Kashmir is outsourced to native directors with restricted actual energy.”
