By Dr. Josephine Varghese, Varkey Parakkal
On June 13, 2025, six months after voting in favor of a ceasefire, India abstained from Spain’s United Nations General Assembly resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. India was the only nation in South Asia, BRICS, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to abstain.The vote passed with a 4/5th majority, indicating Israel’s increasingly isolated position on the Gaza genocide.
This is not an insignificant shift. This is the fourth abstention since the beginning of Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, and it is a marked departure from India’s erstwhile commitment to the Palestinian struggle, which was rooted in solidarity between two peoples bound by a shared history of struggle against western imperialism.
Within a day of this resolution passing in the UN General Assembly, Israel attacked Iran. The attack happened while negotiations were ongoing between Iran and the US regarding Iran’s nuclear program, with a meeting scheduled for the next day.
India refused to condemn Israel’s attack, instead expressing “deep concern” and urging restraint from both sides. Shortly after this, India distanced itself from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s statement, which condemned Israel’s attack on Iran, indicating a shift in favor of Israel. Israel has, in the last two years, attacked Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and now Iran.
History of India’s foreign policy towards Palestine
As a newly independent state, in 1947, India voted against the “Partition of Palestine” resolution at the United Nations. At the time, India viewed the issue as a parallel struggle to its own, against the British empire. Gandhi had categorically stated that the state of Israel was an “imposition” on the Palestinian people with the aid of America, Britain, and “naked terrorism”. This stance was also reflective of the secular ideals that underpinned India’s own freedom struggle. The opposition to Israel was an opposition to the formation of a nation-state that had a religion as its national basis. These were hard-learned lessons from struggles against religious nationalisms ignited by Britain’s divide and rule policy in India. In 1988, India became the first non-Arab state to recognize the state of Palestine.
The signals of shift in Indian foreign policy began with the IMF-led economic reforms in the early 1990s. India established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992, under P. V. Narasimha Rao’s government. The relationship was strengthened as India became more deeply embedded in the neoliberal global economic system. This era marks the beginning of a shift in which principled positions started taking a back seat, with international alliances being shaped more by the “pragmatisms” of market relations. The Indian National Congress (INC)-led coalition governments from 2004 to 2014 increased trade and diplomatic ties. This period also saw the steady growth of military partnerships, with Israel eager to enter the market strapped with Western military technology. This period marks the beginning of the relative softening of India’s approach to Israel compared to previous decades.
After 2014, the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition governments (2014–2019; 2019–2024; 2024–present) continued to improve relations with Israel. Between 2019 and 2023 India accounted for 37% of Israel’s arms exports. Private players closely linked with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), such as the Adani Group, run a joint venture with Israel’s largest arms producer, Elbit Systems. Elbit’s Hermes 900 UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) which are used by the IDF, are produced in Hyderabad. The Adani group also holds 70% ownership of the strategically important Haifa port, which was recently struck by Iranian missiles.
The Zionist-Hindutva ideological alignment
Although trade relations improved under the Congress-led coalitions, the growing ideological alignment between India and Israel became apparent in the Narendra Modi – BJP era. In 2017, Modi became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Israel.
BJP’s Hindutva ideology has found a natural ally in Zionism. Both are grounded in exclusionary nationalisms and are united by the othering and vilification of minorities, especially Muslims. For the Sangh, Israel represents a successful model of a militarized, ethno-nationist state that suppresses dissent and claims civilizational primacy. This does not stop at the level of rhetoric, but is reinforced by shared counter-insurgency strategies, surveillance technologies, and legislative vocabulary.
In 2019, the Indian government passed a controversial Citizenship Amendment Act which provides a pathway for citizenship to refugees from several religious groups, except Muslims. A year before that, in 2018, Israel had passed a law that redefined the country as “the nation-state of the Jewish people”, centering Jewish ethno-nationalism and delegitimizing non-Jewish Israelis.
India’s growing alignment with Israel highlights the paradoxical nature of Hindutva’s so-called “de-colonization” project. While the Modi government aggressively renames roads, cities, and railway stations in its cosmetic purges, it is increasingly becoming an enabler of imperialist violence and settler-colonial brutality by moving closer to Israel and the West.
Despite being founded at the height of the Indian independence struggle in 1925, RSS was absent from the Indian independence struggle. So, it does not come as a surprise that under an RSS-linked government, India is moving closer to Western powers, even as they carry out a colonial genocide in Gaza.
Recent shift towards the West
The rift between BRICS nations and the West is becoming more apparent, and a New Cold War is developing between the US and China, as evidenced in the trade wars and the increased military encirclement of China by the United States.
In this context, the West has made an effort to improve relations with India, pitting it as a “democratic” ally against “totalitarian” China. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad) between India, the US, Australia, and Japan, and the recent renaming of the “Asia-Pacific” to the “Indo Pacific” within Western foreign policy discourse are indications of this.
The New Cold War, however, comes at a time when the West is declining in power and legitimacy across the world. Inequality, poverty, homelessness, and addictions are on the rise across most western nations. Meanwhile, China is surging in areas such as technology, defense, public transport, infrastructure, and renewable energy. With China as an alternative, many developing nations are gradually distancing themselves from neocolonial instruments like the IMF, in favor of loans from China and Russia, which do not come with policy directions such as austerity and deregulation.
The United States and its allies are currently engaged in a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, and recently struck Iran without provocation. Both Russia and Iran are India’s traditional allies, whereas the United States has been an adversary, through their sponsorship of Pakistan’s military and its clandestine terrorist activities in the region. The terrorists involved in the recent Pahalgam attacks, for instance, were found with NATO arms from the 1980s, which potentially link them to the US-funded extremist militias waging proxy war against the USSR in Afghanistan during the cold war.
At least part of the reason for India’s recent abstentions on Gaza in the United Nations appear to be bids to win the favor of Israel and the United States. This position marks India’s growing moral and political isolation within organizations such as BRICS, the SCO, and the global south in general.
Tilting towards historical adversaries
The Gaza genocide is an unconscionable act of collective violence which is turning public opinion across the world against Israel and its allies. Moving closer to Israel during this period is akin to jumping on a sinking ship, and is nothing short of self-sabotage.
India is now tilting towards its historical adversaries – the United States and its allies – once complicit in the genocide in Bangladesh, and instrumental in empowering the Pakistani military at the cost of its civilian politics. This realignment seems shortsighted, with serious consequences for regional stability.
The plight of nations allied to the US in their proxy wars must serve as a warning to India. For example, Ukraine in the ongoing proxy war against Russia, and Pakistan during the Cold War and later in the US “war on terror”. India should be wary of aligning with the United States in their cold war against China.
Yet, India seems to be responding positively to Western efforts to pit India against its neighbors and allies.
During the previous Trump term, India responded to US pressure, agreeing to halt oil imports from Iran, who Washington sought to isolate with crippling sanctions. Earlier this year, four Indian companies were sanctioned by the US for trading with Iran. India has stopped oil imports from Iran, while nearly doubling imports from the US.
In May, Russia held Victory Day celebrations marking 80 years since the USSR troops defeated Nazi Germany. While major global leaders like Xi Jinping participated, India was conspicuous with its absence. India only sent a junior minister, as tensions between India and Pakistan were on the rise at the time. Some experts speculate that this signals a growing rift between the two traditional allies. Meanwhile, the Indian government accepted a last-minute invitation to attend the G7 in Alberta, Canada, as an observer.
Recently, India stood as the sole opposition to the idea of a BRICS currency as an alternative to the US dollar as the reserve currency. India’s move appears to be a gesture aligned with Washington’s expectations, if not demands. This was made apparent when the reports of these discussions prompted Trump to issue a warning of “100% tariffs” on any country trying to replace the dollar.
Way forward
India’s change of stance on a ceasefire in Gaza, at a time when it has been subjected to 20 months of genocidal violence is a matter of moral depravity and embarrassment for millions of Indians who cherish the ethos of India’s independence struggle. India must uphold its core values of anti colonialism, secularism, and solidarity with oppressed peoples which shaped who we are as a nation.
Many analysts now view the US as an empire in decline. A course-correction in India’s foreign policy is therefore warranted. Moving on from the current global order which profits from war, disease, and environmental destruction, India should play a proactive leadership role in the construction of an alternative global order rooted in mutual cooperation, sovereignty, and a shared prosperous future.
Dr. Josephine Varghese is a Lecturer at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Varkey Parakkal is a PhD scholar at Jamia Milia Islamia in New Delhi, India.
This article is republished from Peoples Dispatch under a Creative Commons license.
