Over the past several months, high profile leaders from the Indian Congress Party have issued statements or made comments about how Narendra Modi’s government has betrayed India’s anti-colonial history by remaining ‘silent’ on Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The accusation of ‘silence’ is a peculiar one, because it implies avoidance, or passivity. But India hasn’t been a passive spectator to the genocide. It has charted a new path and cultivated closer ties with Israel. But beyond the repeated accusation of ‘silence’, many of the statements from Congress leaders, including Sonia Gandhi, have been disingenuous at best. In her latest, titled: ‘India’s muted voice, its detachment with Palestine,’ Mrs. Gandhi adds a new level of absurdity that cannot go by unchallenged.
Mrs. Gandhi starts off her piece referring to the move by several nations to recognize Palestinian statehood.
Even a casual observer of history would know that statehood as presented in its current form won’t do much for the Palestinians. Moreover, the countries that are currently starting to recognize it are doing so symbolically. They are not making meaningful interventions when it comes to stopping the genocide.
India recognized Palestinian statehood decades ago (and still maintains the two state solution). Mrs. Gandhi zeroes in on the developments today as a means to both throw shade on western countries catching up to recognize statehood, and more importantly, to remind readers of India’s glorious past.
To substantiate her claim that India has always stood with the oppressed she refers to India’s history with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.
But her claim that “India raised the issue of Apartheid South Africa in the UN” even before Indian independence is not just false, it is fragrantly deceitful.
Yes, it’s true that the incoming Indian government did raise the issue of racism in South Africa at the United Nations in 1946, however it only focused on racism against Indian South Africans.
It did not raise racism as a matter facing the Black majority in South Africa.
Moreover, it should be noted that apartheid in South Africa as an institutionalized policy began in 1948 when the National Party took power.
This, however, does not stop Mrs. Gandhi from claiming that India stood up to apartheid even before [Indian] independence in 1947.
India did speak up about apartheid in 1948, and it was added to the complaint against racism in South Africa filed at the UN in 1952.
Now all of this may come across as a mistake; a simple error. It is not.
The claim is one of those strange lies Indian envoys around the world (Durban, Geneva, New York City) like to repeat to help boost its credentials as a historically ethical and moral actor that always stood up for the oppressed.
This myth of moral grandeur is central to Mrs. Gandhi’s argument, and the idea of Indian exceptionalism.
“In 1971, India intervened firmly to prevent genocide in what was then east Pakistan midwifing the birth of modern day Bangladesh”
In another passage, Mrs. Gandhi goes on to reinforce India’s role as protector; this time focusing on Bangladesh.
India and Pakistan did go to war in 1971 as Bangladeshi liberation fighters sought to establish their own dominion separate from West Pakistan.
At the time, India was led by Indira Gandhi (Sonia Gandhi’s late mother-in-law).
But did India intervene to end bloodshed or establish itself as the hegemon in the region?
It is widely known that Israel secretly provided weapons to Delhi (and evidently helped deliver Bangladesh into this world – to use Mrs. Gandhi’s analogy) during the war of 1971.
Three years earlier, Indira Gandhi helped set up a direct line between Mossad and RAW (India’s foreign intelligence agency) from her office.
Over the years, RAW has claimed it contributed to the creation of Bangladesh.
With Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina now out of power (she fled to India), it is possible more details will emerge about India’s so-called benevolence viz-a-viz Bangladesh.
“The world has been slow to respond, implicitly legitimizing Israeli actions”
Back to the genocide in Gaza, the world has been slow to respond, Mrs. Gandhi writes.
It would be more accurate to say that most of the world has stood by and watched the annihilation of a people over the past two years.
She adds that the world has “implicitly legitimized Israeli actions”.
But it is Mrs. Gandhi who has repeatedly condemned the Palestinian resistance, describing the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October as “absolutely horrific and totally unacceptable” and even in her latest article calling its attack “brutal and inhumane”.
It is through condemnations like these that Mrs Gandhi has not only ingratiated herself with the Israelis, but helped legitimize its actions against Palestinians in Gaza.
How did India become a country of such hate?
The Indian mainstream media and punditry class have been foaming at the mouth since the the incident on 22 April in Pahalgam, Indian-occupied Kashmir. Across the country, Muslims have found themselves in the crosshairs of a society baying for blood, and calling for revenge against Pakistan. When India began its airstrikes against Pakistan earlier this w…
Besides offering platitudes about ending silence or taking action, she has avoided the fact that when some states have attempted to take action against Israel – including the case of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – or the International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants issued for Netanyahu – it is the Indian state that has looked away.
On the ICJ case in The Hague, the Indian National Congress Party has not called upon Delhi to join the case.
She would know that joining the ICJ case would mean undercutting India’s close military and security ties with Israel.
And given that the ruling BJP has framed the relationship as fundamental and connected to the Hindu nationalist project, Congress would risk being seen as anti-national and could cost them domestically.
In fact, there is nothing that suggests her party would change or alter ties with Israel (besides speaking from both sides of the mouth).
On the arrest warrants issued by the ICC, the INC has not shown any keenness on his arrest either.
This could be because Mrs. Gandhi knows that both the ruling-BJP and Congress Party could be brought to book for crimes at the ICC for several crimes against humanity in India – be it crimes against Muslims in Gujarat, crimes against the Adivasi community in central India or crimes against Kashmiris.
“The Modi government’s response has been characterized by a profound silence and an abdication of both humanity and morality. Its actions appear to be driven primarily by the personal friendship between the Israeli premier and Mr. Modi rather than India’s constitutional values or strategic interests.”
Since the genocide began in October 2023, India has chosen to stand with Israel in word and in act.
It has sent combat drones, bombs, and other components; it has refused to endorse an arms embargo; it has also ignored the case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
These are not acts of silence. They are one of support and enablement.
A whole cabal of Indian companies are working with their Israeli counterparts – in military, agriculture, tech, education, and more.
Mrs. Gandhi’s diatribe is then, actually, very obfuscating.
Whereas she expresses pride in India’s stance on South Africa, and India’s recognition of Palestinian statehood, note that there is no call in her op-ed for India to dissociate itself from Israel or for Indian companies to halt their trade and exchanges.
In fact, she offers no vision as to how India should act.
The Ambanis and Israel
On July 12, the partial heir to the Ambani fortune, Anant Ambani, will marry Radhika Merchant in a lavish ceremony in Mumbai.
Instead she blames India’s purported inaction on Modi’s friendship with Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu.
By framing ‘India’s silence’ as one primarily connected to the unique friendship between Modi and Netanyahu, Mrs. Gandhi insinuates that the Indian state has been captured; she suggests there is a gulf between historic Indian values and Modi.
But there is little proof of this.
There haven’t been mass resignations in the foreign services or in government.
To not call on for India to end ties with Israel, Mrs. Gandhi admits that India-Israel ties are here to stay.
”Most fundamentally, India must not approach the issue of Palestine as merely a matter of foreign policy but as a test of India’s ethical and civilizational heritage.”
In one of her final passages, Mrs. Gandhi invokes India’s ‘civilizational heritage’ to argue why India should not remain ‘silent’ on Palestine.
By suggesting that India’s duty to Palestine is underpinned by a heritage outside of the foreign policy goals of the state, Mrs. Gandhi seeks to frame India as an exceptional nation with an inherently unique moral compass.
Not only is this, again, ahistorical – as India, the state – is only 78 years old – and has been mired in immense violence against its own people, and towards others (like Kashmiris), the decision to gently lean into a Hindu nationalist vocabulary tells us all that we require to know about how far right the Congress really is.
Moreover, to declare this a test of India’s character moves the focus away from Palestine and makes justice for Palestinians contingent on proving India’s adherence to a set of abstract, made-up, civilizational values that have nothing to do with standing in solidarity with the oppressed.
Here Mrs. Gandhi calls on India to look to its mythical past – its defacto Hindu self – to do the right thing.
Her attempt to invoke a depoliticized Hindu nationalism is neither here nor there.
India’s support for Israel during this genocide is not incidental or an oversight.
It is part of an effort to work with and learn from Israel to build an ethnonationalist state, in which certain groups are second class or expendable, and which laws are not equal for all.
India hasn’t lost its voice, or hasn’t been muted. It is speaking louder than ever.