Hindu nationalist groups frame Israel’s war on Palestinians as a parallel to India’s struggle against “Islamic terrorism.” Their narrative posit Israel as a civilisational ally, a “natural friend” in a global battle against a common religious adversary—further cementing the ideological bridge between Zionism and Hindutva in the popular imagination.

By Arkadeep Goswami

On April 9, 2025, India and Israel signed a Comprehensive Agriculture Agreement in New Delhi. At face value, the deal appeared innocuous—an agreement focused on water-saving irrigation techniques, improved post-harvest management, and cutting-edge seed development. But to stop at that would be to fundamentally misread the moment. This agreement is not merely agricultural cooperation; it is another step in a deeper and far more dangerous ideological and strategic convergence. What we are witnessing is the Israelisation of the Indian state.

This is not just a metaphorical alignment, nor a rhetorical flourish. It is the embedding of an authoritarian template—refined through decades of experience of the Israeli occupation, military innovation, and nationalist propaganda—into the Indian body politic. It affects not just our foreign policy or military doctrine but reaches into the heart of Indian democracy, eroding its secular foundations, pluralistic ethos, and constitutional architecture.

The Arms Bazaar as Ideological Highway

India has, over the past two decades, emerged as Israel’s largest defense customer. Between 2014 and 2021, 42 percent of all Israeli arms exports went to India, making the India-Israel bilateral defense relationship one of the most intimate in the world. India now has Israeli-made UAVs like the Heron and Searcher, surface-to-air missile systems like Barak-8, airborne warning and control systems (AWACS), precision-guided bombs like the Spice-2000, and Spike anti-tank missiles.

What makes this partnership dangerous is not just its scale but its depth. Joint ventures between Israeli defense firms and Indian conglomerates like Adani, Tata, etc—often under the euphemistic “Make in India” banner—have ensured that Israeli strategic doctrines are now domestically reproduced, tested, and celebrated. India no longer merely imports Israeli weapons; it integrates Israeli logic. That logic is one of overwhelming force, pre-emptive strikes, targeted assassinations, surveillance-based counterinsurgency, and the securitisation of civilian spaces.

Indian military exercises now routinely simulate Israeli urban warfare scenarios, including house-to-house raids and civilian containment strategies.

Surveillance State: From Palestine to Parliament

The Pegasus spyware scandal was a watershed. Developed by Israel’s NSO Group, Pegasus turned smartphones into portable bugs, tracking journalists, opposition politicians, activists, and lawyers. In a healthy democracy, such revelations would prompt resignations and criminal investigations. In Modi’s India, it generated silence from the top and apathy in institutions meant to protect illegal state surveillance of citizens.

The new battle-ready surveillance model, perfected by Israel in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, is built on total information dominance. Facial recognition cameras, biometric databases, predictive policing algorithms, and mass data collection constitute the architecture of “pre-emptive governance”—where dissent is not only predicted but punished. This model is now being aggressively replicated in India, especially in conflict zones like Kashmir and urban protest spaces.

The Delhi Police’s use of facial recognition software during the anti-CAA protests or the expanded reach of the Aadhaar database beyond welfare into policing are not isolated developments. They are the Indianisation of Israeli surveillance policies, enabled by shared vendors, mutual training exercises, and a deepening exchange of internal security paradigms.

Ideological Affinity: Hindutva Meets Zionism

More than hardware and technology, what cements the Indo-Israeli partnership is ideological kinship. Hindutva and Zionism—especially in their right-wing, ethno-religious incarnations—are mirror images across different geographies.

Zionism, particularly in its revisionist form articulated by Ze’ev Jabotinsky and later institutionalised by Menachem Begin’s Likud party, asserts a Jewish homeland secured through force, immune to compromise, and defined against the “demographic threat” of Palestinians. Hindutva, articulated by V.D. Savarkar and nourished by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), envisions India as a Hindu Rashtra where Muslims are at best tolerated and at worst delegitimised as anti-national.

Both ideologies feed off historical trauma or myths—Holocaust for Zionists, Partition and medieval invasions for Hindutvavadis. Both require a perpetual enemy—internal and external—to justify exceptional laws, extraordinary violence, and mass suspicion. In both cases, nationalism is not civic but ethno-religious; not inclusive but purifying. This shared worldview explains policy parallels. Israel’s 2018 Nation-State Basic Law formally declared the country a Jewish state, demoting Arabic and legalising discrimination. India’s 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act introduced religion into the citizenship matrix for the first time, explicitly excluding Muslim refugees. Demographic engineering—through settlements in Palestine, and domicile law changes in Kashmir—serves the same function: to change facts on the ground in favour of the majority.

Kashmir: The West Bank of South Asia

The most chilling parallel is Kashmir. Following the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, India enforced an unprecedented lockdown, arrested over 7,000 people—including minors—and imposed a communications blackout that lasted months. Kashmiri leaders were detained without trial. Journalists were threatened, newspapers censored, and NGOs banned.

All of this is drawn from the Israeli playbook in the West Bank: administrative detention, movement restrictions, digital surveillance, and demographic manipulation. The Indian government even sent bureaucrats from across states to “promote development” in Kashmir—a replica of the settler outreach programs promoted in illegal Israeli settlements.

In both cases, the purpose is not just occupation but normalisation. The occupied territory is to be transformed—not just controlled but incorporated. Dissent must not only be crushed; it must be delegitimised as irrational, foreign-backed, or terroristic. The enemy is not a human being with political demands but an obstacle to development and peace.

Likud and BJP: Brothers in Arms

It is no coincidence that the BJP and Likud share warm fraternal ties. Both were born out of reactionary nationalism—BJP from the RSS network that admired Nazi Germany and Likud from the Revisionist Zionist movement that glorified military solutions to political problems (one of their extreme forefathers Stern Gang even reached out to Nazi Germany during World War II!).

Benjamin Netanyahu and Narendra Modi have not only exchanged state visits and economic deals but rhetorical tactics. Both have weaponised historical grievances, demonised minorities, eroded judicial independence, and captured the media. Both project themselves as defenders of ancient civilizations under siege. Both of them believe that the elections are won not just through votes but through control of narrative, suppression of dissent, and invocation of national humiliation or glory.

Institutional Capture and Cultural Rewriting

The alignment is not superficial. It is embedded within institutions. Curricula are rewritten to reflect civilisational myths and erase histories of pluralism and resistance. In India, Mughal history is being systematically vilified; in Israel, Palestinian presence is reduced to a “security problem.” Museums, public broadcasters, and think tanks echo the state’s ideological line. Independent judiciary is hollowed out through appointments, pressure, or political interference.

This isn’t accidental. India has hosted visits by Israeli educational consultants, held bilateral cultural forums, and signed numerous memorandums for “civic education” exchange. Even the propaganda techniques—viral WhatsApp disinformation, media echo chambers, bots amplifying hate speech—are replicated across borders.

From Fields to Frontlines: Agricultural Diplomacy as Political Symbol

The April 2025 agriculture agreement is just the latest link in a chain that began in 2006 with the Indo-Israel Agricultural Project. Israel helped India set up over 30 Centres of Excellence in various states, ostensibly to improve farming techniques. But these centres also serve diplomatic, commercial, and ideological functions.

These are sites where Israeli firms access Indian markets, where Israeli agronomists shape rural policy, and where high-tech agriculture becomes a metaphor for a high-tech state—disciplined, militarised, and hierarchical. The optics is powerful: India learning from Israel, not just in science but in statecraft.

Foreign Policy Realignment: Goodbye Non-Alignment

India once led the Non-Aligned Movement, a coalition that championed anti-colonial struggles and Third World solidarity. It was among the first nations to recognise the Palestine Liberation Organization. But in practice, that solidarity has evaporated. Despite occasionally voting for Palestine in symbolic UN resolutions, India has joined the I2U2 grouping with Israel, the UAE, and the US—an axis that advances techno-security partnerships and marginalises the Palestinian cause. It abstains on UN votes condemning Israeli aggression, hosts Israeli arms expos, and downplays atrocities in Gaza. Modi’s silence during Israel’s 2023 invasion of Gaza, and the continuing Genocide, is deafening.

This new foreign policy prioritises arms, trade, and surveillance over solidarity, morality, or international law. India’s relations with Iran have suffered. So have its credentials among the Global South. Pakistan, meanwhile, uses India’s Israel embrace to solidify ties with Turkey, Malaysia, and China.

Zionism as Role Model: Dangerous Cultural Shift

Indian politicians, journalists, and ex-generals now openly admire Israeli policies. TV debates praise Israel for its “decisive leadership.” Police officers cite Israeli tactics in handling urban protests. Zionism has moved from marginal fascination to mainstream inspiration in right-wing circles.

The surge in Israel’s popularity among right-wing Hindus is no longer anecdotal—it is now empirically evident. A 2021 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 54% of Hindus in India held a favorable view of Israel, compared to 28% among Muslims. Among BJP supporters, this favorability rose even higher, with over 60% expressing admiration for the Israeli state and its leadership. Social media analysis by the digital forensics platform Alt News revealed that pro-Israel hashtags such as #IndiaStandsWithIsrael and #IsraelUnderFire regularly trend during Israeli military operations in Gaza, often pushed by verified accounts linked to the Sangh Parivar ecosystem. Hindu nationalist groups like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Hindu Sena have publicly organised rallies in support of Israel, framing its war on Palestinians as a parallel to India’s struggle against “Islamic terrorism.” This narrative posit Israel as a civilisational ally, a “natural friend” in a global battle against a common religious adversary—further cementing the ideological bridge between Zionism and Hindutva in the popular imagination.

The implications are terrifying. A polity that emulates apartheid policies, occupation strategies, and demographic manipulation will soon lose any claim to moral authority or constitutional democracy.

The Economic Convergence: Militarised Development

The emulation is not limited to politics. India’s economic model is increasingly one of militarised capitalism—where defense and surveillance are engines of growth, not costs. Public funds flow to mega infrastructure projects and defense startups, often linked to private cronies. Welfare, labour rights, and environmental safeguards are sacrificed at the altar of “strategic development.”

In Israel, the military-industrial complex underwrites much of the high-tech sector. India’s dream of becoming a $10 trillion economy increasingly hinges on the same formula: surveillance, crony capitalism and militarised innovation.

Conclusion: A Crossroads, Not a Destiny

Israel’s policies toward Palestinians are now widely condemned as apartheid. To emulate that model is to abandon India’s constitutional promise. Political mimicry in the name of collaboration must stop. Moreover, from 1947, India has been firm in its opposition to the colonial Zionist entity, and support towards Palestinian cause. We, the people of India, must reclaim that once more.  India must ask: Does it want to be a state defined by fear, exclusion, and surveillance? Or a republic committed to liberty, justice, and fraternity? The choice is still ours—but every agreement, silence, and emulation brings us closer to the precipice. Let the agricultural agreement of April 2025 serve not as a blueprint but as a cautionary tale. What we choose to sow today will determine what we reap tomorrow.