On Israel’s Genocide in Gaza, Hindutva Has Failed the Test of Humanism

India’s silence on Palestine and Hindutva’s pro-Israel shift signal a sharp change in foreign and domestic politics.

As the war in Gaza rages on, India's muted response signals a deeper shift in its foreign policy, marked by the rise of Hindutva within its own borders.

(Photo: iStock)

The 20^th century was a century of decolonisation. India, both during and after its own freedom struggle, steadfastly supported others who had become victims of colonial subjugation. The founding fathers of independent India—Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, and others—regarded India’s solidarity with other nations fighting for freedom and justice as our international duty and an obligation to humanity.

It is, thus, an undeniable truth that a large part of the international community’s respect and admiration for independent India stemmed from the organic bond our leaders established between our own struggle for freedom from British colonialism and similar anti-colonial aspirations of people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It is also true that India’s support to Palestinians’ struggle for freedom and statehood began much before 1947, and persisted unwaveringly thereafter. For a long time, there was broad and strong national consensus in India over the cause of Palestinian freedom.

The BJP veteran Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who became India’s external minister in Morarji Desai’s government in 1977, categorically stated that Israel was the aggressor and Palestinians were its victims, and demanded that Israel must vacate Palestinian land which it illegally occupied after the 1967 Arab-Israel war.

India was among the first to recognise Palestine in 1988, along with over 80 other countries. Our support to Palestine continued even after India established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992.

Why Hindutva Supporters See Netanyahu as a Role Model

Nevertheless, there has been considerable dilution in this support since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014. Today’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sees the Palestinians through the Hindu-Muslim binary. Since Israel is the only nation in the world that supports ‘Hindutva’, Modi backers show no sympathy for “Muslim” Palestinians. This is evident from the fact that the BJP, and the Sangh Parivar ecosystem, have turned a blind eye to them at a time when worldwide protests against Israel’s indescribable inhumanity against the dying, starving, brutalised, bombed, and ethnically cleansed Palestinians in Gaza—their own homeland—are rising like a crescendo.

The ruling establishment has also ensured that there are no protests in India against Israel’s mass killings of Palestinians in Gaza. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, fully supported by the US, has used the terrorist attack by Hamas on 7 October 2023 as a pretext to destroy all of Gaza, free it of Palestinian population, and annex it to be made a part of ‘Greater Israel’.

US President Donald Trump has publicly stated that he would like Gaza, minus its own rightful inhabitants, to be turned into a international luxury resort.

Many BJP supporters, for whom Netanyahu is a hero, are backing him as they endorse the same policy for India in dealing with Pakistan and its own minorities.

The Story of Global Moral Crisis

The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres bemoaned on 29 July: "Palestinians in Gaza are enduring a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions; this is not a warning, it is a reality unfolding before our eyes.” He called it a moral crisis of the global conscience.

"Israel is using barbarity in Gaza. ChiIdren are being crushed by hunger. It must stop."

Pope Leo XIV

Huge protests have erupted in European cities, forcing even those countries that have dragged their feet so far to pledge support to Palestinians’ demand for a separate statehood. French President Emmanuel Macron has said Paris would officially recognise the Palestinian government at the UN session in September. Along with Saudi Arabia, France held a preparatory conference at the UN last week with the goal of recognising Palestinian statehood and achieving an end to Israel’s war on Gaza.

Britain, seen by critics as the nation that first rendered the Palestinians stateless, is also under intense public pressure to end its blind support to Israel. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced that the UK would recognise the state of Palestine by September unless Israel takes “substantive steps” to end its war on Gaza, halts plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, and supports a political path towards a two-state solution.

To their enduring credit, Spain, Norway, and Ireland formally recognised a Palestinian state in May.

As of now, most countries in the UN—147 out of 193—have already recognised a Palestinian state, which currently has observer status at the UN. Last September, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful.

All this shows the tide is turning against Israel. Both Tel Aviv and its backers in Washington DC are getting isolated internationally on the Palestinian issue. But the Trump administration has become deaf to both international opinion and the Palestinians’ cry for justice.

In yet another show of big-power arrogance, it went a step further last week in backing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

It imposed sanctions against members of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization, accusing them of supporting “terrorism” and seeking to “destabilise peace efforts”. If anyone wanted to see an example of a lie impersonating as truth, here it is.

Bombay High Court’s Bizarre Order

It is against this backdrop that we should see how the voice of Indian supporters of Palestinian freedom is being systematically suppressed. A case in point is the recent bizarre order by the Bombay High Court denying their Constitutional right to voice their solidarity through a peaceful public protest.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) wanted to hold a protest at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan against Israel’s relentless war on Palestinians in Gaza and its deliberate policy of starving the survivors. The Government of Maharashtra has designated a small corner Azad Maidan—a place deeply associated with India's freedom struggle—for citizens to hold protests and demonstrations. What the CPI(M) had planned was perfectly legal. Yet, Mumbai Police denied permission to the party’s activists.

“Our country has enough issues. We don’t want anything like this. You are all short-sighted. You are looking at issues in Gaza and Palestine. Look at your own country. Be patriots. This is not patriotism.”

Justices Ravindra Ghuge and Gautam Ankhad, Bombay High Court

The Lordships further observed: “The party should take up civic issues in India. You are an organisation registered in India. You could take up issues like garbage dumping, pollution, sewerage, flooding. You are not protesting on those but on something happening thousands of miles outside the country.”

Then came the reasoning behind the court’s denial of permission to hold anti-Israel protests. The foreign policy of the country differs from the stance the CPI(M) has taken, the judges said. They warned the party of potential diplomatic consequences of such protests. “You don’t know the dust it could kick up… getting on to the Palestine side or the Israel side. Why do you want to do this? It’s obvious, going by the party you represent that you don’t understand what this could do to the foreign affairs of the country.”

“Don’t raise your voice on what is happening thousands of miles outside India. Stick to local municipal issues like garbage dumping.” Never before has a High Court admonished a party that has won several elections and held government in such a way.

‘Amar Naam, Tomar Naam, Vietnam Vietnam’

A sharp question needs to be posed to the honourable judges. Respected Lordships, have you ever heard this slogan: ‘Amar Naam Tomar Naam Vietnam Vietnam'? Translated from Bengali, it means ‘My Name, Your Name, Vietnam Vietnam'.

This powerful slogan was chanted by tens of thousands of protesters not only in Kolkata, but in many parts of India as an expression of solidarity with the Vietnamese people during the 20-year war (1955-75) waged by the US. It was not just the Left parties, who were not in power in West Bengal then, that organised these protests. Supporters of the then ruling party, Congress, and several other parties also held rallies against America’s war on innocent Vietnamese.

Did any government in India at the time, central or state, stop Indian citizens from holding these protests? Did any court in India deny permission to hold such peaceful protests?

Vietnam War is not the only example of the courts in India upholding citizens’ right to hold peaceful protests. There have been innumerable such protests in independent India. When the now-extinct Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, supporters of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which eventually made way for the BJP, and Swatantra Party held public protests.

When 9/11 terror attacks by Al Qaeda targeted the US in 2001, Indians protested spontaneously. Likewise, when the US under President George W Bush attacked Iraq in 2003 to hunt for “weapons of mass destruction” that are yet to be found, there were demonstrations in New Delhi, Mumbai, and other Indian cities.

Indeed, people’s outrage was one of the reasons why the Vajpayee government introduced a resolution in Parliament deploring the US-led attack on Iraq. The resolution was unanimously adopted by all parties, including the BJP.

When the inhuman apartheid regime in South Africa was still alive, Indians belonging to almost all political parties held protest meetings, showed solidarity with the anti-apartheid struggle, and demanded the release of Nelson Mandela and his comrades from prolonged imprisonment.

Similarly, there used to be peace marches on Hiroshima Day (6 August) every year in many Indian cities demanding immediate and universal nuclear disarmament. I have myself taken part in several such marches and meetings in Mumbai’s Azad Maidan.

When the Judiciary Itself Muzzles Article 19 of the Constitution

Such protests were routinely held in the past because it was, and is, a right enshrined in the Constitution. The learned judges of the Bombay High Court need to be schooled that Article 19, specifically clauses 1(a) and 1(b), guarantees the fundamental right to citizens to exercise freedom of speech and expression and the right to assemble peacefully and without arms. Empowered by these rights, our people have shown solidarity with victims of war and injustice around the world, and sometimes even expressed dissent over the Indian government’s policies and positions (such as when the Congress governments did not outrightly condemn the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia).

Now, let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that what the two judges—remember, they are high court judges, not those representing the lowest rung of the judiciary—said is a fringe opinion in the Indian establishment today.

The stark and dark truth is that it is indeed the mainstream belief of the ruling establishment. If you question the genocide of Palestinians by Netanyahu’s government, it is considered as lack of patriotism.

It is even viewed as anti-national because you are questioning India’s foreign policy of not criticising Israel. You are questioning India’s Prime Minister who regards Israel’s prime minister as his personal friend.

In short, criticism of the government has come to mean criticism of the nation.

Anti-Israel protests are disallowed not just by the police, not just by the high court (in the case of Mumbai), but also by the ecosystem of the ruling establishment itself.

Consider what happened in the national capital on 27 July: A group of protesters gathered at the Nehru Place market with placards condemning the violence in Gaza, expressing solidarity with Palestinians, and condemning the Indian government’s “cooperation with Israel”, as evidenced by its abstention on UN's resolutions against Israeli violence that have received support from most countries. The group included noted personalities such as Jean Dreze, a globally renowned economist.

In no time, there was a counter-demonstration by pro-government Hindutva supporters, who questioned the protesters’ “patriotism”. As per media reports, they chanted, ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’. They also said: “Ye log Bangladesh mein Hinduon ke paksh mein kabhi kyon nahi bolte? Israel mein jo atankwadi hamla hua tha, woh bhool gaye? (Why don’t these people ever speak about Hindus being killed in Bangladesh? Have they forgotten about the terrorist attack on Israel?)

The killing of Hindus in Bangladesh must be condemned. The barbaric terror attack by Hamas on innocent Israeli citizens must also be condemned. It is also true that some of the groups that are concerned over what is happening to Palestinians do not show the same concern over what is happening to Hindus in Bangladesh or what happened to the victims of Hamas.

But why allow this false equivalence to obscure the enormity of Israel’s crime in Gaza?

Parliament Must Debate, Adopt a Resolution on Freedom for Palestine

Five lessons emerge from the foregoing discussion.

One: The people of India must compel the Modi government to end its equivocation on the Palestinian issue, stand with the rest of the global community in condemning Israel’s violations of the international law, demand an immediate end to Netanyahu’s war on Gaza, and lend India’s full support to acceleration of the establishment of a free Palestinian state as part of the two-state solution.

Two: There should be an in-depth debate in the Parliament on the Palestinian issue, something the Modi government has deliberately avoided. The Parliament must unanimously adopt a resolution, in the same way that it did in 2003 deploring the US attack on Iraq. Such a resolution would decry any attempt to view the Palestinians’ just struggle through the prism of Hindu-Muslim polarity.

Three: There should be no restriction on, or suppression of, people’s right to protest peacefully on national and international issues—a sacred right guaranteed by the Constitution. India will cease to be a democracy if this were to happen.

Four: True to what India has always been saying, terrorism in all its forms must be condemned. What Hamas did in 2023 was an act of terrorism. What Netanyahu has been doing is also—and a bigger—act of terrorism.

Five: ‘Nyay’ (justice) and ‘Satya’ (truth) have been the cornerstone of Hinduism. All great Hindu saints have extolled the virtues of empathy and solidarity with suffering humanity in every part of the world. None other than Narsi Mehta, the venerable Gujarati saint-poet, proclaimed that a true person of religion is one who shares the pain of others—“Vaishnava Janato Tene Kahiye Je Peed Paraayi Jaane Re”, which was Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite bhajan. Hinduism must reaffirm its core principles, which Hindutva has sought to deligitimise.

Now is the time for the Modi government to demonstrate to the international community that it stands for justice on the Palestinian issue. Any further opportunism and ambiguity in this matter would severely undermine India’s moral standing in the world.

(The writer, who served as an aide to India’s former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has been active in promoting India-Pakistan and India-China Cooperation. He tweets @SudheenKulkarni and welcomes comments at [e-mail]. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)