"We do have a defence relationship with India, which
is no secret. On the other hand, what is a secret is
what is the defence relationship. And with all due
respect, the secret part of it will remain secret." -
Mark Sofer, Israel's ambassador to India, in a recent
interview given to OutlookIndia.com.
India and Israel were born within months of each other.
While the former became an independent state on August 15,
1947, the latter was born on May 14, 1948, following the
decision of the United Nations to partition British
Mandate Palestine.
India, which had opposed this partition, remained
officially cold to the Jewish state. In May 1949, it voted
(in vain) against the admission of Israel into the UN. In
early 1950, after recognising the state of Israel, a
visibly reluctant New Delhi allowed it to set up an
"immigration office" in the port city of Mumbai. This
eventually morphed into a "trade office" and then into a
consulate.
But New Delhi dithered over according full diplomatic
recognition to Israel until early 1992, when the two
nations formally opened their respective embassies in Tel
Aviv and New Delhi.
Pro-Arab leanings
Indian foreign policy in the early days after its
independence was heavily pro-Arab, partly due to the fact
that India has a huge Muslim population which empathised
with the Arab world and viewed Israel with suspicion and
distrust. But that was not the only reason.
Almost a decade before independence, the father of the
Indian freedom movement, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, had
clearly articulated his position on the issue. In an
editorial in the Harijan, a widely circulated
Indian weekly, on November 11, 1938, Gandhi declared: "My
sympathies are with the Jews ... but my sympathy does not
blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the
national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me
... Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth,
make that country their home where they are born and where
they earn their livelihood? Surely it would be a crime
against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that
Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as
their national home."
India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, agreed.
Nehru was among the founder members of the Non-Aligned
Movement (NAM), along with Presidents Josip Broz Tito of
Yugoslavia and Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt. This
relationship with Nasser and other Arab members of the
movement made it difficult for Nehru to align openly with
Israel. Besides, while the NAM was an attempt to stay
non-aligned during the Cold War, Israel was seen as too
closely aligned with the US.
Another reason for India's coldness towards Israel was
that, after independence, a large number of Indian workers
migrated to the Gulf. The money that they sent back to
India formed a sizeable chunk of India's foreign exchange
inflow.
This foreign policy position laid out by Nehru and Gandhi
was challenged, however, by opposition parties in India
from both ends of the political spectrum; they
consistently argued for better relations with Israel.
Establishing relations
Although formal relations between India and Israel were
established only in 1992 during the tenure of Indian Prime
Minister Narasimha Rao, informal relations in the areas of
defence and intelligence had commenced long before that.
It is interesting that Rao, who was prime minister from
June 1991 to May 1996, also aggressively wooed Iran, a
nation which did not recognise Israel's statehood,
preferring to describe it, instead, as "the Zionist
regime".
India's historically hostile relations with Pakistan are
often cited as a key reason for the India-Israel defence
and intelligence link. But military aid from Israel
(mostly in the form of artillery shells) was received by
India even during the 1962 India-China border war, which
ended only when the Chinese unilaterally withdrew to their
pre-attack positions.
Before Rao officially recognised Israel in 1992, Indian
and Israeli intelligence officials often met
surreptitiously in third countries, particularly after the
India-Pakistan war of 1971.
During that war, which led to the birth of Bangladesh
from Pakistan's eastern wing, Israel again helped India
with mortars and ammunition. One of the Indian heroes of
that war was the then eastern command chief, General JFR
Jacob - a Jew.
Then, during the Kargil war of May-July 1999, when India
attempted to repel Pakistani intruders who had taken up
positions on the higher reaches of the Kargil mountains,
Israel quickly sent Heron and Searcher unmanned aerial
vehicles, or UAVs, to locate and identify the
Pakistani-held positions. It also supplied ammunition for
the Bofors field guns and night vision equipment, both of
which played key roles in the conflict.
Endorsing Palestinian cause
Paradoxically, India also, simultaneously, endorsed and
espoused the Palestinian cause. On its website, the Indian
ministry of external affairs says with regard to its
relations with the Palestinian people: "India's empathy
with the Palestinian cause and its friendship with the
people of Palestine have become an integral part of its
time-tested foreign policy. In 1947, India voted against
the partition of Palestine at the United Nations General
Assembly. India was the first non-Arab state to recognise
the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation] as sole and
legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in
1974. India was one of the first countries to recognise
the state of Palestine in 1988. In 1996, India opened its
Representative Office to the Palestine Authority in Gaza.
The office was moved to Ramallah in 2003."
The founder and chief of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, had made
numerous visits to India, where he was always received
warmly. In April 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
visited Arafat's headquarters in Tunis after a state visit
to Libya. When Gandhi was assassinated a few months later
by her bodyguards in New Delhi, a shocked Arafat wept in
public.
One might wonder how New Delhi reconciled these seemingly
irreconcilable positions. It did so by getting the
Palestinian Authority on board. Zikrur Rahman, the Indian
representative to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah,
told the London-based Al-Haqeq newspaper on 12
May 2007: "When we recognised Israel and normalised
relations with her, we did that after taking the approval
of the Palestinian leadership; we said, after you agree
we'll recognise [Israel] .... The Palestinian leadership
told us: 'There are signed accords between us [and Israel]
and we are now talking to the Israelis; your establishing
relations with Israel helps us.'"
India has also been consistently contributing huge sums
of money as grants for budget and development aid to the
Palestinian Authority. A recent example took place during
the visit of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to India
in February 2010.
On that occasion, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced
a grant of $10mn as budget support to the Palestinian
National Authority. This followed several earlier grants
of similar amounts, as well as assistance with the
development of schools, stadiums, roads and hospitals.
India also trains Palestinian diplomats.
An 'unwritten axis'
Over the years, however, the India-Israel relationship
has burgeoned into a situation where Israel is poised to
become the largest defence supplier to India, a position
currently held by Russia. Israel also trains Indian
special forces, which are then deployed in the troubled
region of Kashmir and in India's north-east areas.
Apart from strategic and military interactions between
the two nations, Israeli sensors and satellites are used
extensively to monitor the Kashmir border to detect
infiltration by insurgents from Kashmir and Pakistan.
The events of 11 September 2001 and the subsequent "war
on terror" served to further strengthen this relationship.
So did the 26 November 2009 Pakistani terrorist strike in
Mumbai. The three-day ordeal left some 200 people dead and
more than 300 wounded. Six of the dead were Jews at the
Chabad House, a Jewish centre near Nariman point, which
was specifically targetted.
But it is not just defence and security that India and
Israel collaborate on, though those sectors form a huge,
though mostly secret, chunk of bilateral relations. India
is also increasingly using Israel's sophisticated drip
irrigation technology to boost agricultural production.
Non-military bilateral trade stood at $4.2bn in 2009, up
from $200mn in 2001. Information technology,
telecommunications, energy, chemicals, agriculture, and
even real estate and space exploration are areas where
there are significant business exchanges.
India recently put an Israeli satellite into orbit. The
two sides already have several joint working groups,
committees and other bilateral institutional mechanisms.
Key among these are foreign office consultations,
counter-terrorism, defence cooperation, trade and economic
cooperation, agriculture, science and technology, and a
dialogue between national security advisers.
While officially tight-lipped over nuclear cooperation,
the two states clearly share deep concerns about the
possibility of nuclear proliferation by Pakistan, as well
as Iran's nuclear ambitions.
In September 2003, during the visit to India by Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (the first such visit by an
Israeli prime minister), his deputy (now late) Yosef Lapid
told journalists that an "unwritten, abstract" axis had
been created between Israel, India and the US. While there
was no "formal triangular agreement ... there is mutual
interest of the three countries in making the world a more
secure place for all of us. There is American support for
development of this unwritten axis," Lapid told reporters
in New Delhi. Therefore, "in the abstract sense, we are
creating such an axis".
In a talk delivered at the Indian Council for World
Affairs the same day, he warned that both nations face
threats from terrorism and "fanatic" Muslims, and said the
"moment terrorists laid hands on nuclear weapons the face
of the world will change".
Noting that Israel had accepted the possible existence of
a Palestinian state, Lapid said this could become a
reality the moment "Arabs stop terrorising us". At the
same time, the strengthening of Indo-Israeli ties should
not be a "disturbing factor" for Arab countries, and "the
Indian government has a right to establish relations with
any country," he added.
Arabs 'losing India'
"What made India change its mind and throw itself in the
arms of a country that occupies Arab and Palestinian land,
to the point where it has played host to Ariel Sharon?"
asked Mustafa El-Feki, the chairman of the foreign affairs
committee in the Egyptian parliament, and a former
Egyptian ambassador to India, in an article in Al-Ahram
Weekly.
"India and Israel have their own separate political
agendas. India wishes to have access to US and Israeli
technology, particularly in the development of weapons.
Israel, for its part, wishes to have the political backing
of a powerful nation," he wrote.
El-Feki pointed to several reasons for this cosy
relationship between India and Israel.
First, we have made the error of viewing the
Indian-Pakistani conflict from an Islamic perspective. We
have tried to "Islamise" the ongoing conflict in South
Asia, posing as protectors of Islam and custodians of the
international community. And we have overlooked the
regional role of India, with Arab leaders showing up in
New Delhi much less frequently than before.
Second, he wrote, was the rejection of India's
application for membership of the OIC. "A country with 120
million Muslim citizens applied for membership and what
happened? Islamic countries, in typical naiveté, rejected
the Indian application, imagining this would please
Pakistan and teach India a lesson," he said.
Third, according to El-Feki, after the collapse of the
Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, India moved
closer to the US for both political and economic reasons.
He argued: "I wouldn't be surprised to see India assume
the role of a policeman in the Indian Ocean and the
outskirts of the Gulf, with US blessing and with the aim
of encircling so-called Islamic violence. This would be in
harmony with Israel's agenda, and it may pave the way to a
scheme of joint control over the Greater Middle East."
Making a strong case for an even-handed Arab approach
towards India and Pakistan, the former ambassador to India
recalled that during his time in India, the Palestinian
ambassador to New Delhi enjoyed the privilege of meeting
the Indian prime minister at any time he wished to do so.
But as the Islamic phenomenon spread and some Arab
policies acquired a religious tint, India grew visibly
suspicious of the Arab and Islamic worlds. To make things
worse, Arab diplomacy in India was lackadaisical over the
past two decades ... We have lost India so far for no good
reason, I should say .... It is time we mend this error.
It is time to bring Arab countries closer to both India
and Pakistan, rather than take one side or keep our
distance altogether. I believe the Arabs have only
themselves to blame for India's change of heart on the
Palestinian question."
'Enlightened self-interest'
Despite the rapidly increasing synergy with Israel,
however, India continues to enjoy reasonably cordial
relations with the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation
Council. India has been attending the annual Arab League
summits as an observer since 2007, and the first
Arab-India Cultural Week was held in New Delhi in 2008.
In a statement released on the eve of the 65th
anniversary of the Arab League on March 27 this year, the
League declared: "There is a need for collective and
dedicated efforts for strengthening Indo-Arab ties with
further building up of relations between India and the
Arab world, including in the fields of Science and
Technology, Education, Health, Telecommunication and
Energy."
As far as the Gulf Cooperation Council (UAE, Bahrain,
Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar) is concerned, while
New Delhi enjoys reasonably cordial ties with the
individual states (which supply almost 70 per cent of its
oil and energy needs), attempts to forge a free trade
agreement with the Council have been held up due to issues
over whether oil should be part of the agreement.
India's current prime minister, Manmohan Singh, has often
described the country's growing relationship with the US,
as well as the recent endorsement of US/UN sanctions
against its long-term ally, Iran, as acts of "enlightened
self-interest". Many in his government use the same phrase
to describe the relationship with Israel.
India - and Israel - have taken pains to spell out that
this relationship is not at the expense of India's
relations with the Arab states. Indian diplomats and
politicians keep pointing to the fact that India has
publicly condemned Operation Cast Lead, Israel's name for
the blistering three-week long attack on the Gaza Strip in
late 2008-early 2009.
[ Note : Popular opinion on the part of Hindus
towards the Gaza operation was often very favorable
because it was seen as payback, by proxy, for Mumbai .
BR ]
India also joined in the international condemnation of
the May 31, 2010 pre-dawn Israeli attack on the Turkish
Ship Mavi Marmara, which led the "Gaza Freedom
flotilla" carrying humanitarian aid for the people of the
blockaded Gaza Strip. Nine people were killed in the
attack by Israeli commandos.
"India deplores the tragic loss of life and the reports
of killings and injuries to the people on the boats
carrying supplies for Gaza. There can be no justification
for such indiscriminate use of force, which we condemn. We
extend our sympathies to the families of the dead and
wounded. It is our firm conviction that lasting peace and
security in the region can be achieved only through
peaceful dialogue and not through use of force," said a
statement from the ministry of external affairs.
But while successive governments in New Delhi have been
quietly trying to maintain and develop India's
relationship with Israel without overly antagonising the
Arab world, there are times when the stress shows. Take,
for instance, the article written by recently-removed
minister of state for external affairs, Shashi Tharoor, in
January 2009. Tharoor was India's candidate for the UN
secretary general's post in 2006. He quit after losing to
Ban Ki-moon, and joined Indian politics. The syndicated
column, distributed worldwide, was run by Israel's Haaretz
newspaper with the title: "India's Israel Envy". The
article, which coincided with Israel's operation Cast
Lead, caused an uproar, both domestically and
internationally.
During his election campaign in March 2009, the
opposition used the article to imply that Tharoor endorsed
the Israeli military operation in Gaza. Earlier, several
Arab diplomats in New Delhi also voiced their concern,
asking whether Tharoor's article reflected the ruling
Congress Party's position on Israel.
Tharoor was subsequently forced to write another article
defending himself, and clarifying that he had not endorsed
Israel's military campaign in Gaza, and pointing to what
he regarded as his long and consistent pro-Palestinian
stand during his stint at the United Nations.
India-US relations
Another critical factor in the changing Indo-Israeli
relationship is the rapidly developing ties between India
and US. Given the strong US-Israel relationship, New Delhi
does not want to rock the boat by openly antagonising
Israel. Besides, the Indian diaspora in the US, which is
growing increasingly active politically, admits to looking
at the American Jewish Council (AJC) and America Israel
Political Action Committee (AIPAC) as role models. As one
analyst put it, India and Israel move closer together each
time the India-Pakistan conflict escalates.
Officially, New Delhi insists that this relationship does
not signify a change in its position on Palestine, or its
ties with the Arab world. Privately, however, Indian
diplomats point to the fact that despite numerous Indian
overtures, the Arab world consistently backed Pakistan's
position on Kashmir, while Israel endorsed the Indian
stand.
In 2003, after Ariel Sharon's visit to India, then Indian
foreign minister Yashwant Sinha had tried to allay Arab
fears by telling the Pakistani newspaper The News:
"The fact that Sharon visited New Delhi in no way
makes us complicit to what the Israeli are doing or
saying. We have explained our position with regard to
Palestinian cause in very clear terms as indeed we have
done repeatedly to Israel."
Responding to a question on India's relations with the
Arab world, particularly in the context of Israel's
decision to expel PLO leader Yasser Arafat, Sinha said: "I
don't think Palestinians are in any doubt about Indian
policy. The problem arises only with those people inside
India and outside India who are more Palestinian than the
Palestinian themselves."
Recently, a senior Indian foreign ministry official (who
requested anonymity) remarked when quizzed on the status
of India-Arab relations: "We are very keen to maintain
friendly relations with both the Arab world and Israel.
But it would help us a lot if the Muslim world took a more
nuanced stand on Pakistan and Kashmir."
Ramananda Sengupta is the chief editor of the
Indian news website www.sify.com.
The views expressed in this article are the author's
own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's
editorial policy.
