On July 4, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi lands in Israel for his maiden trip to the Jewish state, also the first by any Indian Prime Minister, it would not just be historic for diplomatic and foreign policy reasons but for several other rings attached to it too. His visit would be a sort of confluence between the civilisations, both ‘wounded’ in the course of history, but still surviving, thriving and ‘rising’. India and Israel, therefore, cannot be simply placed in the euro-centric category of nation-states. Rather, drawing analogy from noted Chinese scholar Zang Weiwei’s work, The China Wave: Rise of a Civilizational State, they can both be bracketed in the domain of ‘civilisational states’. Both have contributed to the world so much in terms of ideas, knowledge and perspectives that it is perhaps unparalleled. From Sigmund Freud to Albert Einstein, Jews had been people with exceptional intellectual capital, just like Indians who have given gems like Aryabhatta, Lord Buddha, Mahaveer and Gandhi to the world. Not many people know that the term ‘diaspora’, now a buzzword widely used in India to highlight the Indians settled abroad, is actually the forced dispersion of the Jews beyond Israel. Yet both the civilisations had been a victims of history and had to wait for centuries to become the masters of their own destiny. For the Jews, the destruction of Second Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD marked the fall of Judaism. It had to wait for more than a thousand years to resurge in the form of the Jewish State of Israel in 1948. Similarly, the plunder, loot and destruction of Somnath Temple in Gujarat in 1024 AD by Mahmud of Ghazni marked the subversion of Indian civilisation by the invaders, first the Afghan, Turks, Mughals and then the British. It was only in 1947 that India got to become the master of its own destiny by gaining Independence from the British rule. However, culturally, its resurgence came in May 1951, when the Somnath Temple was inaugurated by the first President of India, Dr Rajendra Prasad after its final reconstruction, already being demolished six times!
The relations between the two ‘far-neighbours’ are different from any other relation. Much before the formation of Israel, Jews had been visiting and staying in India for a very long period. How welcoming India had been for Jews can be understood by the Speech of Swami Vivekananda at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, Chicago in 1893 where he mentioned about how India accommodated the Israelites who had come to Southern India after the Romans destroyed their holy temple. In fact, India and China were among the rare countries in the world where Jews never faced any kind of discrimination or anti-Semitism, unlike in the Christian Europe and later in Muslim Arab world. Though majority of Jews have left India after the formation of Israel, many Jews still continue to live in India, especially in Southern cities and Kolkata. Despite being miniscule minority, they have made valuable contributions, most famous among them being Lt General Jacob Farj Rafael Jacob (JFR Jacob), the man who led the Indian Army in the 1971 war and played a significant role in the Liberation of Bangladesh.
Historical perspective
India’s Israel policy had been a hostage to two considerations, international and domestic. In order to remain in the good books of Arab states, in an atmosphere where Pakistan made every effort to paint India as ‘anti-Muslim’ and tried to project the Kashmir issue as same like the Palestinian issue, India chose to side with Arabs and argued for the creation of a Palestinian state. In fact, India, as a champion of the rights of third world countries and the founder of NAM, always expressed solidarity with Palestine and opposed Israel and voted against it in UN several times. The second is the domestic political consideration. The ‘secular’ Congress party indulged in appeasement politics, did not want its Muslim vote-bank, which had emotional attachment with Palestinians, to get enraged by India’s association with Israel in any form.
During the Cold-War period India sided with USSR while Israel was too close to the USA, which added fuel to the fire. But things took a turn after the end of Cold War. With the demise of USSR, India lost an ally global power as well as a major exporter/supplier of weapons. Under the dynamic leadership of P V Narshima Rao, India was able to establish diplomatic relationships with Israel with setting up of Israeli embassy in New Delhi in 1992. Rao dared to ignore the pressure from a strong anti-Israel lobby within the Congress party as well as from several left leaning academicians, intellectuals and politicians. He understood that with the changed geo-political scenario India would need all kinds of friends and therefore it cannot afford to ignore Israel anymore. The issue of Islamic terror, internal security threats, and arms sales etc. were some of the agendas that brought them closer.
PM Modi’s Visit
After Modi’s spectacular victory in 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Israeli PM Netanyahu was among the first of international leaders to greet and congratulate Modi. It was then expected by both the admirers as well as critiques of Modi that he would visit the Jewish state very soon, owing to the huge admiration he had for Israel for its policies on agriculture, business and terrorism. However, it took him more than three years to finally craft a much awaited visit in 2017. Conceivably, it is understood that Modi was himself playing a balancing act for the fragile West Asian region and did not want to jeopardise India’s energy security. Therefore, in his first round in the region he visited UAE in 2015, followed by his visit to Saudi Arabia, Iran and Qatar in 2016. After the visit of all key players of the region in 2015 and 2016, Modi’s visit to Israel was perhaps deliberately left for 2017. The year 2017 is no ordinary year as it marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the full-fledged diplomatic relationship between India and Israel.
Modi had been known to untie the Gordian Knot when it comes to Foreign policy, and it is only his strong conviction which has helped in breaking the ‘tyranny of the status quo’. By dehyphenating India relations with Israel vis-à-vis Palestine, he has made a bold and realistic move for dealing with West Asia in the future, a region with immense importance for India in terms of trade, diaspora and energy security. It has long been argued that India must not be ashamed or shy about its relations with Israel and must try to maintain ‘positive neutrality’ like China. However, despite building up a strong partnership, India has not given up its stand for the ‘two-state solution’, i.e. the creation of a Palestinian state along with the Israeli state. Very recently, Modi played host to a three-day visit by the President of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, during which India took pains to reiterate that it stood firmly with the Palestinians who had some legitimate claims.
However, what had been triggered by Rao in 1992 was carried forward by Vajpayee in his premiership during which Ariel Sharon, the then PM of Israel, visited India in 2003. Therefore, a lot of hopes have been pinned on PM Modi that his visit becomes a watershed and that he takes this relationship to an entirely new height. In fact, one can hope that apart from defence, anti-terror, security, agriculture and trade, new avenues of co-operation may also turn up like academic/cultural exchange, tourism, knowledge partnership etc. Indian Government and entrepreneurs can also learn a lot from success story of Israel, covered up brilliantly by Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s book Start-up Nation: The story of Israel’s Economic Miracle.
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