Kashmir, spying, demolitions: How Modi’s India embraced ‘Israel model’

As India under Modi openly embraces Israel, New Delhi appears to import more than just weapons.

At a private event in November 2019, Sandeep Chakravorty, India’s then consul general in New York, was caught on camera calling for New Delhi to adopt an “Israeli model” in Indian-administered Kashmir.

At the time, millions in Kashmir were already reeling under a crippling military lockdown and communication blackout: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu majoritarian government had stripped the region of its semi-autonomous status months earlier, jailing thousands of people, including the region’s political leaders – even those who are pro-India.

The senior Indian diplomat was musing about Israel’s far-right settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, in reference to the resettling of thousands of Kashmiri Hindus, who had to flee their homeland in a 1989 exodus after an armed rebellion against Indian rule started in the Himalayan region.

“It has happened in the Middle East. If the Israeli people can do it, we can also do it,” Chakravorty told the gathering, adding that the Modi government was “determined” to do so.

Six years later, Chakravorty’s words ring truer than ever. As Modi prepares for his second visit to Israel starting on February 25, the two countries are bound by more than just friendship, trade and military partnerships – they are increasingly, say some analysts, also joined at the hip in certain facets of their models of governance.

‘Hostile subjects under occupation’

At the heart of these deepening ties, say analysts, is a shared ideological vision.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has roots in a philosophy, Hindutva, that seeks to turn India into a Hindu nation and a natural homeland for Hindus anywhere in the world – similar to Israel’s view of itself as a Jewish homeland.

“The India-Israel relationship under Modi is a bond between two ideologies that see themselves as civilisational projects and Muslims as demographic and security threats,” said Azad Essa, author of the 2023 book Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel.

The nation-state of Israel, which Bose characterised as majoritarian and supremacist, is the model Hindu nationalists are implementing in India in the Modi era, he argued. “The Israeli ideal finds reflection in many policies and measures of Modi’s government.”