[News] India once called Zionism racist. Today it moves to replicate it
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Wed Sep 11 14:56:49 EDT 2019
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/whereas-india-once-called-zionism-racist-today-it-moves-replicate-it?fbclid=IwAR1SrKstkmV8cnboaV1EchwWciSE6rYlZ93BoPU8vI2C6qtOgwLrzSUo7mI
India once called Zionism racist. Today it moves to replicate it
Azad Essa - 5 September 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the winter of 1975, the United Nations passed resolution 3379
<https://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/761C1063530766A7052566A2005B74D1> stating that
"Zonism is a form of racism and racial discrimination".
UN resolution 3379 made reference to a resolution adopted three months
earlier by the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union),
that drew comparisons between the racist and colonial projects in South
Africa and Israel.
"The racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regime in
Zimbabwe and South Africa have a common imperialist origin, forming a
whole and having the same racist structure and being organically linked
in their policy aimed at repression of the dignity and integrity of the
human being,"the OAU resolution 77
<https://au.int/sites/default/files/decisions/9591-council_en_23_february_1_march_1976_council_ministers_twenty_sixth_ordinary_session.pdf>
(XII) read.
A landmark resolution
India was one of 72 nations, mostly former colonies, that brought life
to a landmark resolution that found Zionism to be a fundamentally
exclusionist ideology, responsible for the demarcation of Palestinians
as second-class citizens.
At the time, India was part of the Non-Aligned Movement
<https://mea.gov.in/in-focus-article.htm?20349/History+and+Evolution+of+NonAligned+Movement>
during the Cold War, playing a trailblazing role in the isolation of
Israel’s close collaborator, South Africa.
Sixteen years later, the Cold War would be over, and the world was a
different place.
In 1991, Israel made the revocation of Zionism-as-racism a precondition
for its participation at the Madrid Peace Conference
<http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1644149_1644147_1644124,00.html> held
the same year, thus forcing the UN to hold a new vote. Resolution 3379
was repealed
<https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/17/world/un-repeals-its-75-resolution-equating-zionism-with-racism.html>.
India voted for its revocation, too.
The establishment of full diplomatic relations between India and Israel
followed in 1992. The liberalisation of India's economy led to shifts in
its foreign policy and a rewiring of its priorities on the global stage.
India also began pursuing closer ties with Israel, independent
<https://www.meforum.org/3494/india-israel-ties> of their commitment to
the Palestinian peace process, while New Delhi's voting patterns
<https://thewire.in/diplomacy/india-highly-publicised-june-6-vote-israel-palestine-un>on
the peace process remained unchanged at the UN.
But whereas it had once considered Zionism, the ideology that underpins
the establishment of the state of Israel, as a type of racism, the
further alignment of India and Israel's defence concerns, especially in
lieu of the US "war on terror," saw its solidarity with the Palestinians
in the 2000s gradually dilute to one of lip service and a politics of
respectability.
And then came Narendra Modi.
The rise of Hindutva
In 2014, the Hindu-nationalist politician became India's new prime
minister.
As a life-long member of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
(RSS) group, which had long-held ambitions to turn India into a Hindu
Rashtra
<https://thewire.in/politics/hindutva-muslims-rss-hindu-rashtra>, or a
Hindu state, Modi has brought the process of reshaping India in the
image of its majority right to the highest level of the state.
It is the RSS which gave birth to Hindutva, the Hindu nationalistic
agenda at the heart of Modi's India. Hindutva has little to do
<https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/hindutva-is-not-the-same-as-hinduism-said-savarkar/cid/1699550>
with the practices or beliefs of Hinduism itself.
And though the RSS found its inspiration in Adolf Hiter
<https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-india-envoy-visits-nazi-inspired-hindu-group/a-49682304>
and the "cultural nationalism" and "race pride" of Nazism, Modi and
Netanyahu quickly bonded in 2014 over their zealous objective to
consolidate total and absolute power over their territories.
They also recognised in each other the similarity of their ambitions to
build supremacist democratic states
<https://thewire.in/politics/hindutva-muslims-rss-hindu-rashtra> with a
single culture, a single race and a single nation.
The relationship immediately translated
<https://www.newsclick.in/covert-overt-changing-nature-india-israel-strategic-tie>into
technological and agricultural exchange and new partnerships. Though
India has been purchasing arms from Israel for close to two decades,
under Modi, India purchased 46 percent of all arms sold by Israel.
Israel is now India's largest arms supplier, with an estimated $1bn
worth of military
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-israel/israels-netanyahu-eyes-trade-defense-ties-on-india-trip-idUSKBN1F11SD>sales
per year.
Apoorva PG, South Asia coordinator for the Boycott Divestment and
Sanctions Campaign (BDS), told Middle East Eye that India was now
deeply "complicit in Israel's regime of military occupation, settler
colonialism, and apartheid".
Modi's visit to Israel in 2017, the first by a sitting Indian PM, put to
rest any lingering doubts about his commitment to Israel. Netanyahu
described
<https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/wall-falls-friends-hug-at-last/cid/1501354>
the visit as "tearing down the final walls dividing our countries".
Since then, the connection between Hindutva and Zionism as kindred
spirits has taken on a life of its own. For one, just as criticism of
Israel and Zionism is conflated with antisemitism, proponents of
Hindutva allege Hindu-phobia in the face of critique or condemnation of
its ideology.
Gandhi and Israel
At an event on 26 August, and easily one of the first of its kind,
organised by the Israeli consul-general in Mumbai in conjunction with
the Indo-Israel Friendship Association, two ideologues
<https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/hinduism-and-judaism-should-come-together/article29263943.ece>
celebrated the closeness
<https://www.facebook.com/167739709937608/posts/2689430281101859/>between
Hindutva and Zionism.
Whereas noted Zionist historian Gadi Taub, from the Hebrew University,
regaled the crowd on the failures of multiculturalism
<https://frontline.thehindu.com/dispatches/article29288744.ece> and the
need for a single national identity, Subramaniam Swamy, an MP with the
ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), invoked Samuel Huntington’s "Clash
of Civilisations" in explaining the need for Zionism and Hindutva to
work against a common enemy.
"Zion is today under attack from Islamic extremists, and therefore
both of us should come together to fight the Islamic terror forces,"
Swamy said.
<https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/hinduism-and-judaism-should-come-together/article29263943.ece>
The closest Taub ventured into India's earlier politics - when the RSS
was banned - was to say that "there is a lot to admire about [Mahatma]
Gandhi and many Israelis do, but he was not a supporter of Zionism".
That Taub would casually raise Gandhi - conveniently glazing over the
fact he was killed
<https://www.indepthnews.net/index.php/opinion/2494-india-s-hindu-nationalists-celebrate-gandhi-assassination>by
a Hindu nationalist from the RSS for refusing to adopt the very
supremacist philosophies they had adopted from Nazism and today from
Zionism - is itself an historical absurdity.
But what is fascism besides the blunting of reason?
Taub is certainly well aware that his country's tiered citizenship has
become the example Hindu nationalists wish to replicate. Just as
non-Jews are scapegoated and treated as second-class citizens
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-curriculum-palestinians-nation-state-law>
in Israel, and Palestinian history is appropriated and written out of
text books, much of the same is underway in India.
Kashmir and Palestine
In India, despite talk of equal citizenship, Muslims and Christians
cannot belong to "the Hindu race" and so they are under constant
pressure to prove their "loyalty" to the Hindu state. Their history,
too, is shameful and an aberration to Hindu India, culminating in
changes
<https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/12/06/indias-dangerous-new-curriculum/>
to school text books and curriculums.
The historical revisionism, as many have pointed out, only advances the
interests
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/06/01/indias-new-textbooks-are-promoting-the-prime-ministers-favorite-policies-critics-allege/%C2%A0>
of the ruling party.
Even the annexation of Kashmir
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/indias-annexation-kashmir-straight-out-israeli-playbook>
in early August is part of a promise made by the RSS to unify all of
Hindu civilisation that, according to Hindutva, was quashed under the
boots of outsiders, ie Muslims.
As Kapil Komireddi writes
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-kashmir-crisis-isnt-about-territory-its-about-a-hindu-victory-over-islam/2019/08/16/ab84ffe2-bf79-11e9-a5c6-1e74f7ec4a93_story.html>in
The Washington Post, Modi's action in Kashmir was a message to all that
"no one is exempt from the Hindu-power paradise he wants to build on the
subcontinent. Kashmir is both a warning and a template: any state that
deviates from this vision can be brought under Delhi's thumb in the name
of 'unity'."
And those deemed to be "imposters" can be ruled as anti-nationals or
simply erased. Last week, more than 1.9 million people, mainly
Muslims, werestripped of the citizenship
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-49520593> in the north-east
state of Assam. In a flash, they became stateless.
Under Modi, India - a country that once held Zionism to be racism - no
longer has an interest in keeping up the facade of solidarity with the
Palestinians. India is now led by a man and an organisation that
fantasise of turning the country into Israel.
/The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye./
--
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