Israel-India ties improved during Rao, Singh goverments, but BJP marketed it better

Though it was the Narasimha Rao-led Congress government that had established full diplomatic relationship with Israel in 1992, it was during the previous NDA government that Ariel Sharon became the first Prime Minister of the Jewish state to visit India in 2003.

Fifteen years later, Benjamin Netanyahu became the second Prime Minister of that country to pay a visit to India. Incidentally both these PMs, who visited India are right-wingers having Kadima-Likud link.

Similarly, Narendra Modi became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Israel last summer.

Israel has become the leading supplier of arms to India. The cooperation in the field of trade and commerce also multiplied manifold. All these developments have taken place when the BJP has been in power for only nine out of the last 26 years.

In 1999 Kargil War, Israel came to the rescue of India when it supplied ammunition for howitzers when the country was badly in need of them. But this is not the first time that Israel had supplied arms to India at the time of war.

No doubt India had recognised Israel after its creation in 1948, but at the same time strongly backed the Palestinian cause. There was just a Consul General of Israel in Mumbai then.

As the leader of Non-Aligned Movement, India always championed the cause of liberation from the imperialist powers.

Curiously this was the stand when on personal level the first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had a good friendship with the first Israeli PM, David Ben-Gurion.

Israeli archives in Jerusalem had last year confirmed the exchange of messages between the two leaders at the height of the Oct-Nov 1962 war with China.

Ben-Gurion wrote to Nehru expressing his country’s “fullest sympathy and understanding”, and provided weapons to the Indian forces.

The archives say India wanted weapons brought in ships that did not fly the Israeli flag, but Ben Gurion said, ‘No flag. No weapons’. The weapons were eventually supplied in Israeli ships flying the Israeli flag.

Today the reality is somewhat different. Israel has a good relationship with China as well as India and backs Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The truth is that actually the relationship between Israel and India improved considerably during the Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh government. Facts and figures suggest so.

But the BJP-led government has marketed this relationship in a better way. It has a reason to do so.

In the past, the RSS has been one of the greatest champions of Hitler, who is accused of massacring about six million Jews. Some of their ideologues like MS Golwalkar openly supported Hitler’s anti-Semitism.

However, after the creation of Israel the situation changed and both the Zionists and champions of Hindutva found common enemy––Muslims.

So in an attempt to remove the impression that they were anti-Semitic, the BJP and RSS are much more vocal in their support to Israel. The latter in return got a big market in India.

Silent diplomacy and back channel or Track-II negotiations play more important role than the high profile visits and the so-called bonhomie. The latter has only symbolic value.

On September 17, 2014––that is on Modi’s birthday––Xi Jinping sat on the same swing at Sabarmati riverfront. The photo was an instant hit though it is also a fact that Chinese troops had at that very time intruded into Indian territories in Ladakh. Three years later the relationship with China has only deteriorated.