Modi and Netanyahu: Two Sides of The Same Coin

[Riaz Haq]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently tweeted that he is "shocked by the news of terrorist attacks in Israel", adding that "We stand in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour".  This tweet was posted immediately after the Hamas militants' unprecedented attack on Israel by air, land and sea. Modi's critics have noted that he has yet to tweet any condemnation of months-long killings of his fellow countrymen in Manipur which are continuing unabated. Nor has he issued any similar condemnation of the long and brutal Israeli military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. To those who know Modi, his reaction makes sense given the similarities between Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both leaders are extreme right-wing divisive politicians. Modi is a Hindu Supremacist and Netanyahu is a Jewish Supremacist. Both have a long history of murdering large numbers of Muslims living under their rule. Both are pursuing settler colonial policies; Modi in Kashmir and Netanyahu in Palestine. 

India's Narendra Modi and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu in New Delhi....

Indians, particularly Hindu Nationalists, have suffered from what Shashi Tharoor calls "India's Israel Envy". Here's an excerpt of Tharoor's piece published in "Project Syndicate" in January 2009:  

"Yet, when Indians watch Israel take the fight to the enemy, killing those who launched rockets against it and dismantling many of the sites from which the rockets flew, some cannot resist wishing that they could do something similar in Pakistan. India understands, though, that the collateral damage would be too high, the price in civilian lives unacceptable, and the risks of the conflict spiraling out of control too acute to contemplate such an option. So Indians place their trust in international diplomacy and watch, with ill-disguised wistfulness, as Israel does what they could never permit themselves to do". 

In a piece titled "The Settler Colonial Alliance of India and Israel" published in The Nation, Indian journalist Deeksha Udupa interviewed Azad Essa,  author of “Hostile Homelands” – The new alliance between India and Israel". Here's what Essa told Udupa:  

"Kashmir is a perfect example of another region being turned into a sort of testing ground (for Israeli weapons and methods). Both India and Israel already share many tactics. They both attack journalists and criminalize civil society. They both exercise collective punishment on Palestinians and Kashmiris. They both maim protesters. In Palestine, protesters are shot in the limbs. In Kashmir, protesters are blinded by lead pellets. Israeli drones, sensors, surveillance, and machine guns are all there, and Israeli methods of controlling the population have long existed in Kashmir—so much so that India is now producing some of these Israeli weapons in factories across India.". 

Azad Essa argues that the Israeli occupation of Palestine has served as a model that Indians are replicating in Kashmir.  He says that Israeli weapons, developed and field tested on Palestinians, have been used in Kashmir.  Here are a couple of excerpts from his book "Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel":   :

"So how did India, which once considered Zionism a form of racism, become Israel’s number one weapons trade buyer, accounting for 42% of Israel’s arms exports since Modi came to power in 2014?* How did India, the first non-Arab state to recognize the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and one of the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement that opposed colonialism and apartheid, simultaneously maintain its colonial occupation of Kashmir since 1947 and metamorphose into extolling Israel’s settlements as a model to colonize Kashmir with its own Indian settlers?"

"In the days leading to August 5, 2019 and in the weeks and months to come, Kashmir became a site of unfathomable cruelty. Thousands of Kashmiris were detained; pro-India politicians were placed under house arrest, pro-freedom leaders as well as minors were rounded up and thrown in jail. Young boys were shipped off to Indian prisons 1,500km away in Agra and Varanasi. Foreign journalists and international human rights groups were banned from access to Kashmir. The region was placed under a complete communication blackout. Cellular phones, Internet, landline services, and even the postal services were dismantled. News traveled by word of mouth. Journalists compressed photos and video onto memory cards and smuggled them out with passengers en route to Delhi. Schools, offices, banks, and businesses were closed for months. Life came to a standstill". 

Here's India's JNU Professor speaking about illegal Indian occupation of Kashmir, Manipur and Nagaland:

https://youtu.be/KWp1E8xrY5E

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[Riaz Haq]

Upper caste Hindus imbibed privilege of White corporate America

In ‘Hostile Homelands’, South African journalist Azad Essa explores the origins of and connections between Zionism and Hindutva.
AZAD ESSA


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Indian Americans who fit snugly into the ‘upwardly mobile model minority’ caricature looked to imbibe the myth of America as the land of opportunity. While they were open to accepting that structural racism existed in the US (given they were victims of racism, too), as highly educated Indian Americans pursuing the American dream, they differentiated themselves from African Americans, whom in time they saw as economic and social burdens on the system, much like the lower caste and urban poor back in India. In other words, a segment of the Hindu Indian American community began seeing their success as a symbol of their culture and individual hard work, as opposed to a direct result of their place in a racial hierarchy or in the caste hierarchy that had given them the opportunity to study and the social mobility to leapfrog over other communities in the US.

As ‘Jews had become white folks’ in the 1960s, Vijay Prashad argues that ‘Hindus became Jews’ in the latter half of the century. They imbibed the very privilege of the white and increasingly corporate America. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, these Indian Americans who had made it in the US were helping shape the social, economic and political landscape back home. They were self-styled ‘pioneers’.

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In the face of a swelling Hindu nationalist and supremacist movement in India during the 1990s, the same Indian Americans, who had once played a significant role in the agitations abroad against Indira Gandhi during the Emergency years, were now activated to consolidate the Hindu nationalist project. They were now deeply established in the US; their organisations like the HSS, OFBJP and VHPA were now a lot more networked, connected to a community with a lot more wealth, social status and stability. Take Ved Prakash Nanda, for example. A law professor at the University of Denver, Nanda authored papers and articles and testified in June 1976 before a Congressional subcommittee about human rights abuses in India during the Emergency.

He later played a central role in the formation of the HSS in the US, becoming its president in 2002. Or consider Ramesh Bhutada. Originally from Maharashtra, Bhutada moved to the US in 1968. He became politically active following the arrest of his father, a member of the RSS, during the Emergency. Bhutada had organised protests in Houston and formed the HSS branch in the city, later becoming the group’s national vice-president. He also became an energetic organiser for the OFBJP, which helped canvas for Modi’s election in 2014.

[Riaz Haq]

Upper caste Hindus imbibed privilege of White corporate America


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In 1990, he traveled to India to meet “the hierarchy of the BJP” who wanted to open cells of the party in foreign countries ahead of the 1991 general elections,’ Edward Anderson and Patrick Clibbens write. It was Mody who established the OFBJP in the US in 1991. For his efforts, Mody received a special mention in Narendra Modi’s memoir. In it, Mody is compared with ‘a sixteenth century Hindu general and Rajasthani folk hero who donated his wealth to Maharaja Pratap in order to raise an army against the Mughals’.

In the 1990s, Hindu nationalists in the US prioritised shifting their identity from an ‘Indian’ to a ‘Hindu’ orientation. Moreover, they looked to mobilise their activities around a ‘Hindu Indian state-building project’. In time, the emphasis on ecumenicalism and nationalism, Prema Kurien writes, became the central planks for ‘official American Hinduism’. In so doing, Indian Americans looked to Zionist organisations to maximise their impact on Capitol Hill as well as to become gatekeepers of the Hindus in the US32 and defenders of anything they deemed to be offensive to Hindus. For instance, in 1997, the VHPA formed the American Hindus Against Defamation (AHAD), modelled on the ADL.

Just as the ADL said its aim was to ‘stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all’, AHAD described itself as ‘dedicated to preserving the sanctity of Hindu symbols, icons, culture and customs’. There were other political initiatives. In 1993, Gopal Raju, an Indian American entrepreneur and founder of India Abroad, formed the Indian American Centre for Political Action (IACPA). The IACPA was created to mould a new generation of politically astute Indian Americans.



Raju arranged internships on Capitol Hill and hired Ralph Nunberger, a professor in international relations and a legislative liaison for AIPAC, to help him succeed. In concert with Raju’s effort, US congressman Frank Pallone (New Jersey) and Bill McCollum (Florida) formed the India Caucus, an interest group that recognised India as a US partner and looked to charter strengthening relations between the two countries. The other US congressman who played an integral role was the Democratic lawmaker Gary Ackerman, who advocated a greater partnership between India, Israel and the US. In the late 1990s, Ackerman was co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on India and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. As the representative of New York’s 5th district, known for being home to a high concentration of Jewish residents, Ackerman was both influential and at the very intersection of US foreign policy towards the Middle East and South Asia.

At a fundraising dinner organised by two Indian Americans in his honour in Atlanta in 1999, Ackerman described ‘strong India-Israel relations’ as ‘very critical to ensuring peace and stability in a part of the world that is characterised by instability, fundamentalist religious bigotry, hatred toward the West and its values and murder and mayhem spawned by acts of cross-border terrorism’.

He, too, described India and Israel as ‘ancient civilisations [that] have much in common politically and economically, and share strong democratic beliefs, traditions and values’. Ackerman also said, ‘As many of you are aware, Israel, just like India, is a special place for me […] and as such, you all should consider me as your bhai—your brother.’ Within ten years, the India Caucus went from eight members to a quarter of the US Congress. ‘It helped, of course, that the Indian American community had money in its pocket and its “leaders” (those with money) wanted to be players in D.C,’ Vijay Prashad writes.

[Riaz Haq]

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Upper caste Hindus imbibed privilege of White corporate America


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For their efforts, both Ackerman and Pallone were awarded major civilian awards by the BJP government in 2002. During its years in power between 1998 to 2002, the BJP routinely urged the Indian diaspora to invest back home as well as to represent its interests abroad. On cue, the Indian diaspora began sending charity to Hindu nationalist projects, and investing heavily in the IT, software and start-up efforts in India.

It simultaneously continued to underwrite efforts to lobby for a narrow pro-Hindu, pro-business agenda in DC. While remittances in 1990–91 were estimated at $2.1 billion or 0.7 per cent of India’s GDP, they rose to $12.3 billion by 1996-97. By 2006, they had become 3.1 per cent of the country’s GDP, contributing even more than India’s software exports.39 To put these figures into perspective, India had begun to receive more remittances from the diaspora than it spent on its healthcare or education.

Moreover, the strength of the dollar and the liberalisation of the economy allowed Indian Americans to take a particular interest in real estate, too.

So much so, it was estimated that by 2005, 20 per cent of all properties over $250,000/Rs 10 million in India were purchased by Indians abroad. Studies showed that while in 1990–91, remittances from North America amounted to 24 per cent, money sent from the Gulf was around 40 per cent. By 2006, the scenario had flipped: only 24 per cent of remittances were sourced from Indian migrant workers in the Gulf, while remittances from North America had increased to 44 per cent. The consolidation of the Indian community in America precipitated a growth in temples, Hindu associations and visits by religious figures and musicians. Naturally, the economic power wielded by the Indian American community meant that India also began catering to its needs.

Even mainstream blockbuster Bollywood films began examining themes like ‘nostalgia’, ‘longing’ and ‘nationalism’ as experienced by the diaspora. To be an authentic ‘Indian’ was to be unequivocally devoted to the values of a certain, purportedly unobtrusive, Hinduness. Raj (played by Shah Rukh Khan) in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) refuses to elope with Simran (played by Kajol) without the approval of her father.

The film makes it clear that it is his Hindu Indian values, dipped in South Asian patriarchy, that prevents him from doing so. In the movie Pardes (1998), Arjun (Shah Rukh Khan), as a ‘good’ Indian-born man, is pitted against his stepbrother, Rajiv (Apurva Agnihotri), a foreign-born Indian man who indulges in every vice imaginable. While Arjun is humble, cultured and respectful, Rajiv is philandering, crass and a borderline alcoholic. Arjun is East, Rajiv is West. No surprise that Arjun wins the girl Ganga (aptly named to represent the Ganges, the holiest river in Hinduism; Ganga is played by Mahima Chaudhry). American capitalism was completely acceptable, if you retained Hindu Indian traditions, the film’s subtitle ‘American Dreams, Indian Soul’ seemed to suggest.

There were several other films which either packaged ‘longing’ for the homeland, like Swades (2004), about an Indian engineer at NASA, who answers a yearning to return to his village in India, or like Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham also known as K3G (2001), in which Indian families were depicted as thriving upper-caste industrialists living in palaces abroad. In K3G, the main protagonist, Rahul (played by Shah Rukh Khan), falls in love with Anjali (played by Kajol), a woman of a ‘lower social standing’, sparking a feud in the family. The dispute is most certainly over her belonging to a lower caste, but the film doesn’t say so, allowing the audiences in the diaspora, where the film broke multiple records, to leave the matter unnamed in their real lives, too.