Modi's Kashmir Blunder: Wider Implications For India, Pakistan and the World

[Riaz Haq]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's reckless decision to unilaterally abrogate Article 370 of the Indian constitution has sent shockwaves across South Asia and the rest of the world. The immediate effect of this action is on Indian Occupied Kashmir which has lost its status as a state and stands divided into union territories directly ruled from New Delhi. It has wider implications for India's federal, secular and democratic constitutional structure.  It has sent alarm bells ringing in Indian states of Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Nagaland and Mizoram. It also threatens to escalate tensions between nuclear armed rivals India and Pakistan when the Kashmiri resistance turns violent and Modi falsely blames it on "cross-border terrorism". Nuclear confrontation in South Asia could result in deaths of billions of people across Asia, Africa, Europe and America. It is time for all sane Indians and the rest of the world to wake up to the serious threats posed to peace in South Asia region and the wider world, including China, by Mr. Modi's fascist Hindutva project.

Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir:

Regardless of Article 370, the region of of Jammu and Kashmir remains a disputed territory whose status must be resolved according to the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 47 (1948) and 80 (1950). India can not unilaterally alter its status without agreement with Pakistan and the people of Jammu and Kashmir who are are parties to it.  Any unilateral action by either India or Pakistan on Kashmir also violates the Simla Agreement which requires bilateral resolution of the disputed region.

Mr. Modi's actions are not only an affront to the people of Jammu and Kashmir but also in clear violation of India's international and bilateral obligations under United Nations charter and the Simla Accord. Annexation of Ladakh is also challenge to Chinese claims to it. 

China, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, lays claim to Ladakh region. It has objected to India making it a union territory.

Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's Pledge

Domestic Opposition in India:

Mr. Karan Singh, a member of Indian Rajya Sabha (upper house) and the son of Kashmiri Maharaja Hari Singh who "acceded" Jammu and Kashmir to India in 1947, has said that Kashmir is "not an internal matter" of India. Mr. Singh has insisted on restoration of the dialogue process with Pakistan.

“J&K’s relationship with the rest of India is guided by Article 370 and the State Constitution that I signed into law. We must realize that from the very beginning, J&K, rightly or wrongly, has been given a special position. Now [after] that special position from the original three subjects, there have been a whole series of developments — some may call them positive developments of integration, others may say negative developments of reducing autonomy,” Mr. Singh was quoted as saying by The Hindu.

Strongest reactions to Mr. Modi's decision to annul article 370 have come from top leaders in Indian Punjab and Tamil Nadu. It has inspired fear that the central government in Delhi could take control of any state, strip it of its statehood and impose direct rule without the consent of its people.

Former union minister P. Chidambaram called Modi's action a "cardinal blunder" and a "fatal legal error"."What you are doing today sends a very wrong signal to every state of country", he added.

Tamil Nadu's DMK party leader MK Stalin took to Twitter to condemn Modi's decision. “This is a dark day in the history of Indian federalism. I urge the President of India to not precipitate the situation and not take any further steps in this regard until a democratically elected Government is formed there. The DMK stands with its Kashmiri brothers and sisters and will oppose any assault on federal structure,” he said in a series of tweets.

Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh of Indian Punjab has denounced the revocation of 370 as “totally unconstitutional”. He tweeted that “the Constitution of India had been rewritten without following any legal provisions. Such a historic decision should not have been taken and pushed through in this arbitrary manner...This will set a bad precedent as it would mean that the Centre could reorganize any state in the country by simply imposing President’s rule.”

India-Pakistan Escalation:

Most of Kashmir has been under an unprecedented and extended lock-down. People are imprisoned in their homes for several days in a row. There is no Internet, telephone or television.

Eventually when the restrictions are eased, there will be large street protests which the Indian security forces will try to quell by force. When such protests turn violent,  Mr. Modi will cry "terrorism" and falsely accuse Pakistan of being behind it. There will be a familiar replay of the events of the past with Mr. Modi escalating conflict with Pakistan across the Line of Control in Kashmir.

Such escalations pose the danger of spiraling out of control and leading to a nuclear confrontation.

The West, particularly the United States and Canada, are geographically far removed from South Asia. This distance makes many think that any nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would not have a significant impact on life in America and Europe. Dr. Owen Brian Toon and Professor Alan Robock dispute this thinking. They believe the nuclear winter following an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange will kill crops as far as the United States and cause a global famine. Another study by Nobel Peace Prize- winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Physicians for Social Responsibility reached the same conclusion.

Professors Robock and Toon have calculated that the smoke from just 100-200 Hiroshima sized atomic bombs exploding in South Asia would cover the entire globe within two weeks. This smoke would hang 30-50 miles above the surface of the earth where it never rains. This thick layer of smoke would block the sun causing farmers to lose their crops for years to come. The resulting famine would kill billions of people around the globe.

It seems that the American leadership recognizes the devastating global impact of possible India-Pakistan nuclear war.  In "Brokering Peace in Nuclear Environments U.S. Crisis Management in S...", Pakistani-American analyst Dr. Moeed Yusuf talks about the US efforts to prevent India-Pakistan war that could escalate into a full-scale nuclear exchange. He analyzes American diplomacy in three critical periods: Kargil conflict in 1999; the stand-off after the Indian Parliament attack in 2001 and the terrorist attack in Mumbai in 2008.

Yusuf argues that the US-Soviet Cold War deterrence model does not apply to the India-Pakistan conflict and offers his theory of "brokered bargaining". In chapters that detail the US role during three India-Pakistan crises, it is clear that the US rejected India's insistence on bilateralism in resolving India-Pakistan disputes.  The author says that "in each episode, the concern about the escalation forced the United States to engage, largely unsolicited, and use a mix of rewards (or promises of) and punishments (or threats of) with the regional rivals to achieve de-escalation--ahead of its broader regional or policy interests."

Summary:

Indian Hindu Nationalist government of Prime Minister Modi's abrogation of Article 370 is in clear violation of the Indian constitution and international rules governing resolution of disputes between countries. It has wider implications for India's federal, secular and democratic constitutional structure. It has sent alarm bells ringing in Indian states of Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Nagaland and Mizoram. It also threatens to escalate tensions between nuclear armed rivals India and Pakistan when the Kashmiri resistance turns violent and Modi falsely blames it on "cross-border terrorism". Nuclear confrontation in South Asia could result in deaths of billions of people across Asia, Africa, Europe and America. It is time for all sane Indians and the rest of the world to wake up to the serious threats posed to peace in South Asia region and the wider world by Mr. Modi's fascist Hindutva project.

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[Riaz Haq]

#India's External Affairs Minister: '#China shouldn't allow #Pakistan to dictate its #India policy'. Jaishankar hosted #Chinese FM in #Delhi 2 days after #Modi gov't strongly criticized Wang's statement in support of #Kashmiris' rights at #OICInPakistan. https://www.deccanherald.com/national/china-should-not-allow-pakist...

China should not allow its policy towards India be influenced by Pakistan, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar tacitly conveyed to his counterpart in the communist country's government, Wang Yi, on Friday.

“I referred to it. I explained to him why we found that statement objectionable,” the External Affairs Minister said after his meeting with the Chinese Foreign Minister. “There was a larger context as well. You know, I conveyed that we hoped that China would follow an independent policy in respect of India, and not allow its policies to be influenced by other countries and other relationships.” Wang had on Wednesday attended a meeting of the OIC hosted by the Government of Pakistan. He had made a statement endorsing the OIC's support for the movement for “right to self-determination” in Jammu and Kashmir.

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China had in 2019 joined its “iron-brother” Pakistan to launch a campaign against India at the United Nations and other international forums, opposing the move made by the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to strip Jammu and Kashmir of its special status and split the state into two union territories.

[Riaz Haq]

#China backs #Pakistan in opposing #G20 summit in #Indian Occupied #Kashmir. “India’s objective in doing so is clearly to force the international community to recognize India’s control and even ‘sovereignty’ over Jammu Kashmir" #India #Modi #BJP #Hindutva https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/china-backs-pakistan-in...

“India’s objective in doing so is clearly to force the international community to recognise India’s control and even ‘sovereignty’ over Jammu Kashmir.... Involving Jammu Kashmir in such an important international conference could also be claimed as a diplomatic victory for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of India and is supposed to bring a boost to its domestic support,” said a commentary on Tuesday in the Communist Party-run Global Times, by Qian Feng, director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Holding G20-related meetings there – the main summit in 2023 is expected to be held in New Delhi – as well as the reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019 were “operations aimed at highlighting the nationalist identity of the BJP, as a representative of Hindu interests”, he said.

The comments underlined the Chinese views on the Kashmir issue that have only got sharper in recent times, particularly since 2019. Beijing said in that year that it opposed the reorganisation and subsequently raised the issue at the UN. The remarks also bring to the fore an increasingly close China-Pakistan tandem - coinciding with CPEC projects in PoK - on Kashmir, an issue that Beijing had largely been reluctant to wade into over the past two decades.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on June 30 said “parties concerned need to avoid unilateral moves that may complicate” the dispute. “The G20 is the premier forum for international economic and financial cooperation. We call on all major economies to focus on steady recovery of the world economy, avoid politicising relevant cooperation and make positive contribution to improving global economic governance,” spokesperson Zhao Lijian said.

Mr. Zhao on June 30 also “extend[ed] congratulations on the start of full commercial operation of the Karot Hydropower Plant” to the Pakistani government describing it as “a priority project for energy cooperation and the first large-scale hydropower investment project under the CPEC”. The project was also the first to be funded by President Xi Jinping’s Silk Road Fund.

Asked about China’s opposition to G20 meetings in Kashmir on the one hand and its continuing projects there on the other, Mr. Zhao said, “What you mentioned are two matters completely different in nature. China has undertaken some projects in Pakistan to help it grow its economy and improve people’s livelihood. These projects are in Pakistan-occupied areas of Kashmir.... This does not affect China’s position on the Kashmir issue.”

He however declined to affirm if China would participate in G20 meetings there. “We will look at whether China will attend the meeting,” he said.

[Riaz Haq]

India & China's political tensions are hitting the #smartphone market. But they need each other. Xiaomi is the top-selling brand in #India. China's Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo together control more than 60% of the #Indian market. #Modi #BJP #QUAD #Ladakh https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/19/tech/chinese-smartphones-india-marke...


The Indian government is cracking down on the companies that make the country's most popular smartphones.

Indians love Chinese smartphones, but for the last two months, New Delhi has intensified the scrutiny of three top Chinese firms — Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo. Together, these companies control more than 60% of the Indian smartphone market, according to data from research firm Counterpoint.
Xiaomi, the top-selling brand in the country, was the first company to face regulators' heat. In May, the country's main financial investigation agency accused Xiaomi's Indian subsidiary of making illegal remittances, violating foreign exchange laws.

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Chinese technology firms have had a particularly rough time in India over the last two years, with New Delhi cracking down since border tensions escalated between the world's most populous countries.
In 2020, India banned more than 200 apps — many of which were Chinese, including the wildly popular video platform TikTok.
Chinese vendors have also come under the thumb of Indian regulators because "they have "grown very fast very quickly," noted Tarun Pathak, a research director at Counterpoint.
"More clarity is being sought by India on how Chinese firms do their business here," he said. "Their balance sheets are now being looked into."
He added that the Indian government is tightening regulations for foreign phone makers because they have realized that "these companies need India more than India needs them."
Although regulatory crackdowns are making business in India difficult, experts say it's unlikely New Delhi would put an outright ban on Chinese smartphones.
"Chinese firms are here to stay," said Pathak, adding that there are "no other takers."

South Korean giant Samsung is the second-best-selling smartphone brand in the country and the only non-Chinese firm among the top five sellers in India, according to data from Counterpoint. But it "cannot grow its share of the market from 20% to 60% overnight," said Pathak.
Apple (AAPL) has had big plans for India for years now, but has only captured a tiny sliver of the market as its products are prohibitively expensive for most Indians.
Kiranjeet Kaur, an associate research director at International Data Corporation (IDC), also expects these companies to bounce back by the time the Diwali festival season — driven by shopping — begins in India in October. She added that these probes would hardly matter to Indian consumers.
After the border clashes, calls for a boycott of Chinese companies, including phone makers, had engulfed India, recalls Kaur.

Despite these protests, there was "not a dent in the shipment numbers" of these companies, and they continued to dominate the market, she added.
India's love for Chinese smartphones transcends any political tensions, mainly because they are seen as great value in a highly price-sensitive market.
While Indian manufacturers have come up with affordable smartphones in the past few years —including one developed by Mukesh Ambani, the billionaire head of sprawling Indian conglomerate Reliance, in partnership with Google — these have failed to make much of a splash among consumers.
"If you compare the features, Chinese smartphones offer a lot more, and cost only a little bit more," said Kaur.
And, despite the new legal challenges, China can't afford to abandon the Indian market.

[Riaz Haq]

At 75, India’s Kashmir challenge shifts foreign policy focus
By AIJAZ HUSSAIN


https://apnews.com/article/china-pakistan-asia-india-0acb43fd7de635...

For decades, India has tried to thwart Pakistan in a protracted dispute over Kashmir, the achingly beautiful Himalayan territory claimed by both countries but divided between them.

That relentless competition made Pakistan always the focus of New Delhi’s foreign policy.

But in the last two years, since a deadly border clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers in Kashmir’s Ladakh region, policy makers in New Delhi have been increasingly turning their focus to Beijing, a significant shift in policy as the nation celebrates 75 years of independence.

India’s ever-growing economy, which is now vastly larger than Pakistan’s, combined with Beijing’s increasingly assertive push for influence across Asia, mean that “New Delhi has increasingly grown Beijing-centric,” said Lt. Gen. D.S. Hooda, who from 2014 to 2016 headed Indian military’s Northern Command, which controls Kashmir, including Ladakh.

Kashmir has suffered insurgencies, lockdowns and political subterfuge since India and Pakistan gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947, and has been at the heart of two of the four wars India has fought with Pakistan and China. The three countries’ tense borders meet at the disputed territory, in the world’s only three-way nuclear confrontation.

Starting in the 1960s, India was an active member of the Non-Aligned Movement, a grouping of over 100 countries that theoretically did not align with any major power during the Cold War. Despite disputes with neighboring Pakistan and China, India’s nonaligned stance remained a bedrock of its foreign policy, with its diplomats focused mainly on upending Pakistan’s claim to Kashmir.

“Kashmir was in a way central to our foreign policy concerns,” said Kanwal Sibal, a career diplomat who was India’s foreign secretary in 2002-2003.

But the current military standoff between India and China over their disputed border in Ladakh set off a grave escalation in tensions between the two Asian giants. Despite 17 rounds of diplomatic and military talks, the tense standoff continues.

For decades, India believed China did not represent a military threat, said Hooda, the former military commander. But that calculus changed in mid-2020 when a clash high in Karakoram mountains in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley set off the military tensions.

[Riaz Haq]

At 75, India’s Kashmir challenge shifts foreign policy focus
By AIJAZ HUSSAIN


https://apnews.com/article/china-pakistan-asia-india-0acb43fd7de635...


“Galwan represents a strategic inflection point,” said Constantino Xavier, a fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress, a New Delhi-based policy group. It “helped create a new Indian consensus about the need to reset the entire relationship with China, and not just solve the boundary issue.”

Soldiers from the two sides fought a medieval-style battle with stones, fists and clubs, leaving at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead.

The fighting came a year after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist-led government stripped Kashmir of its statehood, scrapped its semi-autonomy, and clamped down on local politicians, journalists and communications.

The government also split the Muslim-majority region into two federally administered territories — Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir — and ended inherited protections on land and jobs.

The government insisted the moves involved only administrative changes, part of a long-held Hindu nationalist pledge to assimilate overwhelmingly Muslim Kashmir into the country.

Pakistan reacted with fury to India’s changes, asserting that Kashmir was an international dispute and any unilateral change in its status was a violation of international law and U.N. resolutions on the region.

But the main diplomatic challenge to New Delhi’s moves in Kashmir came from an unexpected rival: China.

Beijing scathingly criticized New Delhi and raised the issue at the United Nations Security Council, where the Kashmir dispute was debated -- again inconclusively -- for the first time in nearly five decades.

India’s line of argument remained consistent: To the international community it insisted that Kashmir was a bilateral issue with Pakistan. To Pakistan it reiterated that Kashmir was an Indian internal affair. And to critics on the ground, it stubbornly asserted that Kashmir was an issue of terrorism and law and order.

Initially, New Delhi had faced a largely peaceful anti-India movement in the portion of Kashmir it held. However, a crackdown on dissent led to a full-blown armed rebellion against Indian control in 1989. A protracted conflict since then has led to tens of thousands of deaths in the region.

Kashmir turned into a potential nuclear flashpoint as India and Pakistan became nuclear-armed states in 1998. Their standoff attracted global attention, with then-U.S. President Bill Clinton describing Kashmir as “the most dangerous place in the world.”

Many Indian foreign policy experts believe New Delhi was successful over the decades in blocking foreign pressure for change in Kashmir, despite deep sentiment against Indian rule in the region.

Now, New Delhi policymakers face the fundamental challenge of a China that is exerting more power in Asia and supporting Pakistan’s stance on Kashmir.

[Riaz Haq]

At 75, India’s Kashmir challenge shifts foreign policy focus
By AIJAZ HUSSAIN


https://apnews.com/article/china-pakistan-asia-india-0acb43fd7de635...


Pakistan “now operates in a more complicated political role as a partner of Chinese power,” said Paul Staniland, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. “This gives it some clout and influence.”

With geopolitical rivalries deepening in the extended region, Kashmiris have been largely silenced, with their civil liberties curbed, as India has displayed zero tolerance for any form of dissent.

China’s rise as a global power has also pushed India closer to the U.S. and to the Quad, a new Indo-Pacific strategic alliance among the U.S., India, Australia and Japan that accuses Beijing of economic coercion and military maneuvering in the region upsetting the status quo.

India’s old nonaligned stance, rooted in the Cold War era when rivalries were playing out thousands of miles (kilometers) from its borders, has come to an end. The entire region has become a focus of geostrategic competition and great power rivalry close to India’s borders.

“We recognize the need to hedge against China to curb its ambitions by making it known that there is a new line of security that is being built against any aggressiveness by China, which is at the core of the Quad,” said Sibal, the former diplomat.

With the Quad now central to discussions among India’s strategic thinkers, New Delhi has massively ramped up infrastructure along its long, treacherous and undemarcated border with China. Beijing views the Quad as an attempt to contain its economic growth and influence.

“This is how we are sending a signal to China that we are ready to join with others to curb you,” Sibal said.

[Riaz Haq]

China too reacted adversely to the above Indian move, accusing India of continuing to undermine China’s territorial sovereignty by unilaterally amending its domestic laws and urging it to be cautious in its words and deeds on the border issue. Subsequently, it repeatedly called for peaceful resolution of “Kashmir dispute” left over from colonial history, based on the UN Charter, relevant UN Security Council resolutions and bilateral agreements, thus echoing Pakistan’s position on the subject.  Pakistan’s questioning of the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India and its policy of cross-border terrorism did not stem from the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under the Indian constitution and have outlasted its abrogation. The Pakistani dimension of India’s Kashmir problem and the Pakistani threat to the security of this sensitive region are still very much alive. China’s reaction to the Indian move and its subsequent aggressive actions in eastern Ladakh have added to that threat. Keen to ensure the safety and security of its strategic CPEC investment, China could in the normal course be expected to encourage a solution based on freezing the existing  territorial reality between India and Pakistan in J&K. However, with the downturn of its own relationship with India, it may be tempted to sustain and bolster Pakistan’s hostility. Equally, India’s strategic planners may be tempted not to give any comfort to China on the CPEC until a degree of stability is restored to the India-China equation, disturbed seriously by China’s aggressive behaviour in eastern Ladakh. Overall, the external environment for the security and stability of Jammu and Kashmir has worsened. This makes it all the more important for India to address the internal dimension of its Kashmir conundrum. India’s challenge is to ensure peace in J&K, not only in the immediate, but durable peace, for the failure to do so would continue to invite external meddling.

. 
Sabharwal, Sharat. India’s Pakistan Conundrum (pp. 181-182). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. 

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan’s relationship with China has emerged as its most important one in the recent years. For a long time, Pakistan enjoyed the patronage of the US – albeit in a transactional manner, but that role has increasingly shifted to China. Significantly, Pakistan and China have strategic congruence, which was lacking in the US-Pakistan partnership.

The China-Pakistan nexus has its genesis in their shared animosity against India. In 1963, close on the heels of China’s 1962 aggression against India, Pakistan ceded over 5,000 square kilometres of illegally occupied Indian territory in the Shaksgam valley to China under the Sino-Pakistan Boundary Agreement, which provided that “after settlement of the Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India, the sovereign authority concerned will reopen negotiations with the Government of the People’s Republic of China on the boundary” as described in it. This was, however, a clumsy attempt to cover up the illegitimate nature of the accord. Since then, the relationship  has seen a multidimensional growth. During President Xi Jinping’s visit to Pakistan in April 2015, the two countries decided to elevate it to “All-weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership, enriching the Pakistan-China Community of Shared Destiny”. China pledged investment of $45.6 billion for energy and infrastructure projects, including $622 million for expansion of the Gwadar port, with the CPEC as its centrepiece and the crown jewel of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Subsequent Pakistani media reports put the planned investment at around 62 billion dollars. 

Sabharwal, Sharat. India’s Pakistan Conundrum (pp. 315-316). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. 

[Riaz Haq]

After India vows to wrest back PoK, China vows to help Pakistan protect sovereigntyXi asked Sharif to ensure security of the Chinese in Pakistan, and agreed to advance CPEC with greater efficiency

Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/national/after-india-vows-to-wrest-bac...

“China will continue to firmly support Pakistan in safeguarding its sovereignty, territorial integrity, development interests and dignity, and in achieving unity, stability, development and prosperity,” Xi told Sharif, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese government.

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After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in August 2019 initiated the process to strip J&K of its special status and to reorganize the erstwhile state into two Union Territories, China had joined Pakistan to oppose New Delhi’s move and run an an international campaign against India. China also stepped up its aggression along the disputed boundary with India in eastern Ladakh in April-May 2020, resulting in a military stand-off, which has not been fully resolved yet.

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India has been opposed to the CPEC, a flagship project of the BRI, as it passes through its territories illegally occupied by Pakistan. Just a day before the Xi-Sharif meeting, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday tacitly reiterated New Delhi’s concerns, stating that connectivity projects should be carried out respecting the sovereignty of the nations. India also stayed away from the BRI perceived as China’s bid to expand its geostrategic influence.

[Riaz Haq]

India, Israel, and Geopolitical Imaginaries of Cooperation and Oppression
Author: Nitasha Kaul
Date Published: June 17, 2022

https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2022/06/17/india-israel-and-geopolitica...

Portrayals of India and Israel as strategic partners or allies in the oppression of Kashmiris and Palestinians often suggest that India emulates Israel in how it manages oppression. Yet, the designation of Israel as a unique source of learning for oppression limits the recognition of the indigenous Indian nature of the long-standing ideological and technological infrastructures of occupation in Kashmir. We must eschew simplistic geopolitical imaginaries of cooperation and oppression and pay greater attention to the similarities as well as the differences across contexts.

The contemporary global moment requires us to be alert to the multiple trajectories of repression. Tactics and technologies circulate amongst and between democracies and authoritarian regimes. Russian and Chinese models of digital authoritarianism have been regionally exported, and there has been Indian and Chinese mutual learning on modalities of repression. These circulations occur along supra- and intra-statal pathways, and via traffic in both economically profitable weapons and ideologies. To attend to these trajectories, we must carefully examine the preferred narratives adopted by the states as well as those offered by resistance and solidarity movements across national boundaries. In this context, the relationship between India and Israel is notable for how the two countries are celebrated as friendly partners for strategic cooperation, or alternatively, critiqued as allies for the parallel oppressions of Kashmiris and Palestinians.

The ties between India and Israel present a systematic divergence between official accounts of these relations and the perspectives of critical resistance scholarship on Palestine and Kashmir. The official story in the media unsurprisingly focuses on the mutually fertile and growing cooperation between India and Israel as strategic partners at every level of investment from infrastructure, innovation, and defense to people-to-people interaction. The bilateral trade between the two countries has been steadily increasing, and apart from growth in collaborative ventures, there is the imminent possibility of the conclusion of longstanding negotiations on the Free Trade Agreement between the two countries. Then, there is the resonance at the level of political leadership. The meeting between Netanyahu and Modi was perceived as a bromance between these leaders of deeply illiberal projects; the right-wing majoritarian nationalist projects championed by the regimes in the two countries both portray themselves as beleaguered by Islamists and resolute in combating terrorism.

On the other hand, there is no dearth of critical narratives that point to Kashmir and Palestine as being symmetrical occupations; here the focus is on the ways in which the oppressed populations in both cases are Muslims and oppressors are non-Muslims. India is the largest buyer of Israeli weapons and Israel is the second largest supplier to India; Israeli drones are used in Kashmir (one unmanned aerial vehicle called the Heron was specially adapted for such use). Indian forces have used Israeli Tavor rifles in 2008, used Spice-2000 guidance technology in the aftermath of Pulwama attacks in Kashmir in 2019, and bought Pegasus from Israel that same year.

Although these two portrayals of India and Israel as strategic partners for cooperation or allies in the oppression of Kashmiris and Palestinians are manifestly different, they have one important point in common. Both these narratives (often explicitly) suggest that India copies from Israel in the ways in which it manages oppression.