Complicated chords

The terrorist attack on an Israeli diplomat’s vehicle in New Delhi this week has thrown a harsh spotlight on a relationship that many in the capital have preferred to hide under a bushel. India and Israel have had a complicated equation since the two independent countries emerged from the territorial reordering that followed World War II, but their history long precedes their existence as modern nation states.

Jews have lived in India, according to legend, since the destruction of their First Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BC prompted several to cross the established trade routes across the Arabian Sea to the south-western coast of India. A delightful anecdote that is part of Kerala’s oral history traditions recounts how, when St Thomas the Apostle landed on the coast of Kerala around 52 AD, he was welcomed on shore by a flute-playing Jewish girl. Other waves of Jewish migration created the “Bene Israel” of Maharashtra in the hinterland of Mumbai, who were accepted as yet another “Hindu” sub-caste for centuries until a wandering rabbi identified their practices and beliefs as Jewish; and the so-called “Baghdadi Jews”, largely urban and educated elites from various Ottoman cities who migrated to India in the 19th century during the British Raj. None of India’s Jews experienced the slightest episode of anti-Semitism at Indian hands; indeed, the only time this diaspora suffered was when the Portuguese arrived in Kerala in the 16th century, found a thriving Jewish community and began to persecute it, leading the Jews to flee south to Kochi (Cochin), where they were given refuge and land, and where in the mid-16th century they built one of the finest synagogues in the world. Their history, and that of the other two waves of Jewish migration, is one of India’s willing embrace of the Jewish people and their cultural (but not racial) assimilation into their desi surroundings.
Nonetheless, friendship and hospitality is one thing, political perspective another. An important element guiding India’s political stance towards Israel has undoubtedly been the strong feelings of India’s own Muslim population, which has, perhaps inevitably, looked with suspicion if not hostility at Tel Aviv. The assumption on the part of most Indian political parties that overt friendship with Israel would cost its advocates dearly at the Indian ballot box remains a strong factor, especially when elections loom in states with a significant number of Muslim voters.
Nonetheless, a significant change occurred at the end of the Cold War when India re-examined its entire geopolitical posture in the light of the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the subsequent expansion of India’s options. As part of a general reorientation of Indian foreign policy, the government of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao decided in 1992 to upgrade diplomatic relations with Israel to full ambassadorial level. The change was managed reasonably well, with the Arab world being assured that it would not affect India’s traditional position of support for Palestine or the considerably greater priority accorded to India’s engagement with Arab countries. Nonetheless, the last two decades have witnessed a steady strengthening of the India-Israel partnership, particularly in the defence and security areas where the two countries’ shared concerns about Islamic extremism have offered common ground for co-operation.
India is now Israel’s largest market for defence products and services (it is estimated that half of Israel’s military equipment sales abroad go to India). Israel also has, at some $10 billion, become India’s second-largest defence supplier. Israel is reportedly willing to offer India equipment and technology unavailable from any other country, and to provide indigenously-developed defence technologies that are therefore less vulnerable to interruption by third-party pressures. Surface-to-air missiles, unmanned surveillance aircraft, training simulators and other sophisticated Israeli defence products are now an indispensable part of India’s arsenal. In turn, the Indian Space Research Organisation has launched at least one Israeli military satellite, and the two countries have intensified intelligence sharing, especially in such areas as counter-terrorism, border management and the joint training of security forces. India’s armed forces have embarked on an intensive series of high-level exchanges which have deepened strategic understanding between the countries.
Non-military commerce has also progressed, with India-Israel trade reaching just under $5 billion in 2010. India is the second largest export market for Israel and Israel is India’s seventh largest trading partner. There is even talk of a free-trade agreement. Israel’s advances in agriculture have led several state governments to send agricultural delegations to Israel, and — as India contemplates serious water scarcity — increasing interest in Israel’s ability to make its deserts bloom. Opportunities for collaboration in high-technology aspects of information technology, space technology, nanotechnology and biotechnology are being explored by the private sector as well as by the two governments. Public opinion polls consistently show high regard in each nation for the other, with India often emerging as the world’s most pro-Israeli country after the United States in such surveys.
At the same time, India is not ready to adopt Israeli methods to deal with terrorism in its own borderlands; it has consistently been critical of Israeli attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, and is unlikely to see Israel as a tutor for its own approaches to similar problems in its neighbourhood. There are also serious differences of perception on Iran and the basic reality of India’s special relationship with the Arab world (as a source of energy security, as a home for Indian migrant labour and as a potential fount of investments). It is clear that India values its relationship with Israel, but not at the expense of its friendships with Arab and other Muslim states.
Political visits at the highest levels have therefore been relatively infrequent, and the Indian government has tended to treat its Israeli connection with circumspection. The visit to Israel last month by external affairs minister S.M. Krishna, more than a decade after his BJP predecessor Jaswant Singh, came after several years during which Israeli ambassadors in New Delhi wondered privately if theirs was “the love that dare not speak its name”. Invitations to prominent Israeli political personalities have been noticeably infrequent, for fear of a domestic backlash. And yet Israel’s willingness to sell India weapons technology it cannot obtain elsewhere, the two countries’ shared concerns about Islamist terrorism, and largely (though not wholly) compatible strategic interests, make this an indispensable relationship for both sides.
This is why the terrorist attack this week means more to both sides than either will openly admit. India and Israel must work together to deal with it, to contain its fallout — and to prevent a recurrence.

The writer is a member of Parliament from Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram constituency