In late November 2019, there was widespread outrage over a video of the Indian Consul-General in New York, Sandeep Chakravorty, in which he suggested to a gathering of Kashmiri Hindus that India should follow the Israeli model, and build settlements in the Kashmir Valley to secure the return of Hindus. Kashmiri activists and journalists were shocked by his apparent support for Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. But this is only one of many recent examples of a growing political love affair between India and Israel.
Ties between the two countries have not always been this friendly. In October 1937, a decade before Indian independence from British rule, the Indian National Congress passed a resolution that declared its support for the Palestinian national movement. It assured “the Arabs of the solidarity of the Indian People with them in their struggle for national freedom.” A year later, Mahatma Gandhi wrote that the “cry for the national home for the Jews” in Palestine had little appeal for him. He added: “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.”
