Israeli Missile Defence for Delhi!Now the AXIS Between the US, Israel and India Works Excellently Galaxy wide!I will stamp out Mumbai-like terror atta

Israeli Missile Defence for Delhi!Now the AXIS Between the US, Israel and India Works Excellently Galaxy wide!I will stamp out Mumbai-like terror attacks: Obama Declares!



Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams: Chapter 121

Palash Biswas

Now the AXIS Between the US, Israel and India Works Excellently Galaxy wide!At first glance, India and Israel seem like improbable allies. India has long championed Palestinian rights, and the country’s large Muslim population makes cooperation with Israel politically dangerous. But 11 years after New Delhi established full relations with Tel Aviv, the two countries share increasingly strong ties based on a common desire to defeat violence rooted in Islamic fundamentalist extremism. Facing terrorism in the state of Kashmir and elsewhere, India has been buying a lot of weapons, recently becoming the largest single destination for Israeli defense exports. And both countries, who share intelligence often, are interested in developing an anti-ballistic missile system to protect against a perceived nuclear threat from Pakistan. Still, none of these topics is likely to be discussed publicly when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visits India this week. The two sides want to keep their public agenda focused on tourism and trade; but as for their deepening military alliance, confidentiality is still a strategic priority.
The Indian Air Force (IAF) will reportedly deploy an Israeli-made aerostat radar system to help protect New Delhi from low-flying hostile aircraft.

An aerostat unit will also be installed in Agra to safeguard the Taj Mahal.

"We are planning to deploy a dedicated aerostat radar to secure the capital from low-flying aircraft," IAF sources told PTI. "With our existing radars, we can protect whole of national capital region. But this would be the only radar guarding against low-flying threats. With the high powered radars, we were sure about tackling high flying threats and with the aerostat, we would be able to counter low-level flying objects also and thus, ensuring an almost fool-proof security cover for Delhi."

India has already deployed an aerostat radar unit along the international border in the strategic Punjab and Gujarat (Kutch) provinces. The radar was also installed in south India, following an LTTE bombing raid against nearby Sri Lankan military facilities.

The tethered EL/M-2083 phased array radar, which can hover up to 13,000 feet, is developed and manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries' Elta Systems Group (IAI/Elta). According to IAI, the system is designed to detect hostile approaching aircraft from long ranges, especially those flying at low altitudes. A single EL/M-2083 aerostat unit is capable of providing three-dimensional low-altitude coverage equal to at least 30 ground-based radars.

As IT Examiner previously reported, bilateral relations between India and Israel have increased significantly in recent years, with both nations experiencing a convergence of interests on a range of issues. Indeed, a number of Indian firms have signed lucrative deals with Israeli defence companies. For example, the omnipresent Tata recently agreed to jointly develop missiles, UAVs, radar and electronic warfare systems with IAI.

The Indian government has also purchased a number of Tavor assault rifles, Galil sniper rifles, and night vision equipment from Israeli Military Industries (IMI). In addition, Israeli counter-terrorist training is viewed by both the political and military echelons as having made a significant impact on the effort to curtail terrorist infiltrations along the Jammu-Kashmiri line of control.

It should be noted that a number of insurgents have crossed the line of control by cutting barbed wire fences under the cover of Pakistani army fire. As a result, Tel Aviv has decided to help New Delhi refine its anti-infiltration strategy and urban-warfare techniques. The IDF is planning to conduct specialised counter-terrorism exercises for Indian troops in various topographical locations, including jungles, mountains and highly populated urban zones.

Israeli and Indian industries and service organizations are accelerating efforts for mutual business contracts and joint ventures. Trade relations between India and Israel have increased 25% since the 1992 establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the two countries. India offers Israeli industries high-quality materials, skilled managers and manpower, capital investment resources and a market of 300 million consumers. Israel can fill India's need for research and development, agricultural equipment, high technology and serve as a gateway to US and European markets for Indian products.

On January 21, 2008 an Indian space launch vehicle lifted off from the Sriharikota spaceport on the Indian Ocean to put into space Israel’s most sophisticated spy satellite ever launched, the Polaris. The commercial launch of Polaris by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) underscored the growing military and intelligence connections between Israel and India. The United States helped inspire this relationship and has a strong interest in its success. Though unique in the military cooperation realm, this is but one of several evolving relationships between Israel and great or emerging powers that deserves attention.


The Brahaminical Ruling HEGEMONY of India adopts Israeli Missile Defence for Delhi! The Brahaminical Intelligentsia as well as Policy Makers insisted all these years that India’s Nehruvian policies kept India and Israel politically apart for over forty years despite sharing many attributes in common. India and Israel emerged as nation states within months of each other. Following India’s emergence as an independent nation on 15 Aug. 1947, Israel emerged as nation state on 14 May 1948, as a result of a decision by the United Nations, the first such nation. India and Israel though comparatively emerging as new nation states were steeped in history of over five thousand years. Thus,Contemporary global and regional developments now dictate that the distortions of past Indian policies be jettisoned and both countries put value on the imperatives for enhancing their strategic cooperation. Events since 1998 indicate that a beginning has been made.

Nrasimha rao Government of India should also be remembered to CONSTRUCT long Term Indo Israel Relationship besides introducing LPG with a Washington Planted FINANC MINISTER. Following NDA Governments led by RSS did the rest of the Work with surgical precision!

Though India and Israel only established diplomatic relations in 1992, their relationship has blossomed over the past 16 years, particularly in the defense arena. India has become the Israeli defense industry’s top foreign customer, with some $1.5 billion in annual purchases, and Israel is now India’s second most important weapons supplier after Russia.With India planning to spend an additional $40 billion over the next decade to modernize its armed forces, which until now have relied primarily on antiquated equipment originally purchased from the Soviet Union, Israeli companies are poised to capture even more business.


India and Israel's bilateral relationship has blossomed since the two countries opened diplomatic ties in 1992. Ariel Sharon's visit to India, the first ever by an Israeli prime minister, marked a growing friendship between the two countries. The visit underwent amid growing calls from some interest groups and commentators in the US for the US, Israel and India to do more together to counter Islamic militants! But more recently the idea of a strategic axis between the US, Israel and India has been gaining ground.

As earlier as in 2003, the green light given by the Bush administration for Israel to sell its Phalcon early warning radar system to India is one well recognised signal of the encouragement which Washington is giving to the developing strategic relationship. Israeli radar had to be used on India's Russian-made Ilyushins! contrarily, the US has a veto over the countries to which Israel can sell defence systems that are based on US technology!

The Relationship was not EXPOSED as it had always been HIDING thanks to the Domestic Obligation of VOTE BANK Politics and Mixed demography consisting of siezable MUSLIM Population. Mumbai Attacks were not only targeted to Five STAR India and Foreign Nationals specially Americans and Britons, but the National Telecast of Nariman House inhibited by hitherto unknown Israeli citizens exposed India Israeli strategic relationship quiet NAKED! Nevertheless,that was quite evident at last week’s Defense Expo, a large defense industry trade show in New Delhi. Israeli companies were eager to show off their high-tech product lines – everything from missiles to advanced night-vision equipment to unmanned aerial drones – but reticent to talk about what they currently are supplying to the Indian armed forces.

I have been always writing that the Global WAR and CIVIL WAR Economics is LED by Zionists and the INDO US Nuclear deal as well as strategic Realliance in US lead has a MANDATORY ZIONIST LINK! The much hyped war Against Terror is nothing but a ZIONIST Game Plan for Ethnic cleansing of Muslims and black Untouchables worldwide and it is strongly supported and implemented by the Post Modern Manusmriti Apartheid Hindu White Zionist Galaxy Order!

Just after Mumbai attacks a RED ALERT was sounded countrywide against possible Terrorist Air Strikes! The Israeli Missile defence for Delhi is the MOST APPROPRIATE Follow Up! The overwhelming logic of the policy makers remains the same as they insist:India and Israel are democracies and have survived in a sea of hostility, surrounded by implacable adversaries and a heavily militarised security environment. Both nations have fought wars in nearly every decade of their existence. Both countries also have been facing external and internal security threats in the form of Islamic terrorism and sabotage. It should have been therefore natural for India to reach out to Israel in terms of establishment of meaningful political and economic relations. India’s record has been otherwise!

India's Then National Security adviser Brajesh Mishra working for NDA GOI led by RSS Face Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the Prime Minister, set out India's stall in a speech to the American Jewish Committee's annual dinner earlier in the year 2003.Brajesh Mishra set the AGENDA as He said that the three countries "have to jointly face the same ugly face of modern-day terrorism".

Mind you it happens to be the same Brajesh Mishra who sided and played a vital role to operationalise INDO US NUCLEAR DEAL despite his known Commitment to Hindutva and RSS! It is not a Coincidence that UPA and NDA united to save Manmohan Colonial Government in the No Confidence SOAP Opera in the Parliament! The Realliance inserted an OMNIPRESENT OMNIPOWER ZIONIST Flavour in the ANATOMY of Brahaminical Hegemony Ruling and Enslaving India. At the same time, it stopped MAYAWATI working hard for an Aboriginal Indigenous Black Untouchable Resurgence in Global Americanised Zionist India!

"Such an alliance", Brijesh Mishra said, "would have the political will and moral authority to take bold decisions in extreme cases of terrorist provocation."

All these years, New lobbying groups dedicated to promoting India's interests in Washington, such as the US-India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) set up in September 2002, had been increasingly working with Jewish groups such as the American Jewish Committee (AJC) to promote what they clamed to be India and Israel's common concerns and values.

India’s founding father, Mahatma Gandhi, penned a famous 1938 essay in which he compared centuries of Jewish persecution to the treatment of India’s low-caste “untouchables.”

Gandhi wrote that he sympathized completely with the Jews but could not support their ambition of creating a Jewish state in Palestine. Instead, Indian nationalists like Gandhi supported the creation of an independent Arab Palestine.

Opposition to Israel was a hallmark of Indian foreign policy under Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first post-independence prime minister and founder of the Congress Party, and remained so until 1992 when a Congress-led government reversed course and recognized Israel.

I will stamp out Mumbai-like terror attacks: Obama
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Karma Takapa
Posted: Dec 10, 2008 at 2157 hrs IST
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New Delhi On Jan. 20, President-elect of the US will finally be sworn in as the President of US and will be using his full name, like every other President, to take the oath of office: Barack Hussein Obama.
Barack Obama says his presidency is an opportunity for the US to renovate its relations with the Muslim world, starting the day of his inauguration and continuing with a speech he plans to deliver in an Islamic capital.

"I think we've got a unique opportunity to reboot America's image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular,'' Obama said on Tuesday, promising an ‘unrelenting’ desire to ‘create a relationship of mutual respect and partnership in countries and with people of goodwill who want their citizens and ours to prosper together’.

The world, he said, ‘is ready for that message’.

In a wide-ranging interview with Chicago Tribune reporters, Obama discussed his strategy for his first year in office, defending his choice for attorney general and reflecting on his role as the first African American to be elected president.

Obama also made it clear that he might be moving to Washington but his heart would remain in Chicago saying that his ‘Kennebunkport’ would be the South Side, where he pledges to return at least every couple months for some family time.

Obama’s first interview with a newspaper since his election on Nov 4 came just a few hours after Governor Rod Blagojevich, a fellow Democrat, was arrested on a federal conspiracy complaint. The complaint alleges that Blagojevich tried to auction off the appointment to Obama’s seat in the US Senate, but the President-elect declined to comment on the discussions between his representatives and those of the governor.

Citing an ‘ongoing investigation’ into the matter, Obama said he considered it ‘inappropriate’ to talk further about the situation.

Distancing himself, Obama said that he had never spoken personally to Blagojevich about his possible replacement, either before or since his victory. Shortly after the interview ended on Tuesday afternoon, Obama's transition office released a statement saying top adviser David Axelrod misspoke last month when he said Obama had talked with Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy.

As the Blagojevich drama unfolded, Obama lounged in his office talking about how the country must take advantage of a unique chance to recalibrate relations around the globe, through a new diplomacy that emphasizes inclusiveness and tolerance as well as an unflinching stand against terrorism.

"The message I want to send is that we will be unyielding in stamping out the terrorist extremism we saw in Mumbai," Obama said, adding that he plans to give a major address in an Islamic capital as part of his global outreach.

Though the present world events and economic winds might have made his agenda all the more challenging, Obama has kept a close counsel on how he plans to move forward.

He was non-commital to specific plans on matters as varied as free trade, unionization and illegal immigration. Instead, he said, his nominees and advisers were studying the issues and would report back with recommendations.

Likewise, he offered no hints about future Cabinet appointments, but voiced strong support for Eric Holder, his nominee for attorney general, by batting away concerns about his role in the controversial pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency.

"Everybody who looks at his record says the guy was an outstanding attorney, an outstanding prosecutor, an outstanding judge, an outstanding number two at the Justice Department,'' Obama said. "And Eric has acknowledged the Rich pardon was a mistake on his part, not having caught that earlier.

"I agree with him," Obama said. "I think it was a mistake. But when you look at the totality of his experience, there's no doubt he's going to be an outstanding attorney general.''

Some liberal supporters have expressed disappointment over some of Obama's choices, like the one to retain Robert Gates as secretary of defense, but Obama said supporters have no cause for concern.

He is steadfast on his "agenda of change," he said.

"On all the promises that I made during the campaign there has been no sense I'm backing off,'' he said. "What I'm putting in place is a Cabinet of extraordinarily qualified, competent people who would not have accepted my offer for them to join my administration unless they believed in my vision.''

While Obama is plans his administration, most of the transition team is at work in Washington, so Secret Service agents outnumber staff members in Chicago. Contemplating issues both great and small, one simple matter comes down to three little words, and on them he has made up his mind: he won't shrink from using his full name when he takes the oath of office.

During the campaign, Obama's detractors would often invoke his middle name, Hussein, in an attempt to falsely paint him as a Muslim. Obama, a Christian, doesn't care.

"I think the tradition is that they use all three names, and I will follow the tradition," he said. "I'm not trying to make a statement one way or another. I'll do what everybody else does.''

And then there are the grand issues, like the burden placed on him by history. As the first African-American president, he acknowledges, he thinks about it.

"The biggest challenges we face right now in improving race relations have to do with the universal concerns of Americans across colour lines," he said. "If we are creating jobs throughout this economy, then African-Americans and Latinos, who are disproportionately unemployed, are going to be swept up in that rising tide."

"I think that more than anything is going to improve race relations," he said, "a sense of common purpose.''

Though he hasn't taken on a singular spiritual adviser, months after the controversial parting with his former pastor, Obama said he has found inspiration in a "prayer circle" of supportive clergy leaders.

"I'm reliant on the pastors who are friends of mine, and who I talk to for support, and my own prayer life at home," he said.

Obama said he and his wife, Michelle, haven't gone church-shopping in Washington yet, mainly because they are trying to pull off a massive move ‘without losing anything’--especially, he joked, either of their two children.

Even in the White House, though, he doesn't plan to sever ties to home. He made reference to former President George H.W. Bush's White House getaway--Kennebunkport, Maine.

"Let me explain to you, my Kennebunkport is on the South Side of Chicago," he said. "Our friends are here. Our family is here. We are going to try to come back here as often as possible . . . at least once every six weeks or couple months."
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/I-will-stamp-out-Mumbailike-terror-attacks-Obama/396766/

China blocked move to ban Jamaat thrice

Agencies

New York Three attempts to ban Jamaat-ud-Dawah, the frontal organisation of the Pakistan-based terror outfit LeT, in the UN Security Council were blocked by China in the past, and now all eyes would be on what Beijing does on fresh attempts to ban the outfit.
The sanctions committee of the Council had circulated a note to its members that the United States, backed by Britain and France, had twice tried to add JuD chief Hafiz Mohammed Saeed to the list of individuals and organisations connected to terrorism last May, but the move was blocked by China, according to a note circulated in the UNSC on Wednesday.

A similar attempt directed against the organisation in April 2006 was also blocked by China, the note said.

Now India has put in a formal request for declaring JuD as a terrorist outfit for its involvement in the Mumbai terror attacks. New Delhi has also asked for freezing of assets of the organisation.


Israel and India's Relationship Stronger Than Ever
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=pahcZT934dA


Inside Story -Indian/Israeli collaboration -21 Oct 07-Part 1
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=VUNN4uEHLaQ


India's defence expenditure v social spending debate-09Oct07
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=wAv6V7L3cTc


Human rights declaration 'under threat' - 10 Dec 08
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=s0mjmtgue_w


Israelis in India
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=234pTxkDKsk


The three countries share a high, enduring interest in determining the roots and causes of terrorism

Richard Foster
Center for Security Policy in BUSH Administration

Increasingly close relations between India and Israel (or, at least, between the Indian Army, the BJP and Israel) brought to light in these articles on one of India's most lauded military men General Jack Jacob, mastermind of the 1971 Bangladesh campaign.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._F._R._Jacob

http://www.muktadhara.net/generajacob.htm

The Hindu, 4 December 2008
Antony warns of airborne terror threat
New Delhi: With India's coastal security already breached in Mumbai by terrorists, Defence Minister A.K. Antony on Wednesday warned the armed forces of possible terror attacks from airborne platforms similar to the '9/11' attacks in the U.S. Mr. Antony asked them to be prepared to counter the threat of terrorists from the air and prevent a repeat of World Trade Center-type attacks carried out by the al-Qaeda...

The Times of India, 8 December 2008
Armed forces capable of 'surgical strikes' in Pak, PoK
New Delhi: Quoting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, US Senator John McCain warned a gathering of Islamabad's elite on Saturday that India was determined to strike terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir if the Zardari government did not act against jihadis of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and former ISI officers behind the Mumbai terror attack.... ...

The Indian Express, 4 December 2008
Navy Chief fumes at media, gets facts wrong
New Delhi: Navy Chief Sureesh Mehta lashed out against the media at the annual Navy briefing on Tuesday, but got his facts wrong. The fuming Admiral, who at one point even told reporters that 'I would have chopped your heads off' for an alleged 'breach of privilege', said a "Colonel was dismissed after he fired an artillery round on requests by an NDTV reporter that resulted in retaliatory fire which killed three jawans". However, Army records show there was no such dismissal... ...

Just remember! India’s growing defense ties to Israel are prompting a negative backlash among some of India’s political leaders!India’s growing dependence on Israeli-made military technology has caused consternation among India’s left-wing politicians and intellectuals, who fear their country is abandoning its traditional support for the Palestinian cause and jeopardizing its warm ties with Arab states – in particular Iran, upon which India is increasingly dependent to meet its surging energy needs.

The leftist parties were especially upset over India’s launch of an Israeli TecSar satellite, widely described in both the Israeli and Indian media as a spy satellite that Israel would use to gather intelligence on Iran.India’s Space Research Organization has an agreement to launch two more such satellites for Israel. In return, Israel has agreed to share certain images from the satellites with India, according to a report in The Times of India.

The leftist parties well noted that the TecSar launch coincided with Israel’s ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip and several Israeli raids into the Hamas-ruled area.but it is quite amusing, that Indian Marxist Brahmisns DID EXACTLY NOTHING against US, Israeli and HINDUTVA interests. it could not stop neither Indo US nor Strategic Realliance in US lead despite the much HYPED PULL OUT Drama! Moreover, Indian Left, despite its HUE and CRY agaisnt Zionism defending its own Brand of Brahaminical Psuedo SECULARISm, could not mobilise a RESISTANCE at all! but it continued the PR statements to convince its MUSLIM Votebank, specially in three Left Rule States West bengal, Kerala and Tripura!

Just see whta they said and what happened NEXT exposing the Marxist failure to resist zionism as well as Fascist Hindutva in India! Infact Left defended the COMBINATION Lethal by its Non Marxist Pro American DEEDS! friend in NEED in friend INDEED!

The UPA government is keeping a shameful silence on this criminal blockade by Israel,” the Communist Party of India said in a statement released immediately after the launch. “It is instead collaborating with Israel to enhance its military capability.”

The statement accused Israel of being “responsible for state terrorism, violence and aggression.”


And as Richard Foster, Asian security fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, suggested, supporters of Israel within the Bush administration could be assumed to view growing Indo-Israeli ties positively. It MATERIALISED! As the Bush Administration HIGHLY Recognised India as a rising regional power in Asia with an expanding economy and shared democratic values. The Plan for Colonisation was Complete as DR Manmohan singh followed RSS Face Atal Bihari Vajpayee totally Americanised! It threw away the masks of Vajpayee`s BHARATYATA, Secularism and demcracy. Rather the Italian remote control Mobilised the Secular Progressive Marxist involvement to set the Indo US Israel AXIS into a RUN Infinite!The depth of the growing ties between the three countries is viewed with particular concern by Pakistan. India accuses Pakistan of sponsoring terrorism within its borders, and has lobbied hard to press this point with Washington. But as long as the US remains dependent on Pakistan for its fight against al-Qaeda and the Taleban it is likely to continue an awkward balancing act in its policy towards South Asia. The GREATEST Irony Struck the Five Star India`s WAR CRY against Pakistan! Thus, Pranab or any one else may never Imagine to REPLICATE MRS INDIRA Gandhi of 1971.

India’s relations with Israel thawed gradually until 1998, when the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, came to power. The BJP, which often is accused of being anti-Muslim, wanted to distance India from its traditional pro-Arab position and looked to enhance relations with Israel dramatically.

During India’s 1999 Kargil war with Pakistan, Israel rushed military support to India, cementing the nascent defense relationship. Many expected India-Israel relations to cool after the Congress Party regained power following elections in 2004, but instead the Congress-led coalition has pressed ahead with expanding defense ties.

Given its fragile coalition, however, the Congress Party has to be cautious of jeopardizing the Left Front’s support.

On Feb. 12, India’s Foreign Ministry released a statement condemning Israel’s “use of force” in Gaza, calling on Israel to exercise restraint and pledging a package of humanitarian aid for the Palestinian Authority. Raja, of the Communist Party, attributed this move to Left Front pressure on the government.

Cognizant of political sensitivities, Lior Weintraub, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi, said it was the embassy’s policy not to comment on military assistance and arms sales to India.

He defended Israel’s blockade of Gaza as justified by the ongoing rocket attacks from the Hamas-controlled territory but declined to comment on India’s condemnation, saying Israel expresses its sentiments to the India government “through the appropriate channels,” not “on pages of newspapers.”

As for the TecSar launch, Weintraub said it was “a commercial tie-up” between India’s Space Research Organization and Israeli Aerospace Industries Ltd., the defense contractor that built the satellite. He referred all further questions to the company.

Israeli companies clearly see more military sales to India in the offing. Israel Aerospace Industries, which built the TecSar satellite, announced a partnership this month with the Indian conglomerate Tata to develop and manufacture missiles, radars, unmanned drones and other defense equipment.

Israel Military Industries also is optimistic about further sales.

“I think the Indian market is a huge one,” said Zeevi, the spokesman, adding that Israeli companies offer “good products, good technology and combat-proven experience.”

India-Israel military relations have been given a boost by warming relations between the United States and India. The United States would like India to counterbalance Chinese influence in Asia, and as such it has approved of Israeli sales of advanced radars and missiles to India.

The United States exercises a de facto veto over such sales because many Israeli systems incorporate U.S. technology and also because of the exceedingly close strategic relations between the United States and Israel. Several years ago, Israel had to call off a huge arms sale to China at the last minute because of U.S. objections.

Israel and India only established formal diplomatic relations in 1991 with the Madrid Arab-Israeli peace process creating a favorable diplomatic context for New Delhi to move beyond informal contacts that existed before 1990. Then President Bush’s National Security Council staff worked closely behind the scenes with Prime Minister Rao’s embassy in Washington to make this happen. Military-to-military contacts and defense interaction followed.

In the 1990s, China was Israel’s most important arms export market. The signature weapons system in the relationship was the Phalcon airborne warning and control system (AWACs). This system used U.S. technology in its development and was thus subject to U.S. export oversight. As the 1990s developed and tensions rose in the Taiwan Strait, Washington pressed the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv to cut back on its ties to Beijing. The Phalcon became a bone of contention. Of course, this had serious economic costs for Israel.

In 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak pressed President Clinton for relief. Clinton came back with an idea — if the United States did not like Israeli-Chinese arms deals, it had no objection to Israeli-Indian arms sales since they did not raise the potential issues Taiwan raised. More explicitly, selling the Phalcon to India would not meet objections in Washington. Clinton made clear the United States would not raise concerns about the arms balance with Pakistan since it has no commitment to the defense of Pakistan and the conventional balance of forces was already tipped in India’s favor in 2000. The two leaders talked the issues through on the margins of the Israeli-Palestinian summit at Camp David in mid-2000. They reached agreement and Israel got a green light from Washington to court India.

Now, almost eight years later, India is Israel’s largest arms export market in the world. Sales in 2006 were $1.5 billion, roughly the same as in each of the preceding three years as well. This from Israel’s total arms sales of $4.2 billion in 2006; the India market comprised more than one-third. Sales included upgrades for MIG 21 aircraft and T72 tanks originally purchased from Russia, the Barak anti-missile ship defense system, communications equipment, laser-guided munitions and the Phalcon. The first of five Phalcon AWACs were delivered in 2007. Co-partnerships are now developing between Indian and Israeli firms.

Israeli arms experts are also seeking to sell the Arrow II anti-tactical ballistic missile system to India, which would require U.S. approval due to shared technology in the ATBM system. This would give India a significant missile defense system. The Green Pine radar system has already been sold to India which is a critical component of the overall ATBM system.

The Polaris satellite is Israel’s first equipped with synthetic aperture radar that allows it to take high resolution imagery in all weather conditions. The radar looks through clouds or fog to see objects on the ground. Launched from south India into a polar orbit it offers new coverage of sites in Iran for Israeli defense planners. According to Indian press sources, two more such satellites will be launched by ISRO for Israel in the next few years. The Iranian nuclear program will probably be the principal collection target for these systems. Israel retains full operational control of the Polaris system including what targets are imaged. It is unknown if any intelligence derived from the imagery is shared with third parties.

Critics of the Indian-U.S. civilian nuclear deal negotiated by President Bush and Prime Minister Singh have complained about India’s ties to Iran. India does have important equities with Iran, not the least because India has the second largest population of Shia Muslims in the world after Iran. But there is no comparison between the sophisticated military relationship between India and Israel and the weak connections between India and Iran on security issues.

According to ISRO officials I talked to in Bangalore in February the launch of the Polaris produced a serious protest from Iran to India. But they were clear ISRO would stick with its Israeli commercial connection. They also said India will launch its own first radar-imaging satellite later this year. The Indian Army Chief of Staff, General Depak Kapoor, has said publicly that India’s imagery satellite capability is now critical to the nation’s early warning capability with regards to both Pakistan and China.

The Israeli-Indian connection in commercial military and space intelligence fields is good for both countries and for the United States. In less than two decades since diplomatic ties were upgraded, New Delhi and Jerusalem have come a long way. Camp David was a pivotal moment on the way. The cooperation between Israel and India, with U.S. blessing, provides important security to two democratic countries in a very unstable part of the world.


Middle Men in Defence Deals





On the basis of Ministry of Finance’s instructions issued on 31st January, 1989 relating to Indian Agents of foreign suppliers for all the Ministries & Departments under the Government of India, supplementary instructions were issued by the Ministry of Defence in April 1989 and in November, 2001 to regulate authorized Indian representatives & agents of foreign suppliers. The instructions provide for the regulation of representational arrangements through a system of registration, categorical and open declaration by the foreign suppliers of the services to be rendered by their authorized representatives & agents and the remuneration payable to them by way of fees, commission or any other method. So far no authorized Indian representatives /& agent has been registered by the Ministry of Defence in terms of these instructions.

Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) 2006 and Defence Procurement Manual (DPM 2006) under implementation with effect from 1st September 2006 provide for direct dealing with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) or Authorised Vendors or Government sponsored Export Agencies (applicable in case of countries where domestic laws do not permit direct export by OEMs). Further, the procedures inter-alia incorporate provisions for penalties being imposed if any seller engages any individual or firm, whether Indian or foreign whatsoever, to intercede, facilitate or in any way recommend to the Government of India or any of its functionaries, whether officially or unofficially, to the award of the contract to the seller.



Missile defence for Delhi

- Israel-made radar system being deployed in capital to watch for threats from the air
SUJAN DUTTA

An Aerostat. (File picture)
New Delhi, Dec. 9: A missile defence system for the national capital is being deployed by the Indian Air Force.

Three Israeli-made balloon or blimp-held radar called Aerostat will be deployed around New Delhi after an intelligence alert of a threat from low-flying aircraft. An Aerostat is also being deployed in Agra for the Taj Mahal.

The Aerostat-based missile defence system is a generation behind the systems used by the US. India is in talks with the US and Russia to check out their more advanced missile defence systems (such as the Patriot III and the SV-300). Its Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is also carrying out trials for an indigenous Prithvi Air Defence system.

The Aerostat radar has been used along the international border in Punjab and in Gujarat (Kutch). The radar is currently in use in south India after the LTTE used aircraft to bomb Sri Lankan military facilities last year.

An official of the Indian Air Force said the decision was taken after defence minister A.K. Antony held a meeting last week and asked the service to mount an extraordinary vigil. Following that, security was beefed up at airports.

The deployment of the Aerostats is in line with that measure, the officer said.

The EL/M 2083 Aerostat radar was bought from Israel in 2004-2005. The blimps have a maximum altitude of 13,000 feet. They are tethered to the ground. The radar they carry has coverage of up to 300km.

The radar is used for surveillance and also has IFF (identification friend or foe) capability. For the national capital, the Aerostat will be connected to batteries of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs).

If the radar signals an unidentifiable aircraft approaching, it can be programmed to trigger the SAMs automatically.

However, the Indian Air Force usually alerts fighter aircraft squadrons in the vicinity of the capital — in Gwalior, Hindon or Ambala, for example — to be ready to scramble.

The officer said Delhi has no-fly zones over strategic areas (such as over Rajpath and Raisina Hill). Besides, the threat perception for the city was assessed to be higher than that for other urban centres in the country.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081210/jsp/frontpage/story_10232024.jsp

Israel and India partner up.(India to purchase arms from Israel)(Brief...

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; January 1, 2001 ; Withington, Thomas; 700+ words...Israel. But is the warmth genuine? India and Israel share enough common ground to...force officer was dispatched to Israel as India's first defense attache. Israel...30MKI aircraft, according to India Today. Israel might offer upgrades to Hindustan...

Q&A: India and Israel's friendship based on common concerns.(WEB)

The Christian Science Monitor; September 12, 2003 ; 700+ words...characterize the relationship between India and Israel? Is it expedient? Long-term? Strategic? Just commercial? India and Israel have had a decade-long friendship...Indian-administered Kashmir. India and Israel have also developed other areas...

Next stop on the Orient Express - India. (India to enlarge diplomatic,...

Israel Business Today; February 7, 1992 ; Fedler, Jon; 700+ words...nail in the coffin of the Arab Boycott of Israel was delivered by India last week, with its decision to defrost...country at the end of next month. Substantial Israel-India Trade Trade between Israel and India is already quite substantial. Exports...

Behind The Headlines: Peres visit highlights growing ties between Israel...

Jewish Telegraphic Agency; January 8, 2002 ; Sedan, Gil; 700+ words...with Pakistan over Kashmir. Both Israel and India have a common nemesis in Islamic...more to the relations between Israel and India than the need to fight Islamic...incoming ballistic missiles. India and Israel also are looking into the possibility...

Israel and India start tying knots. (Israel's high tech transfers to...

The Middle East; May 1, 1996 ; St. Clair, Alan; 700+ words...hi-tech transfers to India. It is also clear that Israel sees India as an ideal launching...Asia-Pacific Region (APR). India has already welcomed Israel's multinational...left, I invited Israeli botanists and plant...geneticists to come to India and start up a number...

Israel Military Industries Hoping For $1 Billion Contract From India.

Israel Business Today; November 15, 1998 ; 318 words...negotiations for a contract to supply India with the Israeli manufactured Falcon Early Warning...economy, it is a good reward to Israel for helping India to improve its security. Since...that America understands the Israel - india relationship and that there...

Sharon goes to the subcontinent to boost growing Israel-India alliance

Jewish Telegraphic Agency; September 5, 2003 ; Baron, Dan; 700+ words...established full ties 11 years ago. Israel and India share a common enemy in the war...bolster already hefty exports to India of Israeli ordnance and technology. India...against Taiwan, a U.S. ally. India and Israel are valued friends, said the...

Israel, India forge strategic partnership: After a decade-long...

The Christian Science Monitor; January 18, 2002 ; 700+ words...Estranged until 10 years ago, India and Israel are steadily moving into an...to get rid of this problem. Israel and India have forged strong ties in areas...relations are really taking off: Israel is now India's No. 2 weapons supplier, after...

India and Israel walk a path to friendship

Jewish Exponent; April 22, 1994 ; Lisa Hostein; 700+ words...Hostein Jewish Exponent 04-22-1994 India and Israel walk a path to friendship. It's been just over two years since India welcomed Israel into its diplomatic fold, but...many countries of the world, India saw Israel as a potential bridge to the...

Israel, India Seek Deal For Arms as Tensions Crest on Subcontinent: U.S....

Forward; January 4, 2002 ; Kintisch, Eli; 700+ words... Kintisch, Eli Forward 01-04-2002 Israel, India Seek Deal For Arms as Tensions...military co-operation between Israel and India since the two nations established...from Israel's Knesset visited India. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and...

India-Israel trade expanding.

Israel Business Today; June 12, 1992 ; 405 words...currently active in New Delhi. India dwarfs Israel in size and population...under the auspices of the Israel Export Institute visited India. The reception was exceptionally...what Israel can offer to India: * Bromine: Israel has 60 percent of the world...

Israel and India - comrades in arms?

Jerusalem Post; August 29, 2003 ; HERB KEINON; 700+ words... 00-00-0000 Headline: Israel and India - comrades in arms? Byline: HERB...This is a hypothetical situation. Israel-India relations are based on very strong...next year's elections, then the India-Israel relationship will take a turn...

India: Israel's Far Eastern brother

Jerusalem Post; July 11, 1996 ; Hillel Kuttler; 700+ words...political decision at the time that India and Israel wouldn't have diplomatic relations...exchanges are now the norm. Israel values India as a market of almost a billion...matter. On the issue of Iran, Israel and India are a gulf apart. Whereas Jerusalem...

India and Israel - mutual interests that bind

Jerusalem Post; September 9, 2003 ; HERB KEINON; 700+ words... 00-00-0000 Headline: India and Israel - mutual interests that bind...much was written about what Israel and India have in common - two ancient...military hardware provided by Israel helped India repel a Pakistani attempt to...

The Dangerous Nexus Between Israel and India

The Arab American News; June 8, 2001 ; Anonymous; 700+ words... The Dangerous Nexus Between Israel and India BY QUTUBUDDIN AZIZ On a recent...matters and spoke of the dangers India and Israel face from their common enemies...the new dangers coming up for India and Israel because of the Pakistani bomb...


See all results. Or,


India and Israel: Together in Space

Siddharth Ramana
Former Research Assistant, IPCS
e-mail: siddharth13@gmail.com



On 20 January 2008, India and Israel successfully forged a partnership in the space sector when an Israeli spy satellite was launched into space by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The Techsar satellite was launched 9:15 am local time (0345 GMT) from the Sriharikota space station in southern India.

The significance of the satellite launch is magnified by the fact that this launch was earlier stalled owning to intense objections by Arab states which viewed the satellite to be a direct threat to their defence integrity. An earlier report in an Indian news media claimed that the satellite launch vehicle was dismantled at the behest of American pressure. Such was the pressure on the Indian government to not support the Israeli space aspirations, that according to a senior Indian intelligence official, the launch was "dismantled" completely to prevent even a future launch if the government changed its mind (DNA, 4 December 2007).

The satellite launch is another feather in the growing cooperation between the Jewish nation and India, an alliance which has culminated in Israel becoming the second largest defence supplier to India.

It makes sense for the Indians and the Israeli's to forge an alliance particularly in the space sector. India has been developing its space program as early as the 1950's and while initially catering to civilian purposes; ISRO has also been involved in upgrading India's military prowess. For example, the Agni missile is based on a successful civilian satellite launch vehicle. India can offer its space expertise in exchange for Israeli expertise in their Unmanned Ariel Vehicle Program or else work towards a commercial arrangement, which would significantly boost the international commercial viability of ISRO.

Indeed, the interest of Israel and India in space cooperation was broached when the two countries signed a cooperation agreement in November 2002. When visiting Israel in August 2003, Krishnaswami Kasturirangan, former chairman of the India Space Research Organization, expressed interest in the Israeli concept of small satellites and their employment, adding: ''Israel has much to offer in terms of cooperative programs for the future.'' The Israeli Ofeq spy satellite had attracted Indian attention even before this visit.

Owing to Israel's precarious security environment, the need for high resolution and timely imagery from enemy territory has led them to develop exceptional imaging technology. Indeed, the Israeli Spy Satellite Ofek-7 was instrumental in helping destroy a suspected nuclear bunker in Syria in September 2007.

The new satellite Tecsar is said to be technologically far superior to its Ofek predecessor. It would be the first satellite to incorporate Synthetic Aperture Capabilities. This feature allows the camera to take pictures of targets under cloudy and foggy conditions (Jerusalem Post, 20 September 2007). It would therefore place Israel in the small list of countries with imaging radar reconnaissance satellites able to distinguish camouflaged vehicles from rocky terrain, for example, and to see at night and through clouds and foliage. In addition, the aperture radar has 1-meter resolution and differing spot, mosaic and strip modes. These modes provide a multitude of different radar aspect angles to illuminate targets on the ground. And while further technical details of the satellite remain confidential, it is believed that the satellite also carries a powerful panchromatic camera.

According to some, the Israeli decision to use an Indian launch vehicle is based on the inability of the Israeli Shavit booster to fire the 600lb satellite into space. However, Israeli critics have observed that the decision can be traced to Israel strengthening ties with a major power other than the US. (ABC News, 27 September 2007).

The launch is a boon for India, for according to details of an agreement, Israel would be sharing the satellite imagery with India and in addition, it would provide a financial windfall for ISRO. The need for such a satellite is being felt by India, which was given a rude shock in 1999, when armed Pakistani intruders established bases deep inside the Indian territory in Kargil. When the Indian satellites were used to map the positions of the insurgents, the pictures were hazy and did not reveal any ground level movement - an intelligence failure which proved critical (DNA, 4 December 2007).

In addition, the launch of the satellite made ISRO richer by about USD$14 million. The launch provided an advertising impetus to the reputation of ISRO in the USD$2.5 billion global commercial satellite launch services (Hindustan Times, 22 January 2008).

With reports that the satellite has already started transmitting high-resolution pictures, the Indian space establishment can be proud of its achievement. In addition, the Indian defence establishment can be commended for having successfully dodged the concerns of its Arab allies while pushing ahead with an alliance which would only mean a win-win situation for India.
http://www.ipcs.org/Military_articles2.jsp?action=showView&kValue=2499&keyArticle=1017&status=article&mod=a

Arms Sales and Recession

Prashant Dikshit
Former Deputy Director, IPCS
e-mail: prashantindelhi@gmail.com



There is a need to dispel the misplaced notion that the quantum of US arms sales will drop because the world is in the grip of a recession and the money supply is low.

According to American sources, US weapons sales to foreign countries in 2008 are higher by 45 per cent as compared to the year 2007. As the year comes to a close, the US would have offered about US$34 billion in weapons to Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other countries. This figure in 2007 was US$23.3 billion, also higher than the figure of US$21 billion for the year 2006. What is important to note is that the sales blitz had continued in the midst of the American sub-prime crisis which was visible from the middle of 2007.

The coalition supported regime in Iraq has emerged as the principle procurer of American weapons for whom more than US$12.5 billion in possible foreign military sales has already been processed. This does not include the demand for the F-16 combat fighter planes, which is still going through the indent, consideration, clearances, orders stages and so forth. But, a sale is a foregone conclusion. A factor much to the elation of Lockheed Martin, the Bethesda based weapons giant and the manufacturer of F-16s. The company in his annual report informed of a 13 per cent increase in profitability, from US$778 million last year to US$882 million in 2008.

With the deeply permeated American psychosis against Iran, which has permeated the Iraqi regime and its policy planners, Baghdad now clamours for Abrams tanks, attack helicopters, Hellfire missiles, heavy transport aircraft, and other weapon systems. The argument put forth is that only through the multi- billion dollar weapon acquisitions can his country reduce it's dependence on the United States military. In Machiavellian realism, however, we would call it close interdependence in the exercise of political power.

As recently as September 2008, when the American crisis was in full bloom, weapons giants like Boeing, Raytheon, and BAE Systems, sponsored an ultra sales inspired conference to hold a thematic discourse on "Defense Priorities in an Age of Persistent Conflict." A representative from the American Navy at the level of an undersecretary, a senior Pentagon Deputy Director, several weapons manufacturers, and defense representatives from France, the Netherlands, Canada, spoke on the occasion. That this group chose to extol on this ominous theme clearly indicates a concerted drive to promote weapon sales with ill conceived armed conflict scenarios. Amelioration of the conflicts on the other hand did not receive the same attention of the members of the American state. This is arms business at its best.

Who says that the American military is tightening its belt? The military budget will spiral: from an expenditure of US$316 billion in 2001, to more than US$515 billion for fiscal year 2009 commencing in October this year. This is over and above the annual funds needed for nuclear weapons and nearly US$150 billion for the "global war on terror," The huge tally adds up to much more than the total money spent by the rest of world on their military. Theis syndrome will receive great impetus and proliferate as Barack Obama is on record espousing the cause of modernizing the American military for the 21st century and expanding the size of the armed forces. Obviously, we see a phenomenal rise in military spending, imminent in the very near future.

The active role of the American military industrial complex is well documented over the years. The fear is that, in the current recessionary scene, the other weapon producing nations may similarly launch drives for energizing their own weapon sales. The French defence manufacturers were already doing their best in the aforesaid seminar and their regime is actively promoting the Rafael combat planes world wide. Among other wherewithal. Russia has in the last few years, enunciated a policy of promoting its global arms sales as one of the principle means of supporting the country's fledgling economy. It's promotions are bound to be invigorated to prop up several factories deeply hit by recession. There is a substance in the view that many unfinished contracts, for which the Russian arms industry was hitherto in the dock, would be speeded up. India is one such buyer, likely to transfer large funds in the next year or so, for speeded up deliveries.

http://www.ipcs.org/US_related_articles2.jsp?action=showView&kValue=2737&issue=1016&status=article&mod=a&portal=pakistan

India/Israel relations
Paul Brians brians at MAIL.WSU.EDU
Sun Sep 7 14:05:45 CDT 2003

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I found this article from the New York Times fascinating:

September 7, 2003

The Bond Between India and Israel Grows
By AMY WALDMAN


NEW DELHI, Sept. 6 - Ariel Sharon plans to become the first sitting
Israeli prime minister to visit India since both nations were carved
from the former British empire more than 50 years ago.

For India, which established diplomatic relations with Israel in
1992, Mr. Sharon's plans for a visit - scheduled for Monday, though
it is not yet known how today's developments in the Middle East will
affect his plans - will be the most public acknowledgment yet of how
far its foreign policy has shifted from its once unequivocal support
for Palestinian self-determination.

While it still mouths that support, which one senior official called
a "cardinal point of our foreign policy" this week, it is now
balanced by an active, and growing, friendship with Israel. While
back-channel and security ties between the countries existed even
before normalized relations, India is only overtly playing up the
alliance now, including deepening military ties.

The relationship has been strengthened by an ideological affinity for
Israel by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu nationalist party
that leads the Indian government, and especially by the perception of
a shared threat in Islamic terrorism.

"Terror is the major issue and challenge for both countries," said
Yaron Mayer, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy here. "We
understand each other and we see each other in similar terms."

The two countries share intelligence and have a counterterrorism
working group. Indian special forces are being trained in Israel.
India's national security adviser, Brajesh Mishra, suggested in a May
speech to the American Jewish Committee in Washington that India,
Israel and the United States should unite to fight the common threat
of terrorism.

But India and Israel are also bound these days by commerce.
Nonmilitary trade reached $1.27 billion in 2002, up from $202 million
in 1992. India has also been spending an estimated $1.5 billion to $2
billion annually on Israeli military technology and equipment.

Military analysts estimate that Israel now rivals and possibly
exceeds Russia as India's largest military supplier, while India is
now among Israel's largest clients. Top executives from both private
and government-owned Israeli military industries will accompany Mr.
Sharon on his visit.

India floundered in the post-cold-war years as the Soviet Union, long
its major military supplier, fragmented. In 1999, when India began
spending seriously on equipment, Israel became a critical source, not
least because it had specialized in upgrading Russian equipment.

For Israel, said Brahma Chellaney of the Center for Policy Research
in New Delhi, "it's an amazing success story in a very short time."

Israeli munitions have proved particularly valuable for India as it
tries to bulk up its conventional defenses against its nuclear-armed
neighbor, Pakistan. Israel has supplied India with surface-to-air
missiles, avionics, sophisticated sensors to monitor cross-border
traffic, remotely piloted drones, and artillery.

The United States and others restricted technology exports to India
in response to its 1998 nuclear tests, making Israel's responsiveness
all the more welcome here.

India and Israel are currently negotiating the transfer of three
Phalcon airborne early-warning radar, command, and control systems -
with an estimated $1 billion price tag - after the United States
lifted its objection this year to the sale. The Phalcon, long coveted
by both India and China, is a long-range Israeli-made system that
will be fitted onto Russian-built military transport planes.

This week, India's Cabinet Committee on Security also approved the
purchase of a $97 million Israeli electronic warfare system for
ships. And India wants Israel's Arrow missile defense system,
although that would require American approval, which has yet to come
through.

The Israel-India security relationship has caused unease in Pakistan,
where officials warned that the American go-ahead for the Phalcon
sale would accentuate imbalances in conventional weapons in South
Asia.

In what analysts say would be an attempt to open its own supply line
from Israel, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has even
speculated publicly recently about normalizing relations with Israel.

But Uday Bhaskar of the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis in
New Delhi predicted that once the American arms market opened more
fully to India, the Israeli share of the Indian market would lessen.
"Israel is not doing us any favors," he noted. "They drive a very
hard bargain."

Some also express concern at what they see as the relationship's
one-sided nature. "It's a patron-client relationship rather than a
relationship between equals," said Mr. Chellaney.

Within India's fading but still present left, meanwhile, Mr. Sharon's
proposed visit has caused vocal opposition. A statement signed by
eight political leaders, among them a former prime minister,
described it as "an insult to India's longstanding tradition of
unequivocal support to the struggle of the Palestinian people for
national liberation and an independent state."

India, which was a leader of the Nonaligned Movement - composed
heavily of Arab states and founded in 1961 as a forum for nations
that were neither pro-American nor pro-Soviet - was the first
non-Arab state to recognize Palestinian independence. It was also the
last major country to establish full diplomatic relations with
Israel. One Indian official said that India still recognized
Palestine and Yasir Arafat as its legitimate president.

But the prospect of the high-profile visit - Mr. Sharon will be
accompanied by three cabinet ministers, 30 businessmen and as many
journalists - has raised concern among some Indian Muslims, who fear
the largely unspoken admiration among some Indian leaders for
Israel's tough approach to its security.

For decades, fear of alienating its Muslim population helped prevent
India from normalizing relations, historians say, and Mr. Chellaney,
for one, argues that India should still exercise caution. "In the
Islamic world, it's being seen as a Jewish-Hindu axis against Islam,"
he said.

India has other reasons to avoid alienating the Arab world. About
three million Indians work in Arab states in the Persian Gulf, and
those states supply India with about one-fourth of its oil. So India
has also established what one senior official calls a "structured
dialogue" with the Arab League to explain the India-Israel
relationship.

But Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political science at Israel's
Bar-Ilan University, argues that "the fact that this is public, and
they are interested in making it public and visible, is a recognition
that opposition to ties with Israel is no longer significant."

C. Raja Mohan, the author of "Crossing the Rubicon: The Shaping of
India's New Foreign Policy," said that Israel was only one of a
number of new alliances India had cultivated over the last decade in
"a pragmatic, interest-based policy."

There was no reason, he said, for India not to adopt the balanced
approach of other major powers like Russia, China, or the United
States. "Everyone deals with both of them," he said.

The coherence of interests between India and Israel, which both have
large, committed, and - some argue - conservative diasporas, is also
playing out in Washington, where Jewish and Indian-American groups
have been joining forces. In July, the U.S.-India Political Action
Committee, the American Jewish Committee and the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee jointly organized a Capitol Hill reception.

Jason Isaacson, who heads the American Jewish Committee's Washington
office, described India and Israel as democracies surrounded by
"hostile neighbors, well armed and numerous." He said it made sense
to jointly work on issues where both countries stood to benefit.

One such issue was getting approval for Israel to sell India the
Phalcon early warning system, a topic that Mr. Isaacson said his
group and others raised with their substantial contacts in the Bush
administration and on Capitol Hill.

"We followed it very closely," he said of the Phalcon issue, "and we
were delighted by the outcome."
--
Paul Brians, Department of English
Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164-5020
brians at wsu.edu
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians
https://mailman.rice.edu/pipermail/sasialit/2003-September/019720.html

Emerging India-Israel Friendship


Does it make sense for India to enter into a strategic alliance with Israel?
RAJEEV SRINIVASAN & S. GOPIKRISHNA, Sep 04, 2003
Yes, both are victims of Islamist terrorism
By RAJEEV SRINIVASAN

As I write this, there are news reports that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel will visit India in September. Also in the news: Islamist terrorists killed Hindu pilgrims on the way to Amarnath. An Islamist suicide bomber wounded the army’s top brass in an attack on a camp near Jammu. On a regular basis, Palestinian terrorists kill Israelis.

India and Israel are both victims of Islamist terrorism. Indians and Jews have been victimized by Islamists and Christians for millennia. The Jewish Holocaust in Europe is exceeded only by the twin Indian Holocausts: one perpetrated by Muslims in 711-1857 C.E., killing an estimated 80 million Indians, and the other perpetrated by Christian colonialists in 1757-1947 C.E. (through avoidable famines they killed 30 million Indians; see Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis, Verso.).

Today, India and Israel are the only two states that are not caving in, in a giant Islamic crescent from West Africa to Indonesia: the only two states that defy dhimmitude.

Out of 148 nations in which Jews have lived, they have been oppressed in 147 of them, the lone exception being India. The Jews of Cochin, for instance, landed in 72 C.E at the great port of Muziris (Kodungalloor). They have lived there unmolested ever since, except when Portuguese invaded circa 1600 C.E. Today, visiting Israeli youth find this is one country where nobody hates them for being Jews.

After independence, the Nehruvian Stalinists in power deliberately kept aloof from Israel, but in the last few years, the relationship has thrived, and Israel has become India’s second largest supplier of weaponry. Israel had extended the hand of friendship earlier, but India rejected it. Just after they bombed and destroyed Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor on June 7, 1981, the Israelis suggested doing the same to Pakistan’s reactors at Kahuta. This could have set back Pakistan’s “Islamic Bomb.”

By opposing Israel, India deluded itself that it would get preferential treatment from Arabs; however, all this goodwill and $32 still buys us a barrel of oil—no discounts there. And Arabs have not once (with the possible exception of Iraq) supported India in its quarrels with Pakistan. Supporting Palestine has brought India no dividends.

Working with Israel today should be beneficial to India, because there are opportunities for technical and military cooperation. Israelis are the world leaders in avionics and in security. They have plenty of experience in dealing with Islamic terrorism, too.

A strong India-Israel alliance does not seem to have too many negatives; on the plus side, the Arrow and Phalcon and similar weapons systems could help. Considerations of the national interest dictate such an alliance. The Sharon visit should kick this off.

Rajeev Srinivasan wrote this opinion from Trivandrum, India.

-----------------------------------------------------------

No, the relationship would be problematic
By S. GOPIKRISHNA

An enemy’s enemy is a friend, seems to be the underlying logic in the recent flowering of Indian-Israeli relations. But are the two fighting a common enemy or different foes with little more than a superficial resemblance?

The bitterness of Indian-Pakistani relations contrasts with the respect (if not friendship) underscoring India’s relationship with Israel’s traditional enemies, Syria and Lebanon. The Indian avatar of Islamic terrorism is represented by various Al Qaeda-affiliated groups like Lashkar-E-Toiba, religiously anchored in Wahabi doctrine, a school so extremist that it clubs even Shia Muslims with the “kafirs.”

Israel’s bete noire is the Hizbollah, a Shia extremist group at loggerheads with various Sunni Palestinian groups fighting Israel. The Hizbollah has also practiced terrorism differently than Al Qaeda—its profusion of suicide bombers is in contrast to Indian Islamic terrorists attempting suicide sparingly (and often unsuccessfully). The lack of professionalism in the parliament house attacks are in stark contrast to the Hizbollah’s professionalism in attacking American barracks in Beirut.

India’s foes and Israel’s enemies are not the same, nor faces of the same coin; they are distant cousins at best.
India has long had an extensive trade relationship with the Middle East, through exporting its technical expertise and agricultural products. Saudi Arabia was the third largest market for Indian exports between 1997-1999 while India imports significant quantities of oil.

Since Arab countries construe relationships with Israel no differently than bulls would a red flag, the repercussions on Indian-Arab trade relations are a matter of grave concern. Irrespective of volume, Israel can never replace the Arab bloc as a trade partner.

Courting the Israelis will adversely affect the more-than-million-strong Indian expatriate community in the Gulf, literally marooned in a sea of Arabs. The Indian government should ponder over the precarious situation into which Indian nationals would be plunged should Arab passions get inflamed as a result of an alliance with Israel. Memories of India’s pathetic failure in rescuing its nationals from Iraq during Gulf War I leave no doubts about the latter’s fate should they be accused of being “Zionist spies.”

India should also remember Israel’s extreme cynicism regarding loyalty and relationships. In the 1980s, Israel simultaneously trained the LTTE in guerrilla warfare while training the Sri Lankan army in anti-terrorism operations. Should Pakistan make overtures to Israel, one shouldn’t be surprised if an alliance were struck to sustain the insurgency in Kashmir while Indian-Israeli efforts focus on containing the same.

Changing partners mid-game is seldom easy; one can only hope that India will not emerge sadder and poorer from the experience.

S. Gopikrishna writes from Toronto on matters pertinent to India and Indians.

Page 1 of 1


V.S.Narayan Sep 08, 2003 15:54:29
The ONLY reason to court the Arabs and the Islamists seems to be MONEY! As Indians, do we have the nerve to do what is inherently in the best interest of our national security? It is high time that we doubled up with Israel and mount serious and steady campaign against Islamic terror. To hell with Arab Money.They were NEVER our friends in the past and shall never be.Unfortunately, some Indians have been enslaved by the Arab countries. It is time that they get out and be FREE!India did not push these expatriates to go to these Arab countries , or for that matter, to any other country. Those of us that chose to leave India, did so voluntarily and should be willing to pay for the consequences of our decisions.India and Israel are Natural, secular and democratic partners and let this friendship grow and mature and DOWN with Islamic terrorists.

Dr. Shankar Sep 07, 2003 16:42:52
I take objection to occupied lands. I always felt when Arabs wanted to dumb Israel and declared a unified war from all sides, Israel after defeating the Arabs and adjusted the boundaries. We should have done the samething in Kashmir, then Kashmir problem would not have gone this far. Israel is not a terrorist country. Only bleeding heart liberals or puppets of Islamists would say that. While our liberals viewed Arabs with secular eyes, they viewed us thru Islamic prism and always supported the enemy in the name of Islam. We should get our priorities right and not bogged down with the failed policies of Nehru and safely antagonized the whole west with his pseudosecularism and hindu bashing
http://www.indiacurrents.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=cfe96c57d20be96e083e8ac2f3b9743a

South Asia

US plays matchmaker to India, Israel
By Ninan Koshy

(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)

Close on the heels of Indian National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra's call for an India-United States-Israel strategic alliance, comes the confirmation that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will visit India within the next few weeks. Some observers in New Delhi consider Mishra's call, made at the annual dinner of the American Jewish Committee, as a curtain raiser for the Sharon visit. What they seem to ignore is that the India-US-Israel strategic alliance has moved beyond last call to center stage and that the plan for Sharon's visit is some 15 months old.

It was an ironic coincidence that Brajesh Mishra was closeted in his office in New Delhi on September 11, 2001 with his Israeli counterpart Major General Uzi Dayan and engaged in what was dubbed a "joint security strategy dialogue" when the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon occurred. Their discussion had to be discontinued as they turned to the television news. Favored by the climate of the ensuing "war on terror", the security relationship between India and Israel developed into a strategic alliance in tandem with the India-US strategic partnership.

The alliance between India and Israel - one an open member of the international nuclear club and the other a secret member - is based predominantly on military and intelligence cooperation. Israel has become the second-largest supplier of arms for India, next only to Russia. Israel has provided India with sea-to-sea missile radar and other similar systems, border monitoring equipment, and night vision devices. It also has upgraded India's Soviet-era aircraft.

Allies and aircraft
The United States has given clearance to Israel's delivery of Phalcon reconnaissance aircraft to India, in marked contrast to Washington's vigorous opposition to supplying them to China in 1998. The US forced Israel to cancel a deal to sell the Phalcons to China out of concern for altering the balance of power between China and Taiwan. Initially, the US administration also had worries about how the Phalcons supplied to India could impact the delicate balance between India and Pakistan, but the concerns soon evaporated in the warmth of the India-US-Israel strategic relationship.

In the third week of February, an agreement was made to supply advanced Israeli avionic systems for the Indian Air Force's new MG-27 combat aircraft. There are reports of Indo-Israeli plans to collaborate on the development of a missile defense system based on the Israel Arrow technology. Indian defense officials acknowledged the acquisition of two Israeli Elta Green Pine long-range radar systems, a component of the Arrow Ballistic Missile Defense Systems, according to some reports. A 2001 Pentagon review said that the defensive nature of the Arrow system exempted it from sales restrictions imposed by the Missile Technology Control Regime, an international agreement designed to stop the spread of offensive military technology.

Israel and India established a joint commission at the ministerial level back in 1999. During that year's brief conflict with Pakistan, known as the Kargil war, Israel responded quickly to India's desperate requests for arms, despite pressures from various quarters not to supply ammunition to a party engaged in war. Unmanned aerial vehicles for high altitude surveillance, laser-guided systems and many other items were provided within days of the request. Jane's Defense Weekly, which gave details on the supplies, reported in March 2000 that Israeli security officers were regularly visiting the Kashmir border. Jane's Terrorism and Security Monitor reported on August 14, 2001: "Israeli intelligence agencies have been intensifying their relations with India security apparatus and are now understood to be heavily involved in helping New Delhi combat Islamic militants in the disputed province of Kashmir."

The Jerusalem Post reported on February 3 that India was sending four battalions of nearly 3,000 Indian soldiers to Israel for specialized anti-insurgency training. Their special assignment on return would be to employ newly learned techniques to stop infiltration of India by Pakistani terrorists in the contested Kashmir region.

Professor Martin Sherman published an article in the Jerusalem Post on February 28 entitled "From Conflict to Convergence: India and Israel Forge a Solid Strategic Alliance". The alliance with India was important for Israel as it intended to develop sea-borne defense capability. In view of the miniscule territorial dimension of Israel, its defense planners are increasingly aware of the crucial significance of the marine and sub-marine theaters. The vulnerability of Israel's land-based military installations grows with the acquisition of modern weaponry by other countries in the region. Strategic thinking in Israel tends to give prominence to the Indian Ocean as a location for logistical infrastructure. For the establishment and operation of such a maritime venture, cooperation with the Indian navy would be vital. The Post article said, "In this regard it is especially significant that in 2000, Israeli submarines reportedly conducted test launches capable of carrying nuclear warheads in the waters of the Indian Ocean off the Sri Lankan coast."

Sherman added, "An alliance between India and Israel openly endorsed by the US would create a potent stabilizing force in the region, which together with like-minded regimes such as Turkey, could contribute significantly toward facing down the force of radical extremism so hostile to American interests in Western and Central Asia." The article argued that considerations beyond regional stability made a vibrant India-Israeli axis a clear interest. "For example, in the growing balance of geostrategic power, the growing Chinese challenge to US primacy will almost invariably dictate the need for a regional counterweight to Chinese domination."

It was in the context of the "war on terror" that the strategic relationship of India with Israel and the US developed dramatically though defense and security cooperation. It was just natural that both Israel and the US found a partner in the Indian government because of its ideological commitment to militaristic policy. Conveniently for them, at work in New Delhi was the calculated dismantling of the entire rationale of nonalignment and the edifice of an independent foreign policy.

New axis in the 'war on terror'?
The visit of Shimon Peres to New Delhi in January 2002 became an occasion to cement strategic ties between Israel and India. Both countries seemed to be convinced they were fighting a common enemy, terrorism. At that time, Zvi Gabey, deputy director general for Asia in the Israeli government said, "We find ourselves in the same camp that fights terrorism and we have to develop our relationship according to that." An Indian foreign ministry spokeswoman said during Peres' visit, "India finds it increasingly beneficial to learn from Israel's experience in dealing with terrorism since Israel, too, has long suffered from cross-border terrorism." The spokeswoman slipped into the ministry's grave and oft-repeated error of equating the Palestinian struggle with cross-border terrorism.

The visit was the most visible sign of the new phase of the Israel-India relationship. Peres was immensely pleased with it. The Israeli cabinet communique of January 13, 2002 on Peres' briefing about his trip billed it as a major achievement "emphasizing the good relations and special ties between Israel and India". Sharon was pleased too. He told the cabinet that he attributed special importance to the deepening of relations with India. That was when he noted that he intended to visit India, giving the first clear signal of the plan. Apparently an invitation to India had been extended to him through Peres.

Mishra drummed up US support for the plan, finding a responsive audience for his skewed and cynical views on terrorism in the American Jewish Committee. Only a "core" consisting of democracies such as India, Israel and the US can deal with terrorism, he maintained. The alliance of the three would have the political and moral authority to make bold decisions in extreme cases of terrorist provocation, he claimed, adding that they would not waste time in defining terrorism or arguing about its causes. "Distinctions sought to be made between freedom fighters and terrorists propagate a bizarre logic," he spouted. "Another fallacy propagated is that terrorism can only be eradicated by addressing the root causes." He repeated the pet themes of India, the US and Israel being "prime targets of terrorism", having a "common enemy" and requiring "joint action".

His comments were underpinned by those of India's Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan Advani, who, in an interview given to Fox News on July 9, 2002, said, "Terrorism in so far we have seen it on September 11 or December 13 has a common source and that common source has described the US, Israel and India as its three main enemies." December 13, 2001 was the date on which the Indian parliament was attacked by terrorists. Advani implied that the three countries therefore have a common cause and could forge a common front against terrorism.

The India-Israeli alliance strengthens US strategic designs for India and the region. India holds a very prominent place in the September 20, 2002 National Security Strategy of the US, "a policy document that bears the personal stamp of President [George W] Bush," according to Robert D Blackwill, outgoing US ambassador to India. The document states, "The United States has undertaken a transformation in its bilateral relationship with India. We are the two largest democracies. We share an interest in fighting terrorism and in creating a strategically stable Asia. We start with a view of India as a growing world power with which we have common strategic interests."

In an article in the prestigious Indian daily The Hindu, Blackwill wrote, "Taken together our defense cooperation and military sales activities intensify the working relationships between the respective armed forces, build mutual military capacities for future joint operations and strengthen Indian military capability, which is in America's interest." He concluded the article: "An Indian military that is capable of operating effectively alongside its American counterparts remains an important goal of our bilateral defense relationship. What we have achieved since January 2001 builds a strong foundation on which to consummate this strategic objective, which will promote peace and freedom in Asia and beyond."

Washington will ensure that the India-Israeli alliance will serve this strategic objective. As for the Indian government, it has already subjugated the country's national interests to US designs in return for its designation as a world power.

Dr Ninan Koshy is a political commentator based in Trivandrum, Kerala, India and author of The War on Terror: Reordering the World (DAGA Press, 2002), and a regular analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.

(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EF10Df03.html

Why Israel Isn’t Angry
Outrage over India's handling of the Nariman House siege has given way to a colder calculation.

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By Kevin Peraino | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Dec 3, 2008
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The smoke has finally cleared after last week's botched hostage rescue at the Nariman House Jewish center in Mumbai, but in some Israeli security circles, the sniping has started anew. Defense Minister Ehud Barak complained last week that India's commandos hadn't performed up to Israeli standards. Other Israeli counterterror experts griped that the operation had taken far too long to unfold. "They should have come from many angles—through windows, through walls," says Lior Lotan, an Israeli security consultant who once commanded the military's hostage-negotiation squad. "I didn't see any deception, any diversion, any surprise element at all." Israeli paramedics reported that some of the hostages appeared to have been killed accidentally by their would-be rescuers; their stories were splashed across the front page of the local newspaper in Jerusalem.

The Israeli-Indian contretemps looked, at least at first, like the beginnings of a diplomatic headache. But then, even as Israel was burying its victims earlier this week, the controversy simply disappeared. Security types started backpedaling, and Israeli leaders like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went out of their way to tamp down the criticism. Privately, Israeli Foreign Ministry officials were livid about the accusations. "These guys are mouthing off," complained one senior Foreign Ministry source, who requested anonymity in order to speak frankly. "We're really upset about these people." Part of the reason for the frustration, aside from the desire to show solidarity during a difficult time: Israel is one of India's top weapons suppliers—a lucrative relationship that has been growing rapidly since the early 1990s. "We're talking about billions of dollars," says the Foreign Ministry source.

For more than 40 years after the founding of the Jewish state, India—home to more than 150 million Muslims—resisted formal diplomatic ties with Israel. India wanted to preserve relationships with key Persian Gulf countries, and the Soviet Union took care of most of its defense needs. After the 1991 Arab-Israeli peace talks in Madrid, however, India softened its stance; the two countries formalized relations the next year. As the Soviet Union collapsed, India also needed to look elsewhere for defense links. (Israel and Russia now alternate as India's top arms provider.) According to a report published this past summer by Harvard's Belfer Center, in the five years ending in 2007, Israel sold India more than $5 billion worth of arms, including spy drones, motion sensors and AWACS planes. Last year, the two countries struck a $2.5 billion deal to jointly develop a surface-to-air missile system—the largest such contract in Israel's history, according to the study.

The irony is that, until now, at least, Israel's training of Indian forces in its defense specialty, counterterrorism, seems to have been limited. "The Israeli-Indian relationship is more about technology and equipment and less about other activities," says Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, a former Israeli military chief of staff. Amos Yaron, a former director-general of Israel's Defense Ministry who traveled frequently to Delhi, says there is "some intelligence cooperation" with India but no joint military training that he is aware of. Yet there are some signs of tightening ties. In 2002, the Israeli Foreign Ministry convened a body called the India-Israel Joint Working Group on Counter-Terrorism. This past September an Israeli general, Avi Mizrahi, also visited India to discuss the possibility of joint counterterrorism training.

For now, though, most of the Israeli-Indian counterterror talks are nongovernmental. Efraim Inbar, director of Israel's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, leads a regular workshop for a handful of Israeli and Indian security officials and academics. At the last meeting, in Delhi, they compared experiences dealing with low-intensity conflict, lessons of the 2006 Lebanon War and strategy and tactics for small wars. Still, Israel's lessons don't necessarily apply to Indian operations. "Part of their problem is that they're dealing with locals who want to integrate into society," says Inbar. "For us it's usually outsiders." He adds that Indian forces have a "more patient" and "defensive" approach than their Israeli counterparts.

Considering the religious sensitivities of the region, any actual military exercises would need to be developed in a "discreet framework," says Lotan. "This kind of cooperation needs to be secret if it can be." After last week's Mumbai attacks, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called her Indian counterpart to offer Israel's assistance, but Indian officials "said they don't need anything," according to Andy David, a Foreign Ministry spokesman. Lotan says he also sent word through "official channels" offering counterterror expertise but didn't receive a reply. Some Israelis, for their part, are also wary of any kind of joint exercises. "I don't think it will happen," says Yaron. "It costs a lot of money and a lot of effort. It's not the first priority right now." In the meantime, as far as the Israeli Foreign Ministry is concerned, the most helpful thing the country's counterterror specialists can do now? Simply hold their tongues.

With Joanna Chen In Jerusalem
http://www.newsweek.com/id/171927


Last update - 08:53 01/12/2008


Israel-India relations / Strong, but low-key

By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags: terror, Mumbai Chabad

The visit of Indian Secretary of Defense Vijay Singh to Israel three weeks ago as head of a high-ranking military delegation passed quietly and was barely mentioned in the local media. The press releases said the officials discussed security-related purchases, including the sale of three Phalcon aircraft radar systems, manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries, as well as missiles, helicopters, maintenance equipment and unmanned aerial vehicles. In the past decade, India has acquired Israeli weapons systems to the tune of $8 million.

However, two other issues were also on the table which were no less important: cooperation between Israel and India against Islamic terrorism, and the two countries' concern - along with that of other Western nations - over the expected dissolution of Pakistan, India's historic enemy and the first, and so far only, Islamic nuclear power.

"Our security cooperation with the Indians is excellent - there is simply no other way to put it," said a senior Israeli security official this week, who stressed that it is necessary to silence all criticism here against the Indian security forces' response to the terror rampage in Mumbai.
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Relations between Israel and India tend to grow stronger when tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad rise, or when India experiences a rightward shift in anti-Muslim public opinion or in leadership. The incident that cemented diplomatic relations between the countries was the 1999 war between India and Pakistan over the Kargil area of Kashmir when, according to foreign news reports, then-Defense Ministry director general Amos Yaron arrived in India with an emergency shipment of artillery shells.

Diplomatic relations were officially established in 1991 during the long tenure of the Indian National Congress, but when the nationalist BJP party was at the helm, from 1998 to 2004, those ties blossomed. That period also saw the historic visit of then-prime minister Ariel Sharon to India in 2003.

The INC is now in power again, and continues to maintain warm relations with Jerusalem, but prefers to keep details of them discreet, partly because it has Muslim members. Singh's visit, consequently, was decidedly low key.

Israel is prepared to do many things to maintain its relations with India. For example, in 2005, when the conversion in India of the Bnei Menashe community (residents of India's northeast, who claim to be descended of the lost Israelite tribe of Menashe) sparked controversy among local religious leaders, the government was urged to stop the conversions abroad, and instead conducted them in Israel once the new immigrants arrived.

The harsh criticism leveled within India at the current government for its handling of the Mumbai attacks bode ill for the INC, which is likely to lose again to the BJP in general elections at the start of 2009. If that happens, relations between Israel and India will likely only grow stronger.

Related articles:

India declines Israeli offer of aid delegation to Mumbai

Israeli experts: Slow operation meant 'no chance' for hostages at Mumbai Chabad house

9 dead in Mumbai Chabad house attack; Israel to help identify bodies
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1042322.html




Bilateral Relations: Historical Overview



Indo-Israel Relations

Historical Overview
Israel and India established full diplomatic relations on January 29, 1992. However, even before that, Israel had a Consulate in Mumbai, operating since 1953. Following the establishment of diplomatic relations an Embassy opened in New Delhi, and the Consulate in Mumbai became Consulate-General. In addition, an Honorary Consulate operates in Kolkata.



During the years since the establishment of diplomatic relations, much progress has been made on the bilateral level. India is increasingly becoming central to Israel’s policy, politically, commercially, in science and culture. Israel is appreciative of the fact thatJews in India were never persecuted.



Reciprocal visits between Israel and India indicate the growing mutual acquaintance and the strength of the relations. Israel’s President visited India in early 1997, following visits by its Minister of Foreign Affairs and other cabinet ministers. During 1998 and 1999 there have been visits in Israel of Indian cabinet ministers and MPs, Attorney General – Soli Sorabhjee, and the Prime Minister’s principal secretary – Brajesh Mishra. In the summer 2000, India’s Home Minister L.K. Advani and Foreign Minister, Jaswant Singh visited Israel. Close at their heels was the visit of West Bengal’s Chief Minister and CPI(M) leader Jyoti Basu. Deputy Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha Najma Heptullah, also visited Israel in 2000. In December, 2001 a delegation of the Knesset, led by Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, came to India. Mr. Shimon Peres, Minister for Regional Cooperation visited India twice, in August 2000 and January 2001. Mr. Peres visited India for the third time (January, 2002) as Dy. Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. In the same year (February, 2002) Mr. Tzachi Hanegbi , Minister for Envionment visited India. Pramod Mahajan, Minister for Communication & Parliamentary Affairs, visited Israel in January, 2002.



In September 2003 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon paid a two day state visit to India toghether with Dy.Prime Minister & Minister of Justice Joseph Lapid, Minister of Education Limor Livnat and Minister of Agriculture Israel Katz. During the visit India and Israel signed agreements on Environmental Protection, Cooperation in Combating Illicit Trafficking and Abuse of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, Visa Free Travel for Diplomatic, Official and Service Passport Holders, Cooperation in the fields of Health and Medicine, Cooperation in the field of Education and Cooperation in the field of Culture. The Delhi Statement of Friendship and Cooperation between India and Israel was issued.



In December 2003 Israel’s Minister of Science & Technology Eliezer Sandberg visited India and signed a MoU with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for the launch of the Israeli TAUVEX UV telescope on an Indian demonstrator Satellite GSAT-4. In January 2004 Indian Minister of Commerce & Industry Mr. Arun Jaitly headed the Indian delegation to the Joint Economic Committee, which met in Israel. In February 2004 Israel’s Dy. Prime Minister & Minister of Foreign Affairs Silvan Shalom and the President of Israel's Supreme Court Chief Justice Aharon Barak visited India. Vice Prime Minister of Israel and Minister for Industry, Trade, Labour & Communications Ehud Olmert, with a large business delegation, visited India from 6th December to 9th December 2004.



The Minister for Science and Technology of India Mr. Kapil Sibal visited Israel in July 2005. During his visit a bilateral agreement was signed to pursue technological ventures together via the establishment of a joint industrial research and development fund. Minister of State for Rural Development, Ms. Kumari Selja, paid a visit to Israel in September 2005.



Minister for Commerce & Industries Mr. Kamal Nath visited Israel in November 2005 during which a Joint Study Group (JSG) was established in order to boost bilateral trade from US $ 2 billion to US $ 5 billion by 2008. Such an agreement will realize the full potential of India-Israel economic relations in a comprehensive manner.



Mr. Sharad Pawar, Union Minister for Agriculture, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution visited Israel in November 2005 to represent India at the official memorial ceremony for the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, marking the 10th anniversary of his assassination. During his visit the two sides exchanged ideas regarding the broadening and intensification of bilateral cooperation in agriculture, including in micro irrigation and dairy farming.



Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak participated in the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in Delhi in November 2005 and lectured on “The Middle East- risks and opportunities for a stable world”. In February 2006 the National Security Advisor of Israel, Maj.Gen.(Retd.) Giora Eiland, visited India and held talks with his Indian counterpart Mr. M.K. Narayanan and other Indian dignitaries. His visit was held in the framework of Indo-Israel National Security Council dialogue.



A sizable Indian delegation led by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar visited Israel again in May 2006 on the occasion of the Agritech 2006 exhibition. The delegation comprised the chief ministers of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Nagaland and included senior officials from other Indian states. During the visit a three-year Work Plan for Cooperation in the Field of Agriculture was signed by the two governments.



Israel’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prof. Shlomo Ben Ami, visited India in the month of August 2006 as part of the on-going dialogue with the Indian government and with civil society institutions.



Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry, Trade and Labour, Hon. Mr. Eliyahu Yishai, with a high level business delegation, paid an official visit in the month of December 2006. During the visit both countries have embarked upon negotiating a Preferential Trade Agreement eventually leading to a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA).


Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Mr. Shivraj Singh Chouhan, led a 16-member delegation to Israel from January 29 – February 1, 2007 at the invitation of Hon’ble Minister of Agriculture & Rural Development of Israel Mr. Shalom Simhon. Mr. Chouhan and the delegation met with Mr. Simhon and visited various institutes at Volcani Centre. The delegates also visited companies involved in irrigation and agricultural projects as well as water treatment & management.



January 29, 2007 marked the 15th anniversary of full diplomatic relations between India and Israel which were established on January 29, 1992. According to the statement issued on this occasion, "the upgrading of relations between Israel and India was a historic milestone in the long journey to achieve normal and prosperous relations between India and Israel, in accordance with the vision of the fathers of the State of Israel".



The 6th meeting of Indo-Israeli Joint Working Group on Counter-Terrorism was held on March 13, 2007 at New Delhi. It was preceded by the 3rd round of Dialogue on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation on March 12, 2007. The Israeli delegation was led by Ms Miriam Ziv, Deputy Director General, Strategic Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while the Indian side was headed by Mr K.C Singh, Additional Secretary (International Organizations), Ministry of External Affairs.



In March 2007, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport & Road Safety, Mr. Shaul Mofaz, visited India (19-22 March 2007). During the visit India and Israel explored the ways to enhance ties in areas such as civil aviation, railways, shipping and road safety programs.



To mark the 15the anniversary of Indo-Israel bilateral relations a major musical concert by “The Idan Raichel Project” was organized in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata during the month of April 2007.The Idan Raichel Group performed in front of thousands of audiences in all three cities. In Delhi, they did a fusion with a local group called “Rajasthan Roots” from the “Jaipur Festival”, which was enthusiastically received by the audiences.


The 10th round of the Foreign Ministry consultations between India and Israel, were held in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Jerusalem on 15th May 2007. The Israeli delegation was led by the Deputy Director General Amos Nadai, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Indian side headed by Secretary (East) N. Ravi, Ministry of External Affairs India. Comprehensive and positive discussions were held on bilateral, multilateral and regional issues. Mr. N. Ravi also called on the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ms. Tzipi Livni.



India and Israel have emphasized that efforts should be made to fully utilize the potential for enhanced economic cooperation between the two countries. Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry of India Mr. Ashwani Kumar headed a high-level FICCI delegation to Israel in the month of August 2007. During the meeting with his Israeli counterpart Mr. Eliyahu Yishai , Israel has put forward a proposal for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with India to boost burgeoning economic and bilateral ties. Mr. Kumar also met with Israeli President Shimon Peres during his stay in Israel.




The Israeli Home Minister Mr. Meir Sheetrit paid a 2 day (Nov. 7-8, 2007) visit to New Delhi to attend the second Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction.During his visit the minister called on Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Mukherjee, Minister of Home Affairs Mr. Shivraj Patil , Panchayati Raj Minister Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyer and discussed matters of mutual interest and means to strengthen the cooperation between the two countries.



Israel’s Minister of Agriculture & Rural Development Shalom Simhon paid a 10-day visit to India in January 2008. During his visit the Minister met with Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Dr.Raghuvansh Prasad, Union Minister for Rural Development, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhra Raje Scindia, Rajasthan Agriculture Minister Prabhu Lal Saini, Rajasthan Irrigation & Water Minister Prof. Sanwar Lal Jat.



Other visits arranged by the two governments include those of industrialists and businessmen, exchanges of academic and political delegations, artists, scholars and more. Bilateral consultations between the Indian Ministry of External Affairs and Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs are held annually, alternately in Jerusalem and New Delhi since 1999. Periodical discussions are also held on strategic matters and on counter terrorism. Both countries are committed to enhance ties in the fields of science, culture and economics. It should be noted, that many other visits have taken place without governmental involvement. Israel welcomes this as a healthy trend, which also indicates the growing professional, academic, cultural and economic ties between the two countries.
http://delhi.mfa.gov.il/mfm/web/main/document.asp?SubjectID=2010&MissionID=93&LanguageID=0&StatusID=0&DocumentID=-1



India-Israel Economic and Commercial Relations
Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and Israel in 1992, bilateral trade and economic relations have progressed rapidly. From a base of US$ 200 million comprising primarily of diamonds in 1992, merchandise trade has diversified and increased rapidly reaching US$ 1,273 million in 2002. With the exception of 1995 and 2001, trade volumes have grown every year. A chart showing bilateral trade since 1992 is given below (in US$ million):


1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 Jan-Nov.
India's exports 75 129 151 190 251 293 343 455.0 534.5 429.5 653.2 806
Israel's exports 127 228 363 313 311 365 334 536.3 551.0 458.4 619.8 644
Total Bilateral 202 357 514 503 562 658 678 991.3 1085.8 887.9 1273 1450
Trade Balance -52 -99 -200 -125 -65 -90 9.3 -81.5 -16.2 -28.9 33.4 +162
%change 77 44 (-)2 12 17 3 46 9.5 (-)18 40.97 26.9

Bilateral trade in 2002: In 2002, two-way trade between India and Israel grew by 41% to over $ 1,273 million, setting a new record. This was more than 6 times the bilateral trade in 1992. India's exports of $653 million in 2002 were 52% higher than 2001. The non-diamond component of India's exports grew by over 14%. In 2002, India moved up three places to emerge as the 11th largest global trading partner of Israel as compared to 14th in 2001 and 3rd in Asia after Hong Kong and Japan, overtaking China. India's export performance assumed significance seen in the context of declining Israeli imports due to its economic difficulties. India increased its share in Israel's total bilateral trade worldwide from 1.4% in 2001 to over 2% in 2002. India's exports constituted almost 2% of Israel's imports in 2002 as compared to 1.3% in 2001. In 2002, India's trade surplus with Israel was over US$ 33 million.

While diamonds constituted about 65% of India's exports to Israel, the other major products were textiles ($ 80 million), chemicals ($ 46 million), rubber and plastic products ($23 million), machinery ($ 15 million) and base metals ($ 14 million). Areas of significant growth in India's exports were prepared foodstuffs (173%), rubber and plastics (145%), diamonds (88%), machinery (85%), transport equipment (78%) and chemicals (32%).

Israeli exports to India grew by 31% from $473.5 million in 2001 to $619.8 million in 2002. Israel's exports excluding diamonds increased by over 7%. Principal items exported by Israel were diamonds ($ 400 million), machinery ($ 98 million), chemical products ($ 69 million) and optical, medical and other equipment ($ 21 million).

Trend in 2003: From the statistics available for the first 11 months of 2003, bilateral trade increased by 26.9% from $ 1142.6 million in 2002 to $ 1450 million in 2003. India's exports to Israel increased by 34.6% from $ 598.6 million to $ 806 million. India's non-diamond exports increased by almost 16.3% and trade surplus with Israel was over $ 162 million. India's share in Israel's two-way trade worldwide grew to 2.4% in 2003 as compared to 2% in 2002. Indian exports' share in Israel's imports worldwide increased from 2% in 2002 to 2.4% in 2003. India is now Israel's 2nd largest trading partner in Asia after Hong Kong, overtaking Japan also.

Investment and Technology Cooperation

In terms of approved investments, during the period 1991 - May 2003, Israel, with Rs 42,460 million in approved investments for 96 proposals, was the 14th largest foreign investor in India. Israel is also a source of technology collaborations for Indian companies. Since 1991, over 73 technology collaboration agreements have been approved between Indian and Israeli companies. The list of approved investment and technology collaboration proposals include inter alia, sectors such as agriculture, IT, Telecom, bio-tech, medical equipment and chemicals.

Earlier this year, Ness Technologies, the biggest software company in Israel, acquired Apar Infotech, a US-headquartered Indian company which has two CMM-5 level (the highest level) software development facility in India, in a deal worth US $ 78 million. Apar, with a staff strength of 1200, has merged with Ness. In July 2003, FIPB approved the acquisition of Regent Pharmaceuticals Ltd., a part of the JK Group, by Teva Pharmaceuticals of Israel, one of the largest generic drug manufacturers in the world, for Rs 400 million.

India-Israel cooperation in the field of agriculture has been extensive. Israeli side has completed a Demonstration Farm project in PUSA at a cost of US$ 2 million. During PM Sharon's visit it was agreed to establish a Joint Committee on Agriculture. We also accepted the Israeli offer to do another joint agriculture project.

An MoU on cooperation in R&D in the electronics and IT sector was signed in January 2002. India has become an attractive destination for telecom investments by Israel. Leading Israeli companies like Comverse and Atrica have won large Indian contracts in this sector.

The India-Israel Agreement on cooperation in peaceful uses of outer space was signed in October 2002. Several joint activities in this field, including an Israeli payload on an Indian satellite, are being considered in this field.

The India-Israel Joint Work Programme of S&T cooperation for 2003-04 was signed in November 2002, which identified 10 new projects for joint work in genomics. Joint work in nanotechnology and S&T Policy Management is also envisaged.
http://www.ficci.com/international/countries/israel/israel-commercialrelations.htm

India and Israel Ready to Consummate Secret Affair

Edward Luce
Harvey Morris
The Financial Times, 4 September 2003



On Sunday Ariel Sharon will become the first Israeli prime minister to visit India in what both sides see as a "coming-out party" for one of the world's most secretive relationships.


Mr Sharon's trip, 11 years after New Delhi established full relations with Tel Aviv, also coincides with the second anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks - something that Atal Behari Vajpayee, India's prime minister, and Mr Sharon intend to exploit.


India has long championed Palestinian rights, at the United Nations and in other forums, but in the face of growing Islamist terrorism in the divided state of Kashmir and elsewhere, New Delhi has quietly strengthened relations with Israel.


India recently overtook Turkey as the largest single destination for Israeli defence exports - and Israel has become India's biggest arms supplier.


In addition, the two often exchange intelligence information on Islamist terrorist groups. "There's a perception that both countries face similar threats and share similar experiences," said an Israeli official.


"We have many things to learn from one another." Little or nothing of those military ties will be mentioned in their joint declaration next week.


Although Israel has supplied India with surface-to-air missiles, sophisticated sensing equipment (to monitor cross-border terrorist infiltration) and unmanned aerial vehicles, the Palestinian cause remains popular in India.


New Delhi has gone to great lengths to keep the flourishing relationship out of public view.


At 140m, India has the second largest Muslim population in the world, as well as 3.5m workers in the Gulf countries, from which it imported $17bn (&euro15.7bn, ?10.8bn) worth of oil last year.


"India has increasingly close ties with Israel but it cannot afford to alienate the Muslim world," said P.R. Kumaraswamy, an Indian scholar of Israel. "There are very large sensitivities in broadcasting this relationship."


But these are obstacles to publicising the relationship, not to its continued growth.


One issue Mr Sharon is expected to raise Mr Vajpayee is Israel's desire to develop an anti-ballistic missile system with India.


New Delhi is gravely worried about the growing nuclear arsenal of neighbouring Pakistan, which it still accuses of sponsoring militant activity in Kashmir and elsewhere.


Israel also has concerns about Pakistan's nuclear programme, trumpeted in the past as the "Islamic bomb".


"India might pretend this is simply about buying arms from Israel and nothing more," said Bharat Karnad, an Indian security expert, who helped draft India's "no first use" nuclear doc-trine.


"But the level of intelligence co-operation on Pakistan is more extensive than with the United States.


"This is a strategic relationship."


Mr Vajpayee in particular feels grateful to Israel for its willingness to step up arms sales after India's nuclear tests in May 1998. The US, UK and others immediately curbed technology exports to India and Pakistan following the tests, although yesterday India agreed a $1.7bn deal to buy Britain's Hawk jet trainer aircraft.


Israel, which also developed its own clandestine nuclear arsenal, felt no such constraints towards India.


There have even been hints that the two co-operate in the nuclear field. "Israel was there for India in 1998 when most of the rest of the world was lecturing India," said Mr Kumaraswamy. "This is a very big plus point."


But many Israeli military products are based on technology licensed in the US. The US, which has a veto on such sales, has relaxed export constraints to India since September 11, which is why Israel can sell the sophisticated $1.2bn Phalcon early warning system to India. It was approved by the State Department in Washington earlier this year.


Mr Sharon and Mr Vajpayee will openly discuss issues such as tourism, cultural exchanges and official trade, roughly two-thirds of which is in diamonds. The two are also likely to announce plans for a free trade agreement. But there will be few hints of the true significance of this bilateral relationship.


"We intend to keep this pedantic," said one Indian official.



Source:
The Financial Times
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=2411





India – Israel Relations : Indian Policy Distortions of the Early years
India’s policy distortions in its West Asian policies were to say the least, reprehensible and inconsistent with the ground realities. India’s historical record is a sorry one in terms of opposing the creation of Israel as evident from the following facts.1

* In the Pre-Independence period, Gandhi, Nehru and the Indian National Congress had opposed the creation of a ‘Jewish National Home’.

* India did not subscribe to the majority plan of United Nations Special Committee on Palestine recommending partition of Palestine.

* India voted against the admission of Israel into the United Nations in May 1949.

Despite the official line propagated by Nehru, the entire spectrum of India’s Opposition parties from the Left (Communists and Socialist parties of all hues) to the Right (Jan Sangh and Swantantra Party) ceaselessly stressed the need for close political and economic ties with Israel.2

The stubborn opposition to establish diplomatic relations with Israel arose from the Nehru - Gandhi regimes of the Congress Party being captives to domestic compulsions of appeasement of Muslim minorities (support for Arab causes) and a greed for Muslim votes. Ironically the first Janata Govt. did not change things either. India’s current Minister of External Affairs had to concede during an address to the Israel Council on Foreign Relations that "India’s Israel policy became a captive to domestic policy that came to be unwillingly as unstated veto to India’s larger West Asian Policy"3. In other words to exclude Israel from all Indian contacts

It is to the credit of the State of Israel and its political maturity that in the emerging deepening of ties between the two countries, Israel has not let this sad record to cloud its views.

India’s Military and Intelligence Contacts with Israel in the Years Before Diplomatic Recognition

Devoid of access to classified documents and entirely by deductive analysis, it becomes apparent that beginning in the 1970’s, India did realise that its West Asian Policies of excluding Israel were wrong. In the military field in India’s critical hour of need of the 1971 war with Pakistan, India sought Israel’s help to supply it with the devastating artillery weapon, 160 mm mortars and ammunition, exclusively manufactured in Israel.

Facilitating such covert Israel aid was that:

"Acting widely as an alternative diplomatic service, the Mossad has opened doors and maintained relations with dozens of countries which prefer that these connections not be known. The Mossad simply gives the other nation an easy way out – receiving military, medical and agricultural advice from the overenthusiastic Israelis without risking economic or political boycotts of the Arab World".4

It also appears that at the about the same time India - Israel intelligence cooperation had commenced. The book under quote sets out lucidly that: "India even more populous was another useful contact point for Meir Amit's Mossad, even though the Indian Government was also unwilling to tell its 800 million Hindu and Muslim people about the secret relationship with the Jewish State. Clandestine cooperation is always based on common interests, leading to an exchange of information. For India and Israel, the common potential enemy was Pakistan – a Moslem nation committed to helping the Arab countries of the Middle East".5

India had yet not given diplomatic recognition to Israel, but in a rare display of pragmatism and need, it began a covert relationship with Israel in the 1970's. Again with no records to go by, it can be safely assumed that covert military and intelligence exchanges should have ensued till 1992.

India – Israel : Formal Diplomatic Relations Establishment, 1992

India accorded formal recognition to Israel in 1950 but continued to resist establishment of formal diplomatic relations till 1992. Probing visits by Israeli officials had taken place to test the temperature in New Delhi ending with the visit of Israel Deputy Director of Israel Foreign Ministry Moshie Yaeger in 1992.6

Following the establishment of formal diplomatic relations in 1992, India and Israel have signed a number of agreements on economic, scientific, agricultural and cultural matters. Joint Commissions stand established in many of these fields including regular foreign office discussions.

VIP visits also commenced and the important ones till 1998 (those after 1998 will be discussed later) have been those of: 7

Israel

- President Ezer Weizman (Dec 1996). First ever visit by an Israeli President to India, leading a 24 member business delegation. For President Weizman it was a sentimental visit as during the Second World War he was posted as an RAF pilot at Yelahanka, Bangalore.

- Israel Services Chiefs

- Foreign Minister

India

- Services Chiefs

- Dr. A.P.J.Abdul Kalam then Head of DRDO.

- Defence Secretaries

Besides the above a sizeable number of official and business delegations from both countries have visited each other and thus the neglect of earlier years was corrected.


India – Israel : Formal Diplomatic Relations Establishment, 1992

India accorded formal recognition to Israel in 1950 but continued to resist establishment of formal diplomatic relations till 1992. Probing visits by Israeli officials had taken place to test the temperature in New Delhi ending with the visit of Israel Deputy Director of Israel Foreign Ministry Moshie Yaeger in 1992.6

Following the establishment of formal diplomatic relations in 1992, India and Israel have signed a number of agreements on economic, scientific, agricultural and cultural matters. Joint Commissions stand established in many of these fields including regular foreign office discussions.

VIP visits also commenced and the important ones till 1998 (those after 1998 will be discussed later) have been those of: 7

Israel

- President Ezer Weizman (Dec 1996). First ever visit by an Israeli President to India, leading a 24 member business delegation. For President Weizman it was a sentimental visit as during the Second World War he was posted as an RAF pilot at Yelahanka, Bangalore.

- Israel Services Chiefs

- Foreign Minister

India

- Services Chiefs

- Dr. A.P.J.Abdul Kalam then Head of DRDO.

- Defence Secretaries

Besides the above a sizeable number of official and business delegations from both countries have visited each other and thus the neglect of earlier years was corrected.
India – Israel : The Imperatives for Strategic Cooperation

For those who still subscribe to the old policies of domestic compulsions in terms of avoiding good relations with Israel, the imperatives for strengthening strategic cooperation needs to be spelt out.

Indian Imperatives – The Defence Field

* Israel offers a valuable autonomous source for purchase of sophisticated weapons and military equipment, indigenously developed; it therefore, precludes external pressures on Israel not to supply.

* Israel’s defence industries have earned a global reputation for upgradation of old weapon systems to latest technological capabilities. It applies to India’s vast holdings of Russian combat aircraft and tanks holdings. Israel has done it for number of countries.

* Israel’s technological advances in the fields of satellites, satellite imagery, missiles, rockets and nuclear fields are appreciable. Most of them being indigenous developments, they can be a source of advanced technology for India.

* Potential exists for India – Israel joint defence production and marketing of conventional military equipment. India’s under - utilised and aging defence production facilities could be modernised and upgraded for export purposes. Export earnings could subsidise India’s requirements for enhanced defence expenditure.

Indian Imperatives – The Intelligence Field

* Israel from its existence recognised "that they needed excellent intelligence to aid their fight for survival. Their country was among the tiniest on earth but would have to develop the finest services in the world". 8 They have done so in the form of Mossad (Foreign Operations), SHIN BET (domestic security) and AMAN (Army’s Intelligence Agency). Each one of them have acquired global reputation for excellence.9 This was achieved both by the imperatives of national survival and being "a synthesis of various traditions that were learned, adopted, inherited, or copied from other countries that have longer histories as states and more deeply ingrained intelligence customs".10

* With India facing both internal and external onslaughts from adversaries, India’s intelligence agencies need toning up. Israeli expertise would be invaluable as inputs for strenghtening of India’s intelligence agencies.

* India is under attack from Islamic fundamentalists. Intelligence exchanges with Israel would provide valuable inputs as Israel too is under similar attacks and has developed considerable expertise in dealing with them.

* Israeli industries produce hi-tech sensitive gadgetry for intelligence purposes. India could tap this source for its requirements.

* India’s counter-terrorism mechanisms and responses are poor. Israel experience could help.

India’s Imperatives – The Internal Security Field

* "Israel is in almost permanent state of war and has been since its birth in May 1948. It is surrounded by hostile nations and a constant, threat so the rules of defence and intelligence must differ from those that apply in America or other Western countries."11 India is in a similar predicament and the Israel experience would be valuable.

* Israel’s border management and counter – terrorism techniques could help India in getting over its major weaknesses in internal security management.

Israeli Imperatives for Strategic Cooperation With India

The Israeli imperatives may not incorporate a wide a list as the Indian requirements. The major ones are:

* India offers vast markets for arms sales. India’s weapons and military equipment requirements in the next ten years add upto billions of dollars.

* India needs autonomous sources of both military equipment and technology in the fields of nuclear power generation, space technology and satellite imagery. Attractive market exists for Israel in India.

* Cost effective joint defence production.

* India is a vast market for Israel’s super speciality – agro-tech industries.

* Israel’s hi-tech industries could find India as an attractive market for sales, transfers and joint production and marketing.

* Tapping India’s advanced IT industry for both civil and military uses.




Israeli Official Responses for Enhanced Strategic Cooperation with India

In marked contrast to India, Israeli official pronouncements on enhancing ties with India and so also strategic cooperation display an open ended approach.

Bar Illan, Senior Adviser to then Israeli Prime Minister, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu made the following statements to a group of Indian journalists in July 1997: 12

* On ties with India "We don’t have any limitations, (in terms of ties with India) we would like it to be as deep and tight and as prolific as possible."

* On defence cooperation: "quite a bit of it is there; there is nothing in the world that cannot be improved."

* On strategic cooperation: "as long as India and Israel are friendly, it is a strategic gain. I hope there is the kind of strategic cooperation that will benefit both."

During President Weizman’s visit to India on Dec 1996, he expressed that Israel was keen on lending expertise in fields of missiles technology and avionics to India. Israel also offered both investment and technical cooperation in production of military aircraft, reverse engineering and upgradation of weapon systems.13

No other nation has made such open offers to India not even those who were India’s strategic partners in earlier years.

India – Israel Cooperation since 1998

India-Israel cooperation has intensified since 1998 and rightly so. India at long last has pragmatically realised the imperatives of strategic cooperation outlined above and efforts have begun as highlighted by the visits of India’s Home Minister L. K. Advani and India’s External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh to Israel in quick succession in mid 2000.

Indian Home Minister L. K. Advani’s visit to Israel drew much attention in external media both in terms of the composition of the delegation (Heads of India’s intelligence agencies RAW, IB, and central police organisations fighting terrorism) and Advani’s inter-action at the Israel end besides the protocol ones.

The focus of external media was on the emerging India-Israel cooperation in the internal security management field as under: 14

- Advani’s visit was first ever by senior Indian Minister since 1992 and that too a hardliner.

- Advani formalised intelligence sharing and cooperation agreement in his meetings with the MOSSAD Chief and Israel’s Ministers dealing with security.

- Israel supported India’s anti-terrorism efforts. Israeli intelligence agencies would open offices in New Delhi on the lines of United States FBI. Agreement modeled on similar lines.

In terms of India -Israel defence cooperation the following was highlighted:15

- Advani spent a long time with Israeli arms manufacturers besides his discussions with intelligence and border management agencies.

- Israel is willing to share defence technology with India.

- Israeli armaments technology is first class and prices reasonable.

Coverage of Mr. Advani’s visit would be incomplete without quoting the Israeli Ambassador’s impressions about Mr. Advani. He said "Mr. Advani is a very unique man. I like him very much. Ideologically and personally he reminds me of some people from an earlier generation of Israelis."16 Such impressions, presumably, would have fostered meaningful interaction.

The other notable event was the visit by Mr. Jaswant Singh to Israel closely following that of the Home Minister, Major events / discussions during this visit, the first ever visit by an Indian Foreign Minister were:17

- Cooperation in defence and counter – terrorism will hence forth underpin a greater political and strategic dialogue between India and Israel.

- Discussions between the two Foreign Ministers spoke of intensified cooperation in areas ranging from counter – terrorism to Information Technology.

- Israeli Foreign Minister Levy stressed Israel would never back off from its commitments to India.

Both Foreign Ministers additionally agreed/ discussed the following: 18

- Joint Commission established at Ministerial level for cooperation in combating terrorism. This is in addition to the Foreign Ministers Consultation Process.

- Strategic discussions will be held every 6 months.

- Defence purchases were also discussed including the GREEN PINE radar (one of the sub-systems of Israel’s anti-ballistic missile system).

- Additionally visits of India’s National Security Adviser Mr. Brajesh Mishra and Services Chiefs have taken place since 1998 underlining the growing strategic cooperation between India and Israel. In non-strategic areas visits to Israel have taken place in 1998 – 99 from the Indian side by the Ministers of Urban Affairs, Health and Welfare and the Attorney General. 19

The Indian Navy has also conducted goodwill visits by its ships to Israel. INS SHAKTI, INS GOMTI and INS RANVEER visited Port EILAT around March 28, 2000 Senior Indian Naval officers held talks with Israeli defence officials.20

India’s Recent Defence Purchases from Israel and Areas of Potential Interest

Recent defence purchases by India from Israel as reported include the following:

* Artillery Guns 130mm upgradation to 155mm- 180
(To be done in Israel)
* Artillery Guns 130mm upgradation to 155mm- 250 21
(To be done in India)

* Battlefield surveillance radars (Artillery) – 250
* Battlefield surveillance radars hand held (Infantry)- unspecified
* Fast attack naval craft Super Davora – 2 plus four to be built in India.
* Electronic Warfare System for INS VIRAT (aircraft carrier)
* 160mm Mortar ammunition - 30,000 rounds
* 130mm artillery gun ammunition - 50,000 rounds
* 125mm shells (for tanks) - 100,000 rounds
* 5.56 mm ammunition for rifles - Unspecified 22

* Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) - 8 in 1999 for surveillance purposes (Army) - 20 in 2000
* Indian Navy (UAV) requirements (Shipborne) - 50 23

* Russian MI 35 helicopter prototype upgradation - 25 24
with Israeli avionics and night vision devices.

* India seeking defence equipment worth- unspecified number25
$ 200 million to include UAVs, avionics
for IAF SU – 30 MK I, MIG 27 ML, and
JAGUAR upgrades Fire Control radars

During the Kargil War, Israel responded magnificently, despite pressures from various quarters not to supply. UAVs for high altitude surveillance, laser – guided systems and many other items were supplied within 24 hours.26 Israel is reported to have emerged as India’s No.2 defence supplier after Russia, and with costs of Russian spare parts for replacement escalating by 300-500%, Israel may emerge as India’s No. 1 defence supplier. India is presently faced with the daunting prospect of buying immediately $200 million worth of ammunition and further $ 1.5 billion later to make up for losses in recent fires at Indian Army Amunition Depots.27 Israel may be the only source for immediate replacement.

In terms of areas of potential Indian interest in Israeli defence equipment, briefly it can narrow down to the following items.

* Submarine launched cruise missiles.28

* Micro-satellite systems for surveillance which can be launched from aircraft or in clusters from a missile.29

* Laser guided systems and precision – guided mention munitions (PGMs)

* Anti – ballistic missile systems.

* Upgradation of all Soviet – origin aircraft, artillery, tanks etc.

* Radars of all types.30

CONCLUSION

India, at the turn of the millenium seems, to have broken out of the straitjacket of moral histrionics of the last 50 years in terms of its foreign policies and approaches to strategic cooperation. In terms of India’s national interests related to the context of its present external and internal threats, the imperatives of strategic cooperation with countries willing to contribute to enhancement of India’s security, becomes inescapable. Israel as the preceding survey would indicate, is a prime example of a country willing to go the whole length for strategic cooperation with India. That it is willing to do so without pre-conditions or succumbing to pressures from other countries, makes it a safe source for meeting India’s defence needs. India is in dire need today to reform its intelligence apparatus and add teeth to its counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism responses. Israel has expressed its readiness to assist in these fields and can be expected to provide blueprints appropriate to Indian requirements.

United States, Russia and China especially, all have noticeable political, economic and defence cooperation with Israel, currently. Arab countries of West Asia have accepted this pattern. There should be no logical reason for them to be concerned about India - Israel strategic cooperation either. Israel’s practical approaches on India’s close relations with Iran do not also either come in the way. Bar Illan, Senior Adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu had commented on this in 1997 that "countries that keep good terms with Israel and at the same time maintain good relations with Iran without providing them arms, could be used as conduits for dialogue" 31 China is a case in instance. India could be a better conduit.

India's national interests are paramount and these dictate the enhancement of India-Israel strategic cooperation. In terms of strategically educating itself from Israeli experience, India could learn to have the will to use power, unapologetically.

1.8.2000



NOTES:

1. BR Nanda Ed. 'India’s Foreign Policy : The Nehru Years', Delhi,Vikas Publishing Ltd. 1976. P75

2. Ibid P 69

3. 'Asian Age', New Delhi, July 4, 2000 based on ‘India Abroad News Service’ despatch by P. Jayaram. The item was headlined "Greed for Muslim Votes Restricted all Ties with Israel: Jaswant Blames Politicians for Decades of Estrangement." P 3

4. Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, 'Every Spy a Prince' – Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990 See Pages 436 and 437.

5. Ibid P 157

6. Lt. Gen R. K. Jasbir Singh (retd.) Ed. 'India Defence Year Book 1998 – 1999', Dehradun PP 119 – 120.

7. Ibid P 119.

8. 'Every Spy a Prince' (1990) PP 1-2.

9. Ibid P 5.

10. Ibid P 13.

11. Ibid P 413.

12. 'India Defence Year Book 1998 – 99'. P 117.

13. Ibid P 119.

14. 'Far Eastern Economic Review' June 29, 2000. P 10. Article entitled "India Works with Israeli Intelligence".

15. 'Asiaweek', June 30, 2000. Newsitem entitled "India – Israel Growing Ties."

16. See 'Outlook' Issue of July 2000. PP 20 – 21. Remarks were made by Israeli Ambassador Dr. Yehoyad Haim. He also highlighted that a very unique affinity exist between Jews and Indians.

17. 'Indian Express', July 3, 2000. P12, Newsitem entitled "India Israel Talk Business."

18. 'Far Eastern Economic Review', July 13, 2000. P 8. Newsitem entitled
"India Shops for Israeli Air Defence".

19. Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, 'Annual Report 1998 – 99'. P 44.

20. 'Janes Defence Weekly (JDW)', April 5, 2000 issue. P15

21. JDW March 22, 2000 P 14.

22. See JDW issues of May 5, 2000 (P4) and June 9, 2000 (P8).

23. 'Defense News', Vol 15 No. 12. March 27, 2000.

24. 'Flight International', May 19 – 25 1999.

25. 'Aviation Week & Space Technology', October 18, 1999.

26. 'Indian Express' July 3, 2000 P 12.

27. 'Defense News', Vol 15 No. 9, May 15, 2000 P11.

28. Israeli capabilities can be referred do in 'Every Spy a Prince' (1990) PP423-424., Also see JDW, Jul 14, 1999.

29. For details of Israeli progress in this fields see JDW, March 29, 2000. P24.

30. Israel has provided a sizeable quantity of battlefield surveillance radars for artillery and infantry. India is interested in missile detection radars. India is also considering Synthetic Aperture Radars (SARs) pods for its MIG27 combat aircraft. See 'Flight International', May 13, 1999.

31. 'India Defence Year Book' (1998-99). P118.
http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers2/paper131.html

Editorial: Budding Israel-India relationship bad for Pakistan

Speaking to the American Jewish Committee in Washington recently, India’s national security advisor Mr Brajesh Mishra informed the audience that Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is scheduled to visit India in June. Mr Mishra is the leading proponent of a policy of engagement with Israel. While the dates for Mr Sharon’s visit have not been finalized as yet, Indian official sources say the invitation was extended some time ago. If the visit comes through, this will be the first time an Israeli prime minister would be visiting India. Previous high-level Israeli visits to India included the 1996 visit by president Ezer Weizman and the 2002 visit by foreign minister Shimon Perez. There have been other regular high-level exchanges between the two countries, including a Sept 2001 visit by Maj.-Gen Uzi Dayan to meet with Brajesh Mishra, his Indian counterpart. On the Indian side, visits to Israel have been undertaken by Brajesh Mishra, former foreign minister Jaswant Singh and now deputy prime minister LK Advani.

To the Pakistanis, growing India-Israel relations should come as no surprise given the convergence of interests between the two countries. This is also reflected in increasing cooperation between the Jewish community in the United States and the Indian diaspora in that country. In the last three years, not only has Israel become the second largest exporter of defence hardware to India, New Delhi has also secured extensive Israeli cooperation in non-defence sectors such as agriculture where Israelis are world leaders in drip irrigation.

But defence remains the mainstay of the two countries cooperation. Israel has supplied India with UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) — in fact only last year a Pakistani F-16 shot down one such UAV, Searcher Mk II during the India-Pakistan standoff — the Barak surface-to-air naval missile following difficulties in production of India’s indigenous Trishul missile, Greenpine radar system etc. Israel has extensively helped India in the field of intelligence, counterinsurgency and so on. Besides, Israel’s Elta Electronics, world leaders in electronic systems and sub-systems have won a contract to upgrade the avionics of India’s ageing MiG 21 fleet. By all indications, this is just the tip of the iceberg and some deals, according to reports in the Indian press, remain secret. Last year, India also secured from Israel the Phalcon AWACs, though the US prevailed upon Israel to not give India the delivery because of the military situation in the region. However, in principle the deal has gone through and the US does not have any objection to it. Interestingly, Tel Aviv called off a similar 1996 deal with China in 2001 after Washington decided to go to a nuclear war with Israel to prevent the latter from delivering the AWACS.

Do growing India-Israel relations have an impact on Pakistan and its security? The answer cannot but be a categorical yes. Pakistan is in an anomalous situation and can do nothing to counter India’s overtures towards Israel because it does not recognise Tel Aviv. The narrow window it got in 1993-94, with the onset of the Oslo peace process could not be utilized and now, given the rightwing coalition in Israel, a policy review has become extremely difficult.

India and Israel emerged as independent states almost simultaneously, with the former opposing the partition of Palestine and voting against the latter’s admission into the United Nations. The Nehruvian policy of appeasement towards the Arabs kept the two states apart for decades. In the 1970s, however, Indian strategists began to rethink their policy of exclusion towards Israel. New Delhi began to import artillery pieces from Tel Aviv. At the time, India maintained a secret relationship with the Jewish state (it even sent a “secret” mission, comprising top nuclear scientists, to Israel in 1984). Diplomatic relations were formally established between the two states only in 1992.

Several strategic imperatives account for India’s opening with Israel. India wanted a reliable source of sophisticated weapons in the wake of the Soviet meltdown and America’s refusal to tilt the balance in South Asia following an arms embargo on Pakistan. Israel was the obvious choice. Many of Israel’s weapon systems are indigenously made and Tel Aviv was prepared to shrug away any external pressures not to supply these to India. On the other side, Israel was interested in a profitable relationship with India which became a huge market for Israel’s defense industry. But a close relationship with India was also Israel’s way of containing Pakistan that was avowedly committed to helping the Middle Eastern states against Tel Aviv. Over time, India has also been able to hone its military intelligence agencies with the help of Israel’s surveillance technology, including airborne warning and control system.

Mr Sharon’s visit will consolidate this budding relationship by expanding trade and defense relations. Interestingly, the Israeli prime minister’s visit will come at a time when India and Israel are both entering US-sponsored peace processes with their enemies in the region. Thus we may expect both to join hands to thwart any American pressure to abandon long-held strategic or tactical positions. Israel can help India with its missile programme, for instance, which will severely impact the balance of power in the region. Already, India is eyeing the Israeli Arrow terminal-phase anti-ballistic missile system, which could have a huge impact on the deterrence equation in South Asia.

To be sure, Mr Sharon’s visit will allow the religious extremists in Pakistan to confirm their “Jewish-Hindu conspiracy theory” against Pakistan. But it will also add weight to a body of opinion in this country that has long argued for Pakistan to have some sort of relations with Israel in order to protect our national interest by not allowing an India-Israel nexus to develop in the region. It remains to be seen which viewpoint will prevail. The former is a negative and emotional stance. The latter is rational and cold-blooded, the very stuff of national realpolitik. *
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_21-5-2003_pg3_1


Pakistan-Israel Relations: A New Beginning?
http://www.india-defence.com/reports/727
Dated 26/10/2005
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The 1 September meeting between Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Mahmoud Kasuri - described by many observers as historic - was carved out of secret efforts by the pro-Islamic and pro-American Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to help diffuse tensions in West Asia.

But clandestine relations did exist between the two countries even as Pakistan, like most other Islamic countries, had adopted a pro-Palestinian posture against Israel. Indirect relations between Pakistan's military establishment and Israel date back to the 1980s and are well documented. Over the last couple of years, President Musharraf has repeatedly attempted to bring these contacts into the public sphere.

In 2003, he stressed the need for better relations with Israel during his visit to Camp David. But his comments were quickly brushed under the carpet when it drew an adverse reaction in Pakistan. In July 2003, President Musharraf called for a national debate on the possibility of opening diplomatic ties with Israel. The same year, Musharraf declared in the UN General Assembly that Pakistan 'recognized the right of Israel to exist'.

For decades, Pakistan has adopted a pro-Palestinian rhetoric coupled with an aversion for the Jewish state. This significant move by Pakistan has come as good news for Israel, which is looking for friends in the Islamic world. It is interesting to note that Israel has full diplomatic ties with only four Islamic nations - Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Mauritania.

However, it has good relations with Albania, Azerbaijan, Gambia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan is another Islamic country that has indicated its willingness to recognize Israel. At this point, the space created by Musharraf to accommodate Israel merits a discussion.

A key factor propelling the present Pakistani leadership is the country's revamped Pakistani foreign policy. The four pillars newly identified in Pakistan are Afghanistan, Kashmir, 'Look East' policy and opening up with Israel. Pakistan is willing to access high-technology military systems directly or indirectly from Israeli industries.

Earlier, Pakistan's Islamic bomb created apprehensions about its security in Israel and Pakistan feared pre-emptive strikes against its nuclear installations, similar to the one Israel carried out on Iraq's Osiraq reactor.

The second reason relates to the growing strategic relationship between India and Israel. It is a well-known fact that Israel has become a major arms supplier to India. Israel is also trying to clinch deals for high-tech defence products and cutting-edge technologies with India.

A $1.3 billion agreement over the Phalcon early warning system, Israel's expertise in counter-insurgency tactics and fencing along the LoC are some of the recent, but important developments. Recently, India has also expressed interest in procuring the 'Arrow' - a missile defence system against ballistic missiles.

The third reason is Israel's move to vacate the Gaza Strip. Pakistan had previously indicated that vacating Palestinian territories were an important prerequisite and diplomatic recognition of Israel would depend on the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

The Pakistani President had said that steps taken by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to vacate Israeli settlements in Gaza and some settlements in West Bank had helped improve Israel-Pakistan relations. However, the sudden public embrace of Israel by the world's second largest Muslim nation worried Palestinians, who warned that 'any prize for Israel is premature as long as it controls Gaza's borders, expands West Bank settlements and tightens its hold on Jerusalem'.

The fourth reason is the Iran factor. Interestingly, while Israel sees Iran as an immediate threat, as the Islamic regime has openly threatened destruction of the Jewish state, no such animosity exists towards Pakistan.

'Major developments such as India-US defence agreement and the Pakistan-Israel friendly overtures may sober Iran to react pragmatically and it may relinquish its belligerency in favour of a policy of mutual accommodation. This will be welcomed by Pakistan as a close Islamic neighbour.'

The Istanbul meeting has drawn condemnation from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and from some religious parties in Pakistan. The Opposition reacted strongly against this move and the MMA President Qazi Hussain Ahmed led a massive protest in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province.

However, the recent earthquake in Pakistan generated a quick assistance from Israel and Pakistan was grateful in acknowledging it. This is an indication of the blossoming relations between the two countries. While Pakistan's declared new policy towards Israel has yet to develop, its immediate effect may well be a signal to new strategic equations in Southern Asia.

Ali Ahmed
Research Fellow, IDSA
The India-Pakistan Nuclear Relationship: Theories of Deterrence and International Relations
E Sridharan (ed.)
New Delhi, Routledge, 2007
Pages 326,Rs.650/-



E Sridharan is the Academic Director at the Institute for Advanced Study of India of the University of Pennsylvania (UPIASI) at New Delhi. He has edited this book as part of a larger project on 'International Relations Theory and South Asia' that has attempted to engage scholars from South Asia in the discipline of international relations to interrogate their understanding of theory in relation to the region. This book is a compilation of updated papers presented by the participants at two of a series of conferences on the problems of conflict and cooperation in the region. The book is commendable on two counts. It treats South Asia as a single strategic space and depicts the perspectives of the three nuclear powers in the region - India, Pakistan, China. Secondly, the work is consciously both theoretical and empirical, providing enough thought to engage readers, both academics and practitioners.

The volume attempts to answer the questions: Does deterrence theory explain Indian and Pakistani nuclear behavior? Post 1998, is deterrence working and likely to be stable in the dynamic context of creeping weaponization, and future crisis? How adequate are deterrence and neorealist theory, developed in the context of the US-Soviet Cold War, and what are the theoretical departures necessary in the South Asian context? At the outset, it can be said that the contributors succeed in bringing to bear theory on the practice of deterrence in South Asia. The scholars represented, from India and Pakistan, are a veritable who's who of the emerging generation of South Asian strategists. Sridharan's edited work has essays by, among others, IDSA veterans Rajagopalan and Swaran Singh.

There is considerably writing on India's nuclear quest. At the forefront earlier was the status of the 'nuclear option'. After Pokhran II, the focus shifted to the type of nuclear deterrence available to India like 'force-in-being'. The Draft Nuclear Doctrine was discussed threadbare and also by the anti-nuclear polemicists. Limited War thinking was developed. The earlier doctrine was one of non-weaponized deterrence or existential deterrence and this did not change overnight with weaponization, The Draft doctrine was only declared in Aug 1999 much after the nuclear tests. Limited War thinking can be traced to the Kargil conflict and was made explicit by George Fernandes during an address in the IDSA in early 2000. Thinking about limited war was promoted by the Pakistani military action in Kargil and sponsored terrorism, which breached the Indian tolerance threshold after the attack on Parliament. Tests heralded weaponization, but Kargil and the Parliament attack came later, showing that nuclearization had not dampened Pakistani adventurism, but may have encouraged it. Lastly, this situation led to enunciation of India's Cold Start doctrine. The book under review has gone a step further by discussing nuclearization through the problems posed by the deterrence theory, and is therefore a recommended read.

Sridharan opines that deterrence leading to peace stands the best chance under a particular combination of regimes; namely, with India being under a secular-liberal party while Pakistan has a version of moderate Islam. He is of the view that India's nuclear policy is directed against a long term threat from China; against the discriminatory policies of declared nuclear powers; and long term security in an uncertain world order. He recommends resolving conflicts with Pakistan as they only box India into South Asia, and reduce its leverage in international forums. He expects that a fundamental resolution of disputes and moves towards greater South Asian integration would improve India's status in the world arena. At the risk of being foolhardy, he even hazards conceptualizing an eventual joint South Asian deterrent!

WPS Sidhu, a faculty member at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, who is well known for his earlier writings on the nuclear question, brings out the shortcomings of realist theory in the South Asian setting. Realism cannot explain why, after having tested in 1974, India did not choose to go nuclear or why the slow paced weaponization continues, despite China's head start. He also brings out the shortcomings of deterrence theory as not being able to adequately explain why Indian armed forces launched conventional action in Operation Vijay and Operation Parakram that could have escalated. Deterrence theory is also limited to the triadic context of India-Pakistan-China, and is wanting in dealing with non-state armed groups and the self-deterrence within decision makers confronted with hard strategic choices. His major insight lies in using organizational theory and strategic culture to explain the India-Pakistan contest.

A leading academic, Varun Sahni, of the JNU, has critiqued the 'stability-instability paradox.' The paradox suggests that stability induced by nuclear weapons through mutual deterrence at the strategic level opens up the possibility of force being used at conventional levels. He suggests that the crisis of 2002 has revealed that the gap between Pakistan's asymmetric warfare and a possible nuclear exchange is small. This is due to India's possible response by launching sub-conventional cross-LOC operations with retractable Special Forces that could have an escalatory potential. This conclusion is questionable, since he mistakes sub-conventional response with 'limited war under nuclear conditions.' The latter is equivalent to conventional war, and any conventional war in the nuclear era can only be a Limited War. Sahni mistakes India's transborder response such as hot pursuit and raids with 'limited war under nuclear conditions'. The Army, on the other hand, would club these conflicts as sub-conventional operations, and term them as Limited War. However, his conclusion that India and Pakistan are on a nuclear learning curve and must engage in a deterrence partnership to prevent conflict and manage crisis is fair. For this he recommends nuclear risk reduction measures and direct communications between nuclear command authorities.

Pakistan's nuclear posture is well argued by Rasul Bakhsh Rais. He identifies three areas of focus for the Pakistani deterrent: it must be a minimum credible deterrent; Pakistan must engage in a security dialogue with India; and lastly peace should be high on the bilateral agenda due to the nuclear shadow. The other Pakistani contribution is by Rifaat Hussain. He expands on the strategic restraints regime proposed by Islamabad to include: nuclear restraint; prevention of a missile race; establishment of risk reduction centers; moratorium on testing; non-induction of ABM and naval leg of the triad; and, interestingly, conventional stabilization through mutual and balanced reduction of forces and armaments.

Karnad, in his piece, typically tilts combatively at deterrence theory of the Cold War vintage. He finds it irrelevant for unequal powers like India and Pakistan. His view that concentrations of Indian Muslims in metropolitan centers like Delhi and Mumbai would influence Pakistani targeting philosophy can be contested. He exaggerates the linkage that familial ties between Muslims on both sides of the border has on India's strategic posture and war aims. These have been restrained and limited for reasons other than the contrived reasoning put forward by Karnad. He also errs in believing that India's operationalizing its nuclear doctrine in 2003 countenances reflexive 'massive retaliation'. Instead, massive retaliation is only threatened against a 'first strike', suggesting that India has adopted a 'flexible response' doctrine - although this has not been articulated either in the doctrine or in any related commentary.

As a final word, the book is an excellent single volume introduction to the concept of deterrence and to the nuclear issue in South Asia- making it equivalent to getting 'two birds with one stone'!
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Raghav Sharma
Research Intern, IPCS
Descent into Chaos: How the War against Islamic Extremism is Being Lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia
Ahmed Rashid
Penguin Books, 2008
Pages lviii+ 484,Rs. 495



The timing and the title of the Ahmed Rashid's latest book could not have been more appropriate. It comes at a critical juncture as the US shifts into election mode marked by politically-charged debates over its policies on the so-called war on terror and as much of South and Central Asia appear to be sliding dangerously down the path of anarchy. Rashid's work makes for a gripping read, his meticulous attention to detail, familiarity with the political and ethnic complexities, credentials as a journalist par excellence having covered the region extensively for 25 years and his access to key political players across the spectrum lend weight to his work.

The author makes a stinging critique of the failure of the policies followed by the international community at large and the US in particular in addressing issues pertaining to social stagnation and state failure in the region that have been vital in fuelling the rise of extremism. While he rightly criticizes the Clinton administration's fire and ice policies in dealing with the rising extremist tide, it is the Bush administration he castigates most strongly for its ham-handed approach. This approach, he says was primarily responsible for plunging South and Central Asia into greater chaosthan had existed prior to nine-eleven. (Page LVII.)

Rashids main premise is that the war on terror would have acquired an altogether different trajectory had the US policy focused squarely on Afghanistan instead of diverting resources to Iraq engaged in nation-building activities and encouraged ushering in genuine democracy particularly in Central Asia where the US enjoyed the rare advantage of goodwill and a positive image. Instead, by propping up unpopular regimes such as those of Islam Karimov, the Uzbek President and indulging the Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf, it undermined its own policies by alienating not only liberals in the Muslim world but also continued to fuel political opposition that often acquired militant Islamist leanings. Thus the author hints at an interesting linkage between the authoritarian nature of a regime and the channelization of political opposition to it in the form of militant Islam. However, he devotes only one chapter to the Central Asia, here too it is Uzbekistan that receives overwhelming space. Thus, in this respect Rashid is unable to adequately draw out the complexities at play here fails to do justice to the sub-title of his work that claims to encompass Central Asia. In the process he misses an opportunity to adequately weave in the Central Asian story into the current discourse on radical Islam that is overwhelmingly focused on Pakistan and Afghanistan and has led to in some respects an academic fatigue of sorts.

Nonetheless, it is Pakistans and Afghanistans descent into chaos that constitute the forte of Rashids work. The book dwells at length about the lacuna in US policy and in doing so convincingly builds up a case for a need to seriously re-strategize policy goals and implementation mechanisms. The author lucidly corroborates his argument regarding critical policy blind spots by highlighting the sheer incompetence and lack of seriousness seen, for instance, in the absence of officials equipped with prior knowledge or linguistic skills or the failure to keep tabs on Taliban activity between 2002 and 2005 in south Afghanistan and Quetta that provided safe sanctuary for the Taliban. Rashids objectivity comes forth most strongly in his criticism of the political ping-pong Afghan President, Hamid Karzai whom he otherwise refers to as my friend indulges in, thereby further undermining the fight against extremism.

In particular, two arguments stand out. Firstly, he talks of a need to engage in nation-building activities which include amongst other things, the building and strengthening of institutional mechanisms which have been weak and seriously subverted by extremist elements. Secondly, he briefly draws the readers attention to the changing social profile of Islamic militancy that is now drawing recruits from the ranks of educated middle class professionals, as was the case with a group called jundullah or Army of God. Thus, he succeeds in breaking the overtly simplistic, but popular notion of a link between grinding poverty and Islamic extremism hinting that the roots of the problem are far more complex. However, Rashid fails to powerfully build up the second facet of his argument, leaving it to the reader to decipher its larger meaning.

Rashids work comes across as a courageous account on two fronts: it deals fairly objectively with contemporary events as they unfold and, his unrelenting criticism of Pakistans Afghan policy characterized by the forging of an unholy nexus between the state, religious establishment and non-state actors armed and motivated to kill and die in the name of Islam has been a source of extreme discomfort for the ruling elite in Islamabad.

It is this objectivity and courage that make for a fairly unadulterated read till almost the very end when Rashid literally springs a surprise by referring to Benazir Bhutto and her Pakistan Peoples Party as secular and being against extremism. It was Bhuttos party under the tutelage of her populist father that turned to Islam as an instrument that promised to reap rich political dividends. While Benazirs short-sightedness encouraged her government to set up a cell under her grand uncle Naseerullah Babar (a Pushtun) to aid the rise of the Taliban and whose ascent to power she termed a welcome development in 1996.

Overall the book is rich in terms of information and the political complexities involved and brings forth the irony of the war against terror. While, it provides an informed and engaging account it fails to provide a concrete theoretical framework to chart the rise of radical Islam that transcends geographical, political and cultural barriers. Nor does it throw light on debates within Islamic circles which may enlighten the reader on another facet of radical Islam, that is, of a struggle within Islam. The greatest strength of this work lies in its style narrative that manages to engage the reader and is pitched at a level that allows the author to communicate with a diverse and wide audience.
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Devyani Srivastava
Research Officer. IPCS
The State, Democracy and Anti-Terror Laws in India
Ujjwal Kumar Singh
Sage Publications, 2007
Pages 345,Rs. 695



A study of extraordinary laws in a democracy frequently revolves around the need for striking a balance between two of its important values pitted against each other: preserving the security of the state believed to be under threat, and maintaining the character of the state as a law abiding state. While the focus of this book remains the same, i.e. debate on extraordinary laws albeit with a focus on Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) in India, it does not seek to situate itself in either of the camps. Instead, it focuses on an ontological study of extraordinary laws in India, i.e. a study of the nature of extraordinary laws to understand its efficacy. In turn, the author digs deep into both sides of the argument in order to discover and unravel the various underlining aspects of extraordinary laws, rich in meaning and powerful in impact. In doing so, the author highlights the way these elements, that get suppressed in the dichotomous debate, have deep ramifications for political processes, institutions and democracy. It is these elements that the author deconstructs layer by layer in a systematic, coherent and powerful manner.

The book is based on the premise that the justification, inception and repeal of extraordinary laws is rooted in the reasons of state i.e. in political power and ideological configurations. The author illustrates this through an examination of the idea of exception that informs extraordinary laws, demonstrating how it unfolds what he identifies as a politics of erosion, exclusion and suspicion. This, the author further argues, has ramifications for people's lives, political institutions, the rule of law and democratic functioning, referred to as the 'violence of jurisprudence', a term he adopts from Paddy Hillyard.

The definition of the idea of exception then constitutes the most striking conceptual lacuna identified by the author. Determining situations which are not normal or ordinary assumes two things- "the presence of an authority that decides on the existence of an exceptional situation, and second, the notion of a 'normal' situation, existing as a counter correlate of the 'emergent'." Therefore, determining the idea of exception legally and procedurally becomes a platform for assertion of sovereign authority. The working of extraordinary laws therefore results in the state of emergency becoming permanently entrenched, thereby redefining state of normalcy. By exploring this angle, the author not only brings out the inefficiency of legal determination in a democracy to account for the establishment of inevitability of exception but also rightly questions the apparent dichotomy between law and violence.

The focus of the book is then to demonstrate how the politics of suspicion, exclusion and erosion embedded in extraordinary laws unfold. For instance, extraordinary laws require/allow the determination by the state of 'mainstream' political community and identification of those that threaten it as 'harmful' elements that cannot be resolved through normal law. Through a detailed study of specific cases of the misuse of extraordinary Laws, be it TADA against Sikhs in Punjab or slashing of POTA against Vaiko in Tamil Nadu and Raja Bhaiya in UP, the author demonstrates how the leeway to determine the 'enemy' results in a clear demarcation between 'us' and the 'others'. The other-ing of certain groups within a society results in a process whereby identity struggles and struggles for self determination get subsumed as terrorist and disruptive acts. Their ramification transcends affirmation of state authority, to creating an 'outside space' within a political community. It broadens the parameters available to the state for defining threats to national security. In doing so, he goes beyond highlighting the open misuse of the law to questioning the right of the state to use expressions like mainstream in defining boundaries of democratic politics.


He further demonstrates the unfolding of the politics of suspicion injected into extraordinary laws through a study of the communal use of POTA against Muslims in Gujarat and the use of POTA against Dalits in Maharashtra. The objective of the author again is to go beyond highlighting the misuse of POTA on communal lines. By examination of the official justifications of POTA, the author demonstrates how the logic of exception informing extraordinary laws- as necessary correctives directed against a clear enemy- facilitated the state to draw lines of conflict around groups and communities. In effect, the author is able to identify the long term consequences of extraordinary laws- targeting of minority communities not only results in rendering an entire community suspect in the eyes of law, thereby perpetuating a state of fear within the community; but it also recognizes communal disharmony as a legitimate punishable offence.

The politics of erosion manifests itself through self perpetuating provisions in extraordinary laws that are inserted as 'exceptions' to procedures of investigation and trial. For instance, accepting the provision of voluntary confession as evidence, like in the case of POTA, inherently implies recognition of the right of the listening authority the power to exonerate. Therefore, conceptually, the idea of confession is deeply entrenched in the structure of power and authority. In addition, it defies the right of the accused against self-incrimination. Similarly, by providing for arrests without warrant, extending the period of police and judicial custody, and the period within which the charge sheet is to be finalised, extraordinary laws facilitate prolonged detention. All these exceptions allow a departure from normal practice of law, irrespective of whether the procedures are followed or not, and threaten to create an alternative system. Through an assessment of the working of these provisions in specific cases (be it the The Case of G. Prabhakaran, 2002, exemplifying the working of the stringent bail provisions or the Kartar singh vs. State of Punjab case, and Mohammad Afzal and others vs. the Union of India case no. 53/2002 on the working of the provision for confessions), the author exhibits how they brought into practice principles and procedures that served to 'suspend the normative universal of the rule of law', and affirmed the sovereign authority of the state.

The objective of the book clearly is then to "read between lines", to "extricate issues and unravel strands" embedded in extraordinary laws. Through a systematic, layer by layer deconstruction, he reaches the conclusion that by the very nature of extraordinary laws, they gradually become enmeshed in the ordinary laws, thereby leading to a process whereby the draconian laws soften the desired standard for further measures. So the term extraordinary law that is supposed to be structurally and conceptually temporary belies its very nature by containing strands that are self-perpetuating. In this way, a completely different view of justice is created which legitimizes minimal due process, increasing the powers of the executive, perpetuating- in the words of Upendra Baxi- a parallel legal system of preventive detention system. This is perhaps the most striking achievement of this book- to expose the 'permanency' embedded in 'temporary' law.

The real triumph of the author however ultimately lies, not as much in his trenchant critique of the politics of extraordinary laws in a democracy, but in his clarity of intelligence. The book is a work of logic. It scores on the ground that the author is able to advance a logical assessment in an objective, meticulous yet impassioned manner. While the book is not a theoretical exercise, i.e. it proceeds through a dissection of empirical cases; it nonetheless exposes basic inadequacies in the legal justice system of a democracy through a scrutiny of the relationship between law and politics, thereby inadvertently constructing a theoretical critique. At the end, therefore, its significance does not remain confined to students and scholars of law alone; it also merits recognition by scholars of politics, sociology and human rights for its incisive reflections on ideas of justice, liberty and democracy.

http://ipcs.org/newDisplayReview.jsp?kValue=123

Hindu, 9 December 2008
Pakistan launches operation against banned organisation
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan military said on Monday it had mounted an 'intelligence-led operation' against a banned militant organisation in Pakistan-adminstered Kashmir and made several arrests. Military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas did not specify that the target of the operation was the Laskhar-e-Taiba, nor would he confirm if Lashkar commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, suspected by Indian investigators of having masterminded the Mumbai attacks, was among those arrested ...more..KAshmir Tribune, 9 December 2008
Militants shifting camps
With tension mounting between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack, the militant training camps across the border are being vacated and relocated to other places. As India has constantly been building diplomatic pressure on Pakistan and America has also been backing India in its claim over Pakistan to hand over the people responsible for the terrorist attack in Mumbai, the militant leadership fearing a 'surgical strike' by India on their camps in PoK, are slowly vacating the camps. 'For the past few days we have been witnessing increase in activities across the line of control and we have intelligence inputs that the militant training camps across the border are being vacated and the inmates shifted to other locations.' a senior intelligence officer told The Tribune on condition of anonymity ...more..Naxal VoilenceHindu, 9 December 2008
Good show by BJP in naxal-hit areas
NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party, while retaining power in Chhattisgarh, noticeably improved its performance in the tribal belts, most of which are hit by naxal menace. It may be pointed out that the State-sponsored 'Salwa Judum' was a main election issue. The BJP won 50 seats and the Congress 38. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) secured two seats. The worst loser was the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which did not win any of the three seats it got under the alliance with the Congress. In fact, it lost the lone Chandrapur seat to Yudhvir Singh Judev (BJP), son of Dilip Singh Judev. ...more..NepalKathmandu Post, 7 December 2008
Disband YCL, YF: Yami
DHANKUTA, Dec 6 - Minister for Tourism and Civil Aviation and senior Maoist leader Hishila Yami on Saturday said it is necessary to ban Young Communist League (YCL) and Youth Force (YF) -- youth wings of the CPN (Maoist) and the UML respectively -- to maintain peace and security in the country. Speaking at a program organised by Federation of Nepalese Journalists, Dhankuta chapter, she said the scrapping of the two youth wings was essential as their activities could be detrimental for the peace process ...more..North East IndiaAsian Age, 8 December 2008
Ulfa tries to get China haven
Dec. 7: The outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom has established a nexus with Chinese intelligence in an attempt to establish alternative bases in China's Yunan province. China's Public Security Bureau (PSB), which handles policing, public security and social order, besides issuing residence registration permits and immigration and travel matters for all foreigners, is helping Ulfa in this regard. The PSB has two wings - military and civil - and both are coordinating with top Ulfa leaders. Assam's new director-general of police G.M. Srivastava, who took charge recently, told this newspaper the Assam police had received information that around 70 Ulfa members are now in China's Yun-an province. This, however, is yet to be confirmed ...more..PAKISTANHindu, 9 December 2008
Pakistan launches operation against banned organisation
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan military said on Monday it had mounted an 'intelligence-led operation' against a banned militant organisation in Pakistan-adminstered Kashmir and made several arrests. Military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas did not specify that the target of the operation was the Laskhar-e-Taiba, nor would he confirm if Lashkar commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, suspected by Indian investigators of having masterminded the Mumbai attacks, was among those arrested ...more..Sri LAnkaHindu, 7 December 2008
Heavy fighting near Kilinochchi: Colombo
COLOMBO: Heavy fighting was reported on Saturday between the Sri Lankan forces and the LTTE on the outskirts of Kilinochchi, the administrative headquarters of the Tigers, even as the Air Force claimed to have bombed several 'identified' LTTE targets in the north. The Defence Ministry said here troops had 'successfully crushed' an LTTE counter attack in the Adampan area, west of Kilinochchi. 'Troops having anticipated the terrorist move took the terrorist attackers by surprise causing a heavy toll to the terrorists. The clashes commenced around 3 a.m. with army engaging heavy artillery and multi barrel rockets on the terrorists still advancing to the army's positions in the Adampan area,' it said ...more..

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Abstracts of reports, editorials and opinion articles published in Asian and American English press including The New York Times, Washington Post, The Indian Express, The Hindu, Statesman, News, Daily Times, Asahi Shimbun, People's Daily and Xinhua.
UPDATED DAILY



VOA News, 30 November 2008
Iran Proposes Building Nuclear Plants with Neighbors
The head of Iran's atomic energy agency has proposed building nuclear power plants jointly with neighboring Arab countries. Gholam Reza Aghazadeh did not give any specifics about his proposal Sunday for the development of light-water nuclear plants. Iran is building its first nuclear power plant with Russia's help. Iran says it is developing nuclear power, not weapons. But Western nations are concerned Tehran's intentions are militaristic. The U.N. Security Council has imposed sanctions on Iran to try to stop it from enriching uranium. Tehran says it wants to produce low-grade fuel for peaceful nuclear power plants... ...


AFP, 28 November 2008
Syria 'sanitized' suspected nuclear sites: US
The United States and Europe expressed concern here Friday that Syria had cleaned up sites that a UN watchdog had asked to see as part of its probe into alleged illicit nuclear work by Damascus. At a closed-door briefing by International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors last week, "we saw dramatic evidence that Syria took immediate steps to sanitize the three sites after the IAEA requested access," US envoy Gregory Schulte told the agency's 35-member board of governors on Friday. Syria was the main topic of debate on the second and last day of the IAEA's end-of-year meeting here... ...

more..
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India's Inadequate Defence Budget 2008-09

Laxman Kumar Behera
Associate Fellow, IDSA
e-mail: laxmanbehera@gmail.com



The Union Budget 2008-09 allocated Rs.1,05,600 crores, or 10 per cent more than previous year's allocation, for defence. Crossing the Rs.1 lakh crores barrier for the first time, the defence budget looks impressive. However, the question remains whether India's defence allocation is adequate for the country's economic and security interests. An analysis of these two factors reveals that India's defence allocation remains moderate as always.

With the new budget, India's defence spending has risen by nearly 125 per cent in current prices over the last one decade from Rs.47,071 crores in 1999-00 (see Figure below). The increased allocation over the years comes at a time when the Indian economy is growing at an impressive rate. What is important is that the present economy is more globalized than before. As the economy grows further and becomes more globalized, the need for maintaining the growth momentum and protecting the economy's global character simultaneously increases. The least that India want at present, in the face of increasing signs of a global economic slowdown and its adverse impact on the Indian economy, is a disruption of the current momentum due to its adversaries.



Source: Extrapolated by the author from figures from Defence Services Estimates (DSE) in various years; and the Union Budget 2008-09.

To meet any threats to its vital interests India requires, among others, a strong military capability that could safeguard its interests within and outside domestic boundaries, including in the vast seas that account for 70 per cent of the country's total trade by value. If India's present maritime capability is any indication, it is inadequate to protect its merchant ships that carry nearly 90 percent of India's traded goods by volume. So the bottom line is: India needs enhanced maritime capability, which, in turn, demands higher allocation.

The higher allocation for defence, given its close links with military capability, has the added advantage of projecting India's hard military power. However, an analysis of India's military spending, through the prism of its share in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), does not convey India's active intention to showcase its military ambitions. This is apparent because the proportion of economic resources devoted to defence has continuously fallen in the last half decade or so. In fact, the latest defence budget as a proportion of GDP has, for the first time, fallen below 2 per cent since the India-China war in 1962, and from a high of 2.46 per cent in 2004-05.

The declining share of defence in GDP and its possible adverse impact on military capability may be little misleading given the fact that India's military capability-related spending, coming under the 'capital expenditure' of the budget, has increased significantly, from less than 25 per cent to more than 45 per cent over a decade. However, from the international perspective, India's defence spending is on the low side.

From a global perspective, India's latest defence budget, estimated at roughly US$26.5 billion at the current market exchange rate, constitutes a mere 2 per cent of the total world military expenditure. While the US, with a military budget of more than US$700 billion, remains the world's largest military spender, it has devoted over four per cent of GDP to defence, which sets the yardstick for 'affordable defence' by other countries. Against this yardstick, Pakistan spends around 3.5 per cent of its GDP on defence, and China spends nearly 4.3 per cent. In contrast, India's defence budget is only 1.99 per cent of the expected GDP for the coming Fiscal Year.

Given these perspectives suggesting India's moderate defence spending, the question arises whether the defence allocation could meet the security needs of the country. A regional survey of military balance reveals the increasing advantage of India's neighbours, especially for China. The military modernisation, in the face of double digit growth of defence expenditure for more than a decade, has resulted in China developing its own IT- and Space-based capability which, along with other 'anti-access/area denial capabilities', have left even the US worried. At the same time Pakistan's military modernisation, especially with American military assistance by transferring fighter planes, missiles, bombs and surveillance technologies, has direct security implications for India, and narrows the advantage in conventional warfare that were in India's favour for long.

To cope with these security imperatives, the present allocation seems inadequate, given the fact that most of the outlays in the budget for modernisation cater for projects signed years earlier. This means, the present budget leaves little that could be used to enhance military capability, meet the security threats in the neighbourhood and technological developments elsewhere.
http://www.ipcs.org/Military_articles2.jsp?action=showView&kValue=2537&keyArticle=1017&status=article&mod=a
China's Security Policy

Hayoun Ryou
Visiting Fellow, IPCS



Report of the IPCS Seminar held on 4 November 2008

Chair: Maj Gen (Retd.) Dipankar Banerjee
Speaker: Jonathan Holslag, Director of Research, Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies

Introductory Remarks

As China is rising, it is important to know China's future trajectory in world affairs and the kind of role it is likely to play. International relations today are characterized by deep economic interdependency that influences strategic relations, interactions between international states, and global power equilibriums.
Jonathan Holslag

An assessment of the Sino-Indian relations in light of the global economic interdependence must proceed on three dimensions. First is the economic dimension. At present, there is little room between China and India to supplement each other. The supposed complementary rather than clashing nature of India's stronghold in the IT sector and China's strength in manufactures are not effective anymore. China is now positioning itself as a very strong competitor to traditional India's strong economic stronghold. For example, regarding the IT industry, China has a number of IT projects which amount to US$400 million now whereas it is also specializing in education. These will render the traditional division of labor between China and India ineffective. There is no scope for deepening the relations.

The second area is the political dimension. Though there are several bilateral exchanges between government leaders of the two countries, the story is the opposite when it comes to public perception. For example, a poll in 2002 revealed that 66 per cent of Indians among 2,000 interviewed regard China as a benevolent and a constructive partner. However, by 2007, the number decreased to 22 per cent. It is noteworthy that despite the Chinese President Hu Jintao's and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's visits, the percentage went down. It means that political optimism at the political level has not yet permeated into the overall society. The third dimension is the military field. Though trade and economic intimacy give the impression of mitigating traditional security dilemmas in the region, in reality it is not so. Apart from confidence-building measures at the borders and a few joint military operations and upcoming naval operations, no meaningful progress has been made beyond these. A recent Chinese government proposal along with other South Asian countries to the Indian government to work together against piracy in the Arabian Sea was rejected by the Indian government. It means that India is reluctant to involve the Chinese in the Indian Ocean because India consider this as part of its area of influence. There exists superficial cooperation vis-a-vis issues problem areas such as smuggling and drug trafficking however, when it comes to the heart of security challenges such as the instability in Myanmar and Nepal, significant collaboration is hard to be found.

How is China going to back up its economic charm with its military and security policy? China watchers have been quite conservative in their assessment. They regard China as a country growing into a continental power, albeit still obsessed with Taiwan. However the world needs to know about Chinese side. An intense debate is ongoing within China concerning how and to what extent it should project its power.

A recent instance of the abduction and killing of five Chinese nationals in Sudan raised a debate in Beijing whether China should deal with Sudan unilaterally or in collaboration with other sources. Last year, the Central Party Committee held a special meeting for handling these challenges. The conclusion was very outspoken. Whenever problems occurred regardless of the regions, China should be able to defend its economic assets which included its workers and assets..

How should China protect its economic interest? Should China work in tandem with global institutions or solve the issues unilaterally? At this stage, the Chinese military in particular is very much divided about theses issues. The need to work together with the African Union or some other alternatives - so called working within a broader framework - has been raised. But there is also a criticism about relying on these for it is not considered enough to play a role in solving and protecting Chinese economic interests. The Chinese government including its Ministry of Foreign Affairs must try to find solutions by working with local governments whenever it is necessary. At first, it is important to step up military diplomacy especially to foster stronger intelligence with these African countries. A second element is that China needs to increase military exchanges with these countries. So far, China has little cooperation with military exchanges with African countries. A final dimension is whether the Chinese government will continue to engage in state-centric diplomacy. It would be hard to expect fundamental changes from China about this.

How is China reforming its military establishment? What is the impact of military capability? China is developing a blue water navy to protect is supply lines and other strategic regions. There have been military modernizations regarding these but these are still experimental and China is not suddenly going to manifest an autonomous presence for instance in the Indian Ocean though there is a strong Chinese desire to do this. Five major articles by prominent security experts from China claimed that China should develop its autonomous presence and expand its activities in the Indian Ocean. There are also signals that Chinese military will play a more important role in the future. Therefore, with this divided internal debate, external powers such as the US and India can be crucial in influencing future Chinese trajectory. Whether the US or other external powers will adopt an aggressive policy or an engagement policy is the key point. So far the US unilateral policy toward Africa and military operations has deepened this security dilemma. It could be applied to India in the same context. China is concerned about India's conventional military arsenal. So far there have been few activities in engaging China.
Thus, more significant steps towards engaging China and setting up more concrete forms of mutual understanding about threats and challenges, not only in Africa but also in other regions in the world, need to be undertaken. There is a need to reach a broader mutual understanding communication should be improved to foster mutual trust and understanding. In this process, the US has to play an important role. It should encourage China to become a more constructive international player. Meanwhile, Sino-Indian cooperation is essential for long-term regional stability.

DISCUSSION


The EU and China

Regarding the future direction of EU-China relations, it is doubtful if the EU and China can act together often; it is also unrealistic to think the EU will act with the US always. The EU wishes to have a more multilateral form of world engagement and prefers a more independent diplomacy For instance, on the Taiwan issue, and several other issues as well, Brussels has taken a slightly different position from that of Washington. For the future, it is one of the priories for the EU to diversify its strategic partnerships rather than merely focusing on Washington. In Brussels and other member states of the EU, the younger generation is frustrated with the EU's foreign policy and are demanding a more concrete,effective foreign policy.


European perspective on 'China threat'

The conception of China being more exclusive than India is unfair. India is also exclusive in certain ways. For India's neighboring countries, for example, Indian diplomacy is regarded as fairly exclusive.. There is a growing concern in Europe and even in Washington about India's diplomatic and strategic assertions. The reason why China's rise is perceived as a threat while India's emergence is not is a question of perspective.

EU arms sale to China would be worrisome to some countries like the US and Japan. However, the EU has been selling arms to China under the guise of dual-use technology for quite a long time. This is a matter of concern more for the US and Japan rather than EU.


Chindia


The term "Chindia" linking China and India does not yet reflect the reality since there are many dimensions between China and India that are hard to bring together. Chindia remains a myth.


EU's policy toward India


The EU and China have genuine cooperation in many areas where India still lags behind. The EU and China have interacted with each other in other countries as well which has not been the case in EU-India relations say in Nepal or Myanmar. With China, Brussels has deeper interactions on regional issues, while there is no concrete European policy towards India yet. This is frustrating to younger generations and young scholars in Europe. In this regard, it is obvious that while Europe uses the democracy argument to praise India over China, in substantial terms its relationship with China is far deeper than it is with India. Ultimately, trade and commerce trump any substantial foreign policy based on identity of values.


Concluding Remarks

China and India will be very significant and important international players in the near future. So far China seems to handle its foreign relations in a very skillful way while pushing its national interests while India still lags behind in this respect. The Chinese have not only have actively participated in ASEAN+3 and other regional frameworks but also dominated these in many ways. India needs to know how to better handle strategic issues and formulate its own methods to deal with world affairs.
http://www.ipcs.org/China_east_asia_articles2.jsp?action=showView&kValue=2742&issue=1009&status=article&keyArticle=1009&mod=b

Asymmetric Capabilities of China's Military

Sanjay Kumar
Research Assistant, Centre for Strategic Studies and Simulation, USI, New Delhi
e-mail: kumarsinha@hotmail.com



Over the past twenty years, the world has witnessed a resurgent China - seemingly unhappy with single power dominance - taking long and steady strides towards becoming the world's next superpower. Not just its economy, China's military too has grown from strength to strength over the past two decades, making remarkable progress in all spheres - land, air, water, space and cyber-space.

While China continues its search for power-projection capabilities beyond the Asia-pacific region with particular attention to its navy, air force and second artillery, it is believed to have achieved considerable power-projection capabilities in space as well as cyber space - domains that remain largely unregulated, indefensible and not bound by any geographical divisions.

China's strategy to develop asymmetric capabilities, often dubbed as "anti-access" or "area-denial" strategy extending from outer space to cyber space is part of the two pronged strategy that China seemingly has adopted with regard to its military modernization. On the one hand, the Chinese military is intensely beefing up basic infrastructure that supports conventional warfare capabilities; on the other hand, it is aggressively pushing for capabilities which are aimed at exploiting technical vulnerabilities of its adversaries.

The unprecedented scale of China's military modernization together with the exponential growth of its defence budgets in the past twenty years has left many nations wondering about China's real intentions behind investing so heavily in its armed forces. Despite mounting international criticism, China has never spelt out its strategic intentions in clear terms.

In the absence of a clearly articulated defence policy,, the outside world has little insight into key capabilities surrounding China's military modernization. Shrouded in even deeper mystery, asymmetric capabilities of Chinese military are viewed as potential threats to not only key military installations of other nations but also their financial hubs and other civilian infrastructure that support their economies.

China's motivation to seek asymmetric warfare capabilities stems mainly from its inherent technological weaknesses in keeping pace with the advances made by modern militaries around the world. While the US military is increasingly looking to a future where unmanned systems will take up frontal positions on the battlefield, China is still grappling with reverse engineering of many of Russia's military equipment.

The geostrategic dynamic of the Asia-pacific region coupled with China's own economic rise contributing significantly to it, necessitates China to keep its military in state of constant combat readiness. The Chinese military, however, is in the throes of biggest transformation in its history - transforming everything it can, from doctrine to strategy and from training to equipment. Therefore, it can ill afford to wait till it has gained technological parity with the western nations. With latest military technology from Russia increasingly becoming scarce and China's own conventional capabilities still a long way off the desired level, it is expected that China's asymmetric war-fighting capabilities will only grow with time. While asymmetric threats from China are real and demand closer attention, deterrence could be perhaps another reason behind China's motivation for building up asymmetric capabilities.

Next to space, China is eying cyberspace as an extension of its anti-access strategy. 'Informationisation' the dominant theme behind China's current military modernization programme is in essence about gaining "electromagnetic dominance". According to a Pentagon Report in 2007, China views cyberspace - attacks, defense and exploitation - as critical for achieving "electromagnetic dominance" early in a conflict. The Chinese military views internet as a possible tool of war. Hence, it is believed to be training and equipping specialists who would try and penetrate foreign military networks which are generally considered safe and impregnable.

Chinese hackers are believed to be behind several intrusions into the White House in the past. In 2007, Niprnet the unclassified e-mail system of the Pentagon was thought to have been invaded by hackers operating from China. UK, France and Germany are among other nations who faced network-based cyber attacks from China in the past. Indian cyber space too came recently under attack by hackers thought to be Chinese. However, the Chinese military is not alone in pursuing cyber warfare. According to one estimate presently there are about 120 countries which are engaged in such activities. In the most recent example, Russia and Georgia were engaged in a 'cyberwar' of sorts attacking each others networks and websites.

The Indian military is seeking increasingly to evolve into a network-enabled force and stands particularly vulnerable to Chinese cyber threats. While the US set up a cyberspace command, albeit provisionally, in 2007 supposedly with the aim to devise both defensive as well offensive capabilities in cyber warfare, the cyber security forum of the National Security Council in India became defunct after the US spy incident. As cyber threats from China are only likely to intensify further, the Indian military would need to remain focused on achieving synergies in the field of information technology and cyber security. What the military needs is a cyber security force with authority to launch cyber warfare. Such a force can be placed within an 'integrated cyberspace cell' and placed under HQs, IDS, similar to what was done with the Integrated Space Cell.
http://www.ipcs.org/China_east_asia_articles2.jsp?action=showView&kValue=2751&issue=1009&status=article&keyArticle=1009&mod=b

Abstracts of reports, editorials and opinion articles published in Asian and American English press including The New York Times, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, The Indian Express, The Hindu and The Times of India.



Dawn, 9 December 2008
New attack on Nato supplies; 53 trucks torched
PESHAWAR, Dec 8: Militants torched on Monday 53 Nato supply vehicles at a terminal on the Ring Road in the second such attack in two days. According to eyewitnesses, about 50 heavily-armed people, some of them carrying jerry cans full of kerosene, stormed the Jamil Terminal at the Jamil Chowk. 'They doused the vehicles parked in the rear of the terminal with kerosene and set them on fire.' Some of them said the militants were speaking 'Persian and appeared to be Afghans' ...


Daily Times, 9 December 2008
Editorial: Destruction of NATO trucks and trouble ahead
While Pakistan awaits evidence from India so it can prove that it has the capacity to move against non-state actors threatening its writ and allegedly attacking other states in the region, another incident questioning its capacity to control events has taken place. An army of some 300 gunmen - official account puts the number on 30 - blasted their way into two transport terminals on Peshawar's Ring Road on Sunday and torched more than 160 vehicles destined for US-led NATO troops in Afghanistan ...


Daily Times, 8 December 2008
Editorial: Senator McCain and 'Indian strikes'
From the tone of the statement one can say that the Senator, possibly along with the rest of the US delegation, wanted Pakistan to respond positively, 'after receiving evidence from India', to the Indian demand that the culprits named by them be arrested. The Senator talked in the future tense about his willingness to persuade India not to embark on military action against Pakistan. He thought America would not be able 'do much' if India attacked Pakistan. He was more mindful of the assertion that India's Mumbai attack was an Indian 9/11 like America's in 2001, after which the US took the option of attacking Afghanistan ...


New York Times, 8 December 2008
Official Calls for Sensitivity to Afghan Demands
KABUL, Afghanistan - In unusually blunt remarks, the chief of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan warned in an interview this weekend that unless Afghanistan's international partners conducted their military operations with more care and cultural sensitivity, redoubled their work to minimize civilian casualties and accelerated their reconstruction programs, they risked jeopardizing their efforts to stabilize and rebuild the country ...
http://www.ipcs.org/us-southasia.jsp

Beyond Partnership: Outlook for Indo-US Relations

Mohammed Badrul Alam
Professor, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi
e-mail: mbalam786@gmail.com



Indo-US relations have had a bumpy ride over the last six decades. The 1990s and opening years of the 21st century have augured well for laying the foundations of a sustained Indo-US engagement in future. The following agenda could serve as the basis for this ongoing process. Both countries realise the full economic potential and are committed to seeking a new era of trade cooperation and investment. The US remains India's largest trading partner. Two way trade with the US has almost tripled in the last seven years expanding from US $14 billion in 2000 to US $41.6 billion in 2007. U.S support in providing the instrumentation for India's lunar mission, Chandrayan-1, is highly appreciated by India's scientific community.

Beyond the Indo-US Nuclear Deal, both countries are committed to bridge their divide to end India's decade-long isolation. The US is committed not to shift the 'goalposts'. India's legal and sovereign right to conduct nuclear tests remains intact. India can conduct nuclear tests in its supreme national interests if the situation so warrants in future. The civilian nuclear deal between India and the US will lift years of embargo on nuclear commerce with India. In a new dramatic shift in the global order and geopolitical equations in Asia, India will graduate from being a nuclear pariah to importing nuclear items from the US, France and Russia. The deal confers de facto nuclear status on India. India can also attain its new target of generating 52,000 megawatts (mw) of nuclear power by 2020. The share of nuclear power, now around 3 per cent, will shoot to around 15 per cent by 2020. As many as 400 Indian and foreign firms, including those from the US, could be the beneficiaries with over $ 40 billion in foreign investment over the next 10-15 years. Furthermore, the N-deal benefits the environment by reducing carbon emissions and greenhouse gases

According to the Pew Global Attitude Surveys of June2008, 66 per cent of Indians had a favourable opinion of the US in 2008 and that is up 7 per cent from 2007. 63 per cent respondents say US foreign policy pays attention to Indian interests which reflects a major change. Foundations like Fulbright have undergone a major transformation by renaming itself as US-India Educational Foundation, and by making both countries equal stakeholders. With students from the US opting to come to India under the Study Abroad Program and Indian students going to the US in increasing numbers, to major US universities setting up overseas branches in India, the education sector could open up new vistas for raising the relationship to a higher level.

India richly deserves a place in the expanded United Nations Security Council as well as membership in the G-8 grouping of nations. It is a thriving democracy with a 1 billion plus youthful, dynamic, entrepreneurial population, a booming economy growing from a 2 per cent 'Hindu rate' of growth a few years ago to a robust 8 per cent, and is a long-standing contributor to UN Peace Keeping Operations. For the Global Democracy Initiative (Capacity Building, Training, Exchanges), India has contributed US $10 million to the UN Democracy Fund and pledged an additional US $10 million also. As twin pillars of democracy and open societies, both India and the US are partners in their Energy Dialogue, Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate and in combating global scourge of terrorism,

As the 'brain banks' of India, the Indian Diaspora has crossed US $2.5 million in US, and play a key role in promoting India's case in various arenas. Shedding the 'imagined community' label, this ethnic group of highly educated and affluent population have contributed to American mainstream society in a variety of ways, including proactive participation in political processes at both the national and state levels. Bobby Jindal's victory to become the Governor of Louisiana is a case in point. With people to people ties at an all time high, India sends the highest number of students, 76,000 plus to the US.

Apart from India's status as a hard power (military prowess, nuclear capability, economic might, emphasis on national interest as state policy), India has increasingly projected its soft power; its attributes include: common political values, peaceful means for conflict management, economic cooperation, cultural interaction, liberal ideology, supporting international institutions, and so on. The US has noted India's edge in both hard and soft power capabilities and would support India's emergence as a global power.

Back to the future, with Barrack Obama, a Democrat, winning the US Presidency in the 2008 election and taking the oath of office on January 20, 2009, it is very likely that a big leap forward would occur between India and US in their bilateral relationship. If so, this win-win relationship will be a non-zero-sum game and more symmetrical, transiting from adversarial to cooperative, from estrangement to engagement, and will be based on shared values and shared interests as their common future is unbound and its possibilities are endless.
http://www.ipcs.org/US_related_articles2.jsp?action=showView&kValue=2762&issue=1016&status=article&mod=a&portal=pakistan

Why India Should Look Forward to the 'Change' in America

Avinash Godbole
Research Assistant, CLAWS, New Delhi
e-mail: avingodb@gmail.com



There has been much discussion on the telephone call US President-elect, Barack Obama, did not make to Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. After his election, Obama had called many heads of state including Pakistan's President, Asif Ali Zardari. That India was not on his first list irked many and fears were expressed that a sea change had occurred in the incoming administration's policy towards India compared with that of the Bush administration. While Indian officials were quick with explanations and the telephonic conversation did take place later settling the issue, it is necessary to look at the larger picture without making hasty judgements.

A large section of the Indian intellectual community and the media are apprehensive about the Democrat victory in the US elections, and would have preferred another Republican administration. The logic is pretty simple. Bush has been pro-India and McCain would have continued his policy. Bush's policy has appeared pro-India not because India was on his mind but because certain circumstances had constrained the Bush Administration for most of its tenure. 9/11 and the subsequent war on terror, and the prolonged Iraq conflict required the Administration to search for a symbolic victory.

Moreover, the US did not wish to anger India since it wanted Pakistan's undivided attention on its war on terror. Therefore, it could not let tensions in South Asia escalate, while maintaining a balance in the region. One needs to recall here the Indian government's posture following the 13 December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament. That the unprecedented build-up of forces did not lead to war and India achieved much less than it wanted is not a defeat for India, but a victory for the Bush Administration's South Asian diplomacy. Also shaping Bush's India policy was the rise of China in this period.

If one believes that the overall Bush Doctrine was wrong then any change that Obama brings about will welcomed. His first priority will be ending the Iraq war and consolidating security in Afghanistan. If this is ensured, along with opening a dialogue with Iran, it will encourage peace in the region. Second, the unilateralism of the Bush era has crippled the United Nations, and there are hopes that this process will be reversed. This would help in climate change negotiations since the process for replacing the Kyoto Protocol by 2012 is about to begin. The Obama government is expected to be more flexible on this issue as world opinion is gaining momentum that US cannot keep asking developing countries to cut their emissions while keeping its fleet of gas-guzzling SUVs intact. New US initiatives can bring China to the negotiating table in the field of climate change and emission reductions and India too can play a vital role here.

Third, even if he has raised concerns over the flight of jobs from the US, Obama is likely to find it less possible to translate his rhetoric into reality. In a milieu of cost-cutting and rationalization, it will not be easy for Obama to convince American business leaders to bring back jobs and pay more, which would affect the profits. Moreover, if the short-term protectionism of Obama is able to rejuvenate American economy, it will help India over the longer run through greater US investments in its economy. A similar view can be taken on Obama's views regarding Kashmir. While Obama has said that he would like to see peace in South Asia, he has not pressed for the US to adopt any direct role in this process, unlike the American policy of taking the Afghanistan war into Pakistani territory. And as long as this is his position on Kashmir, it will continue general US policy in the region. Moreover, his condemnation of religious extremism is more in sync with Indian policy than the Bush doctrine on the war on terror.

Further, the current American meltdown and its serious ripple effects on the world economy, increasing fears of recession, have not spared India and its effects have been severe. If the dropped jaws of the market analysts and the repeated media briefings required by Manmohan Singh on the health of the Indian economy were not enough, the spate of suicides by middle class investors provide a sad testimony to this fact. The need for 'change,' therefore, has never been more pressing than right now. To sum up, India has more to gain from an Obama presidency than many seem willing to believe.
http://www.ipcs.org/US_related_articles2.jsp?action=showView&kValue=2753&issue=1016&status=article&mod=a&portal=pakistan


Kaladan Multi-modal Project in Myanmar

Vibhanshu Shekhar, Research Associate, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Papori Phukan, Doctoral Candidate, Guwahati University, Guwahati, Assam
e-mail:vshekhar@mail.jnu.ac.in, papori_p@yahoo.co.in



In April 2008, India and Myanmar signed an agreement on the US$110 million Kaladan multi-modal transit-cum-transport project, which would connect India's land-locked Northeast with the southern coast of Myanmar. The project will be entirely funded by India and the Inland Waterways Authority of India has been appointed as project development consultant. The project envisages an upgradation of the Sittwe port on the southwestern coast of Myanmar and development of a 225km-long waterway between the port of Sittwe and Setpyitpyin (Kaletwa) in Myanmar along the Kaladan, which flows from Mizoram. Given the non-navigability of the river from Setpyitpyin, the project also involves construction of a 62km road network from Setpyitpyin to Lawngtlai (a district in southwestern Mizoram), where the road will merge with the National Highway 54. The project activities are expected to be completed by 2011-2012.

The Kaladan project is essentially a result of more than a decade-long effort by India to provide sea-access to the northeastern states and developing an alternate transport network, which can considerably reduce the traffic-load over the only connecting link by land through the narrow Siliguri corridor, also known as 'chicken's neck,' and substantially reduce the distance between Kolkata and the Northeast. Initially India had tried to persuade Bangladesh to offer transport and transit rights to the northeastern states. However, Bangladesh has consistently refused to grant such rights, including access to its Chittagong port, which is less than 200kms away from Agartala, the capital of Triupra.

What does the Kaladan project offer India? First, the project offers India's northeastern states access to the sea and an opportunity to develop greater economic linkages with Southeast Asia, and is a newly-acquired focus of the Look East Policy. Maritime access can facilitate bulk trade via Sittwe port, opening up contiguous markets. The Sittwe port offers quicker access to the largest Myanmarese market - the most densely populated regions of Irrawaddy basin and Yangon, thereby, further advancing the economic logic of India's engagement with Myanmar. With the operationalization of the Sittwe port, food-starved Mizoram will get sufficient quantities of rice from Myanmar and this would further enhance border trade between the two countries. Moreover, Sittwe can also enable traders and businessmen from Northeast India to explore markets in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore and vice-versa.

Second, the opening of the Kaladan waterways reduces the distance between Kolkata, the largest city and port in eastern India, and the capital cities of border states of Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura by more than a half. The distance between Kolkata port and Sittwe port is roughly 539kms and people and products from Lawngtlai would have to travel only 650kms to reach Kolkata, as opposed to the current route of Aizawl-Silchar-Siliguri-Kolkata that is approximately 1,700kms long. Thus, the maritime transport network will reduce the dependence on the Siliguri corridor.



However, two important logistical obstacles, facing the project, need to be addressed before the project can actually achieve its desired objectives. The project involves a complicated process of disembarkation and re-embarkation at Setpyitwin in Myanmar. Mizoram-bound goods and people need to de-board from the Kaladan waterway and board land-based vehicles before entering Indian territory. This transfer requires easy availability and smooth operation of switch-over vehicles at the point of disembarkation, and monitoring of the traffic of people and goods, which can prove to be a very complicated and lengthy process. Faced with complicated operational procedures, people may choose not to use the Kaladan transport network. Another important question that arises is whether the military regime will be well-equipped to oversee the sophisticated and complicated process of disembarkation and embarkation. Any laxity in this process can also lead to the influx of drugs and arms into the Northeast, bolstering the insurgency in the region and defeating the very objective of developing the region.

The issues of drugs and immigration must be addressed so that unmonitored immigration and traffic does not further destabilize the region. There are almost 100,000 Burmese refugees presently in Mizoram many of whom have fled political and military repression. More than half of this population, however, is a floating population that crosses the borders to look for work in Mizoram as domestic help, coolies or petty traders. It is this section that is often accused of being involved in crime, drugs and illegal border trade.

The Kaladan project is a significant effort towards developing greater connectivity, which is certainly an important prerequisite for greater economic relations and people-to-people movement between India and Southeast Asia. By facilitating greater movement of people, and goods, the project can further strengthen India's strategic presence in Southeast Asia in general and Myanmar in particular. It remains up to India how quickly it can develop the facilities required for hassle-free transport along the Kaladan river. The 2001 opening of the Moreh-Tamu-Kalemyo road, which connects India and Burma was an initial step taken towards this goal. The Kaladan project is another step in that direction.

http://www.ipcs.org/North_east_articles2.jsp?action=showView&kValue=2679&country=1016&status=article&mod=a&portal=pakistan

India and Israel Shape a New Strategic Relationship

Frederick Stakelbeck, Jr. - 2/15/2005

In the face of unrelenting international pressure and criticism, Israel is keenly aware that it must seek to develop strategic alliances wherever possible in order to help maintain its very survival.
Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert no doubt had this harsh reality in mind in December, when, during a visit to New Delhi to announce the establishment of a joint Israel-India economic think tank, he stated, "Israel is looking for a genuine, friendly and open-hearted partnership with India."

The partnership Olmert spoke of is a natural one. Its genesis lies in the shared vision of a more prosperous, secure future for the Israeli and Indian people. Since first establishing formal diplomatic relations in 1992, both countries have signed a number of defense, economic, and intelligence agreements in an effort to cooperatively address issues of mutual concern such as pan-Islamic extremism and terrorism, territorial sovereignty, and nuclear non-proliferation.

The improved state of Israel-India relations is most apparent in defense cooperation between the two countries. Israel has quickly become India's second largest defense supplier behind Russia with $2 billion in sales over the past decade. Indeed, the exchange of military hardware and sophisticated battlefield technologies, cooperative ventures in the design and manufacture of military defense systems and the sharing of highly classified intelligence information are at the core of the Israel-India relationship.

In December, an Indian delegation led by Defense Secretary Ajay Vikram Singh visited Israel and met with Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz to and to explore areas for further cooperation between the two countries. And in early January, Israel Military Industries (IMI) signed an $11.6 million deal with India to jointly manufacture 125 mm tank shells. This, in addition to two previously announced agreements between IMI and the Indian government that would establish five chemical plants in India to develop explosives and a $30-$40 million deal to upgrade rockets for the Indian Army.

Israel and India have also agreed to hold joint air force exercises sometime in 2005 that will pit Israel's American-made F-15 and F-16 fighters against the Indian Air Force's (IAF) Russian-made Su-30's. In addition, Israel has agreed to upgrade the IAF's Chita helicopters, jointly develop the Barak-II ship defense missile and upgrade the Indian Navy's fleet of Tu-142 maritime reconnaissance planes. Separately, India is currently conducting trials of the Israeli built Lahat anti-tank missile, Crystal Maze laser-guided bombs and Pop-Eye missile.

Furthermore, Israeli Special Forces and intelligence agencies such as the Mossad (foreign operations) and AMAN (Army Intelligence Agency), which are recognized as two of the premier intelligence agencies in the world, are said to have trained Indian troops on counter-insurgency techniques.

The recent flurry of Israel-India defense agreements has angered the weapons-peddling Russians, who are eager to re-secure their Cold War position as a leading purveyor of military hardware and technology to the Middle East and Asia. To achieve this goal, the Russian government has placed intense diplomatic pressure on India, demanding that the country buy more Russian weapons and threatening to supply Muslim neighbor Pakistan with military hardware if they refuse.

On the economic front, Israel and India agreed in December to set up a joint study group to formulate a formal economic partnership plan that could potentially reach $5 billion annually by 2007. "We expect this positive trend to continue as India expands its range of goods and as its appetite for high-tech products grows," said India's Commerce Minister, Kamal Nath. A "Statement of Intent" that would establish the "India-Israel Industrial R&D Cooperation Initiative" to provide support for joint R&D projects has also been signed.

Recognizing a unique opportunity for increased economic cooperation, Israeli Employment Minister Ehud Olmert recently called for increased R&D efforts between the two countries to create IT products for the global marketplace, saying, "We need to find a balance between using the innovation of Israeli engineers and the proven skills in software development and implementation of Indian engineers."

Opposing defense, economic, and intelligence cooperation between Israel and India is an array of well-entrenched Muslim hard-liners and Islamic theocrats who have called for the immediate severing of all relations between the two countries. The frequency and intensity of these virulent assaults could affect the ability of New Delhi's government to forge a long-lasting, amenable consensus among the country's 140 million Muslims. Making the situation more difficult is the fact that Muslim Indians, traditionally strong supporters of the Palestinian cause, view Israel as a human rights violator.

Recognizing the need to assuage the fears of its Muslin population, India has attempted to separate its Israel policy from the Arab-Israeli conflict. To achieve this, New Delhi has taken a more neutral position on the Palestinian question, publicly stating its continued support for the Palestinian cause and making deliberate efforts to further strengthen ties with its Arab neighbors, while reassuring Israel of its friendly intentions.

Adding new uncertainty to the fledgling Israel-India relationship has been India's increased reliance on Iranian oil and gas reserves to sustain its economic growth. In early January, the state-run Gas Authority of India Limited and Indian Oil Corp. reached an agreement with the National Iranian Gas Export Corp allowing India to purchase 7.5 million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) over a 25-year period.

Discussions to acquire and develop the Iranian Yadavaran and Juffair oil and gas fields have already taken place. The construction of a $4 billion India-Pakistan-Iran LNG pipeline and a multi-billion joint Indian-Iranian LNG tanker project have also been proposed. Any expanded energy alliance between Iran and India would be a legitimate concern, as Israel and the U.S. try to isolate a nuclear-infatuated Iran.

Increased Israel-India bilateral cooperation raises important questions concerning the impending strength and depth of the relationship. For example, how will India maintain an effective balance between its growing energy dependence on Iran and defense relationship with Israel? Also, if a regional crisis were to erupt in the Middle East involving Iran, Israel and the United States, how would India respond? And how will nuclear-capable neighbor Pakistan, already a vocal opponent of Israel-India relations, react if bilateral, defense cooperation accelerates?

Muslim countries such as Iran, Syria and Pakistan view normalized relations between Israel and India with disdain -- an increasingly difficult concept to embrace. In turn, U.S. intermediacy as a facilitator in the Israel-Indian relationship is seen as "hegemonic meddling" for the purpose of world domination. The reason for this untenable position is clear: regional anti-democratic forces are fully cognizant that any high-profile U.S. presence on the Asian sub continent, or increased presence in the Middle East, could lead to the rapid evolution of a formidable, Pro-Western U.S.-Israel-India alliance. This nuclear triad would immediately challenge the nascent, geo-political aspirations of China, Iran and Russia.

Both Israel and India should carefully formulate a long-term, comprehensive strategy in a regional and global context to respond to inevitable criticism and resistance to any alliance.

For its part, the U.S. should actively support the Israel-India alliance and encourage their mutual desire to explore continued opportunities for improved synergies. In its role as the world's leading democracy, the U.S. has a responsibility to make itself readily available to assist in the resolution of any difficulties that may arise from the new relationship. Strategic bonds between Tel Aviv, New Delhi and Washington should also be explored, with an emphasis on fluidity and informality, not rigidity-such a convergence of democratic beliefs and interests should continue to be a hallmark of U.S. foreign policy.

Frederick W. Stakelbeck, Jr. is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. He's an expert on East Asia.
http://www.globalpolitician.com/2345-israel

The Insane Zionist Masterplan - Pitting Hindu India against Islam
Don't make the mistake of assuming that because India is not in the Middle East that it's not an integral part of the Zionist master plan.

This opinion piece by Maryum Saifee published in the Columbia Spectator Online is crucial reading for anyone who wants to understand the latest horrific developments involving Pakistan and India and to figure out who is behind them.


Last Monday, a number of organizations convened a panel at Columbia University law school to celebrate emerging relations between India and Israel. As a person of Indian origin with a Middle East regional focus at SIPA, I was particularly intrigued by the subject matter of the talk and wanted to learn more about this budding relationship.

After attending the talk, I realized that much of the content was not academic in nature and was politicized to the point of propaganda.

The panelists included members of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the former Indian ambassador to Israel, and the United Nations Development Programme. By the end of the talk, I found the panelists to collectively reflect a very biased and unrepresentative point of view that is not shared by the majority of moderate-minded Indians and Israelis.

The AJC, one of the lead organizers, recently endorsed an article by Indiana University professor Alvin Rosenfeld conflating Jewish criticism of the Israeli state policies with anti-Semitism. The AJC's decree has sought to silence a constructive debate on Israeli state and foreign policies by labeling any dissent as falling inside the category of anti-Semitic hate speech.

Although the panelists harked back to long-time relations between India and Israel and glorified India as one of the only nations with no traces of "anti-Semitism," the two nations only established normalized diplomatic relations in 1992, coinciding with the rise of a Hindu nationalist-led Indian government. The talk offered little convincing substance that the two countries shared much in common aside from rising Hindu nationalist and intolerant AJC-style fundamentalisms.

The theme reiterated throughout the talk was that both India and Israel are democracies under attack by a Muslim fundamentalist threat-both internal and external. This rhetoric of fighting a common war on terror against an Islamic enemy serves to fuel a rising Islamophobia that has become mainstreamed in Israeli, Indian, and even American discourse. We can see manifestations of these policies in Israel to justify the occupation of the Palestinian territories, in India to create a motive for the state-sponsored pogrom against Gujarati Muslims in 2002, and in the United States with Guantanamo Bay and a wide array of civil-liberties infringements against Muslims/ Muslim-Americans.

Rather ironically, the panelists invoked the rhetoric of both Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to illustrate Indian and Israeli commitments to nonviolence and plurality. Nehru never supported the creation of a nation-state based on religio-political nationalism and I am confident that if Gandhi were alive, he would not have endorsed the Israeli occupation and apartheid wall as part of his definition of ahimsa (nonviolence).

The panelists described both Indian and Israeli principles guiding state policies by referring to Nehru's famous words that "the only alternative to coexistence is codestruction." While this is predominantly true in the case of India (with the exception of episodic outbreaks of politicized Hindu-Muslim violence, India's one billion plus do live in harmony), I do not believe this analogy extends to the state of Israel, as both Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter have analogized Israeli treatment of Palestinians to that of the South African apartheid system.

Another disappointing aspect of the talk was the perpetuation of the model-minority myth to describe Indian-Americans and Jewish-Americans. The AJC representative talked about the commonalities between both groups as being peoples tied by cultural ethics-such as hard work, family ties, and an emphasis on education. She identified cultural reasons as lending to the success of these two groups. As an Indian-American, I know that one of the main reasons I and my compatriots were able to succeed in this country had less to do with inherent cultural superiority, and more to do with immigration policies of the late 1960s.

During my parents' generation, the United States had an aggressive policy of recruiting skilled professionals (engineers and doctors) to come to the United States in response to a labor shortage. Most sociologists and historians who study the period would agree that the success of Indian-Americans in the United States context has to do with filtered immigration policies rather than cultural/racial superiority.
Aside from the racially charged content and questionable historical accuracy of the talk, I was most surprised by the fact that the Earth Institute, which generally sponsors events and conferences of high academic caliber, was included as one of the co-sponsors for an event promoting right-wing fundamentalists on both sides of the Indian and Israeli spectrums.
When I made an inquiry to professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, he stated that the talk was never approved by the Earth Institute and that an individual must have used the logo without the permission of Earth Institute's senior management. While Sachs is making a concerted effort to find out exactly what went wrong, it seems clear to me that at least one individual within the Earth Institute must have been aware the event took place as an announcement was circulated to the Earth Institute list on Friday, Feb. 9.
Whatever the case may be as to how and why the Earth Institute was involved in the talk, I was relieved to hear from Sachs that the Earth Institute had no intention of sponsoring such a talk. I was particularly concerned that the Earth Institute's sponsorship of such an event would not only lend credibility to such propaganda, but also tarnish the Earth Institute's reputation for rigorous academic standards.
The talk ended in a rather tasteless display of solidarity with participants indulging in spicy Kosher Vegetarian Indian cuisine. I left the talk depressed, but not discouraged. Despite the offensive nature of the content, the event has opened the door to what will hopefully be a more constructive debate on campus that will critique this one-sided Hindu nationalist/ right-wing AJC-style narrative of Indian-Israeli relations predicated on a common Muslim enemy.
To further understand the insane zionist masterplan, that involves pitting the Hindu world against Islam, I urge readers to review the maps in


Redrawing Borders (to get at the oil) and israeli pipedreams.
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/680
at 11/27/2008
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View my complete profile
http://ww3zionism.blogspot.com/2008/11/zionists-and-unrest-in-india.html
Hindutva, Zionism, India and Palestine
http://www.geocities.com/virodhi2001/IndiaResistance2001.htm
contact author
In this paper, I look at some features of Hindutva and compare it to Zionism. As ideological currents that are both powerfully placed with respect to U.S. imperialism’s global ambitions, this comparison is meant to sound a warning to all peace-loving and democratic minded people; fascism is on the rise again, and with alliances developing like those between Hindutva and Zionism, lack of knowledge about either could lead to catastrophic consequences. The struggle of Palestine for freedom and self-determination is tied to the struggle of India for freedom from the neo-colonial order being imposed at the behest of the IMF-WTO regime and its U.S. sponsors and domestic lackeys. Zionism and Hindutva are global movements with a history that is both fascistic and pro-imperialist. Here are some reflections. I use lengthy quotes for the simple reason that it is better to allow authors to speak for themselves rather than paraphrase them; hopefully this curtails monologue and allows for a richer representation of the issues. The sources at the end of the document are to be treated as resources, many of them available over the internet for more in-depth study.
For Palestinians and Arabs interested in why India’s solidarity with the Palestinian cause is under threat, I have gone into some detail about the historic affinities of Hindutva with European fascism, and most importantly, the anti-national, pro-imperialist past and present of Hindutva. For Indians and South Asians, I draw upon the similarities of Hindutva and Zionism because we are caught in wave after wave of imperialist nurtured and sponsored chauvinism, and are yet unable to grasp at the global dimensions of our histories. The longer we are left to the mercies of lunatics like the Hindutvadis (and their counterparts), the more distant any hope for real freedom, and revolutionary change will be. This is precisely what the Yankee imperialists want, and this is why they have always excelled in supporting all sides of fascism simultaneously. Let us meditate on the issues and develop global vision, so that we can more effectively work towards a decent future for South Asia.
What takes place in South Asia is crucial to the Arab world. For decades now, the Arab world is dominated by pro-imperialist regimes standing shakily between their people and their imperialist allegiances. Strangely enough, Saudi Arabia, which is a major U.S. ally, draws no condemnation for its medieval practices against its domestic and migrant population. Israel, which practices apartheid, and commits atrocities on a daily basis with no restraints on barbarity, is called a ‘democratic friend,’ by its U.S. puppeteers. The ability of the great numbers of dispossessed, and marginalized from South Asia and the Arab world to establish effective means to build on their solidarity and confront their common enemies is being targeted day and night by endless attempts by imperialism and its domestic lackeys. One of the means they have often used is by taking advantage of the incredible illiteracy and poverty endemic to great sections of these regions: fundamentalism has been a useful tool for the imperialists, from Talibanism, to Hindutva. Whether people have started growing beards, or whether they have started singing praise to Rama, theirs is a lot that is at the mercies of the global capitalists; and this is what the so-called fundamentalists have to show for their achievements: delivering their peoples to the slaughterhouse of yankee capitalism while torturing their capacity to resist out of them, by directing their suffering towards concocted enemies, almost always, people within our own societies. It is the people who suffer, and sacrifice endlessly. Global capitalists and the prison guards of the new world order (our so called ‘leaders’), make grand proclamations about globalization, but in the same breath, use every means to disempower, dispossess, and disarm their victims.
This paper is part of a continuing effort to demolish the tower of lies and fallacies being built up by hateful and cowardly people and their disgusting institutions, practices and ideologies. I name three of them relevant to this paper: U.S. imperialism, the godfather, Zionism and Hindutva, the running bloodhounds of the former. This paper is copyLefted; meaning, you may freely spread it far and wide to like minded people who are interested in fighting against this monstrosity. Giving credit has the most important function of enabling someone to research by themselves, rather than taking your word for it. So in that spirit, let us embark on this brief, and hopefully fruitful meditation.
"A massive survey project by the Anthropological Survey of India published in the form of a series called People of India proves a number of points which give lie to the lies of the Sangh Parivar. It shows that approximately more than 4000-odd communities inhabit this country and their cultural profile is rooted and shaped by their relationship with their environment their occupational status their language, etc., primarily and that religion falls way down in the construction of their identities. This survey also shows that Hindus and Muslims share more than 95% characteristics of various kinds that are common and that it is shared lives that have given shape the diverse cultural expressions. Among other things the studies also show that nobody today can be characterised as an original inhabitant or a foreigner. (BJP’s assault on Education and Educational Institutions. Nalini Taneja, Delhi University)"1

Note: Sangh Parivar: The coalition of Hindu extremist organizations who subscribe to the ideology of Hindutva
Brahmanism: pertaining to the culture, ideology and practices of Brahmanism, associated with Brahmins and upper caste Hindus. It is often related to the veneration of the Vedas, the sacred hymns (mytho-poetry) of the Brahmin priests; specifically I use it to denote the chauvinistic, elitist, and racist aspects of the ideology and practice of Brahmanism, or caste Hinduism.
"Hindutva is not embodied only by the most visible aspect - the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP - Indian people Party) but by an entire set of institutional arrangements and structures which all function together, in a reasonably coherent fashion to produce the ideological and material structures of the fascist complex."2

India, hostage to Hindutva’s and its new friends
In recent years Israel’s role in the colonization and military occupation of Palestine has been increasingly overlooked and ignored by leaders in several countries of the world. For half a century countries of the global south by and large expressed solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, seeing it as another anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle, something familiar to most of the former colonies of the European imperialist powers, and easy to identify with. However in the last decade some countries have seen momentous changes both in their societies as well as in the roles played by their governments in the realm of international issues. India is one such country.
Going back to the very foundation of the independent Indian state and the ideas of Gandhi, there was a clear and principled basis for condemning the dispossession and oppression of Palestine by the newly instituted state of Israel, as practices abhorrent to the idea of secular, democratic and free humanity; these were ideals deeply instilled at least in the minds of the masses of Indians who gave their lives to the struggle and forced the British imperialists to surrender their claims on India. Gandhi’s views on Palestine are well known. In a paper titled "Mahatma Gandhi's Approach to Zionism and the Palestine Question" Professor A.K. Ramakrishnan brings to light some of Gandhi’s views on Palestine and the claims made by the Zionist movement for a separate state. Under pressure by Zionists to make a statement, Gandhi, while expressing his deepest sympathies for the Jewish victims of Nazism went on to say:
"My sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and in the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after their return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?"3
Gandhi did not like the idea of a national state founded on a religious chauvinistic basis. He was also firmly supportive of the Palestinian people’s struggle for national liberation against the British colonialists and their Zionists allies.
He also added, "Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract," a statement coming from a person who had considerable knowledge of the world’s religions. In other words, he dismissed the religious basis for the claims of Zionism.
Seeing the Palestinian struggle against Zionist claims in the light of the anti-imperialist struggle being waged in India and the colonies, Gandhi stated that,
"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs... Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home."
According to Professor A.K. Ramakrishnan,
‘Gandhi, in his role as leader of the national struggle and the Indian National Congress (the organization embodying that struggle), had been actively engaged during the 1930s and 1940s in molding the perception of the people of India to the nationalist and anti-imperialist struggles in the Arab world. The 1937 Calcutta meeting of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) "emphatically protested against the reign of terror as well as the partition proposals relating to Palestine" and expressed the solidarity of the Indian people with the Arab peoples' struggle for national freedom. The Delhi AICC of September 1938 said in its resolution that Britain should leave the Jews and the Arabs to amicably settle the issues between the two parties, and it urged the Jews "not to take shelter behind British Imperialism." Gandhi wanted the Jews in Palestine to seek the goodwill of the Arabs by discarding "the help of the British bayonet."
The BJP’s effort is to erase India’s anti-colonial history, and tie India to the shoelaces of the American imperialists.
Indian foreign policy over the last fifty years maintained a consistent stand in support of Palestine, and opposed to settler colonial Zionism. According to Aijaz Ahmed, one of India’s foremost political thinkers,
‘This aspect of Indian foreign policy was noted and admired, I might add, by Arab diplomats and intellectuals. I remember visiting a number of the Arab countries and regularly meeting a broad cross-section of the intellectuals there, in the 1960s and 1970 s. I was very young then and it was always very striking to me that Pakistan's support for Palestine was usually seen as shallow and Islamicist, whereas the Indian solidarity with the Palestinian cause was regarded as a natural and secular, non-religious response from a country that had played so seminal a role in the making of the non-aligned movement.’4
However since the rise of the BJP (Bharatitya Janata Party) a political wing of a movement known as Hindutva, whose ideological mother organization is called the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or ‘National Volunteers Organization’), things have taken an about turn both in terms of India’s progressive heritage of secular and principled foreign policy, as well as the role played by government in the welfare of the people. Since the 1990’s the growth of the Hindu extremist movement has brought tyranny and oppression for India’s Muslims, India’s Christians, as well as India’s oppressed castes and Dalits. The latter make up the vast majority of the Indian people but are victims of centuries of social oppression under the tyrannical caste system. Additionally, women’s rights, the access of tribal people to land and resources, the rights of workers, agricultural workers, peasants, all under threat, while with much nuclear fanfare, the BJP works hard to recast India from the anti-colonial pro-third world nation, to a Hindu Rashtra (nation), under U.S. and Israeli Zionist tutelage. ‘Human rights’ is a term looked at with derision and contempt by triumphant Hindutvadis. And in this process India’s progressive position of solidarity with Palestine has come under attack by these self-proclaimed "nationalists." So we have a two pronged effort: one, against the toiling masses of India, the vast majority of the Indian people: workers, peasants, traditionally oppressed sections such as the Dalits, Adivasis ("tribals"), etc.: at the behest of the U.S. imperialist multinational brigades. Secondly, the ideological enemy, specifically members of India’s religious minorities, specifically Muslims, and Christians, but also Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Nastikas (atheists, often called "pseudo-secularists" by the rabid sections of the Hindutva movement). In the context of the second, Hindutva’s pro-imperialist stand takes on an international dimension: all Muslims are seen as enemies, therefore, the enemy of the enemy (ie. U.S. Imperialism/Zionist Israel) is taken as the friend! This is the staggering depth of Hindutva’s worldview, the cesspool of chicanery and spineless capitulation!
Ahmed continues,
‘I was therefore very surprised when I read the statement of Jaswant Singh, during the course of his recent visit to Israel, that India's foreign policy in the past decades was held hostage by the Muslim vote bank and that the government was now going to correct that error. India's anti-colonialist past was simply being erased, and what even Arab intellectuals, from their great distance, could see as an expression of India's secular solidarity with anti-Zionist forces in Palestine was now being presented , by a suave and insufferable Foreign Minister, as an error forced by the Muslim minority in the country upon those whom the Bharatiya Janata Party is fond of calling "pseudo-secularists". Hindutva was now going to undo all that and make a strategic alliance with its natural counterpart: Zionism.’
More money is being spent today on bombs and weapons, rockets and tanks than on education, health, and the well-being of the growing number of people who live in extreme poverty. While sections of the middle classes have become rich, promoting their worldview and upper caste elite cultural affinities as "Indian" culture to the world, every day we hear of farmers committing suicide, workers losing jobs as factories are sold off to local privateers and multinationals; extreme hardships brought on by the anti-people policies of the Hindu fundamentalist government, which will spare no effort to roll in the dirt for the benefit of U.S. economic and geopolitical interests. When the junior Bush recently announced plans to initiate the so called "son of star wars" plan, the world unanimously rejected it, while India’s pathetic Hindu fundamentalist leaders bowed low and cheered the American president’s plan, a response I am sure his gigantic lack of intellect would have been baffled by, as much as the world was baffled and irritated by the sheer servility shown by the Hindu right leadership. Servility towards imperialism and chauvinistic violence against minorities, qualities that bode ill for the people of India and South Asia.
What happened to the anti-imperialist anti-Zionist pro-Palestinian heritage of India? First, we might want to start with Gandhi. Towards the end of 1947, Gandhi made his statement, in response to a question by Doon Campbell of Reuters.
"It has become a problem which seems almost insoluble. If I were a Jew, I would tell them: 'Do not be so silly as to resort to terrorism...' The Jews should meet the Arabs, make friends with them and not depend on British aid or American aid, save what descends from Jehovah."
It is interesting to note that Gandhi recognized the actions of the Zionists in the 1940s as "terrorism." On January 31, 1948 barely months later, a man by the name Nathuram Godse shot Gandhi and committed one of the centuries most heinous political assassinations. Nathuram Godse was a committed member of the RSS or Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the mother organization of the present day BJP, Bharatiya Janata Party. The organization though banned after the assassination of Gandhi, continued to grow in strength partly due to the lukewarm opposition to its activities by the upper caste dominated leadership of the Congress rulers, which used communal and religious strife to attack popular dissent in regions such as Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Assam and Kashmir during its fifty odd dynastic years in power.
During the 1920s and 30s, while nationalist revolutionaries of such stature as Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekhar Azad, Ashfaqullah, Rajguru, Sukhdev, Jatin Das, and thousands of others gave their lives fighting against the British imperialists, the RSS ‘volunteers’ were consistently instructed by their leaders to be ‘apolitical.’ Bhagat Singh’s organization forbade membership to any individuals working with religious fundamentalist groups like the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha. This was clearly an action intended to convey that these Hindu fundamentalist groups were lackeys of British imperialism and were not to be trusted. Yet today proponents of Hindutva shamelessly lay claim to the revolutionary heritage of these great sons and daughters of India, conveniently forgetting that their own organizations were on the wrong side of the struggle during the critical years of the 1920s and 30s.
During the 1942 Quit India movement, one of greatest anti-colonial mobilizations of humanity, when millions of Indians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians from every corner if the country, boldly challenged the arrogant might of the British occupiers, the RSS leadership instructed its cadres not to participate, ridiculing the efforts of the oppressed masses and also having the audacity to support the British war effort, when Indians were being crushed under the heels of colonial repression. Yet when the opportunity arose for creating communal, religious disturbances, the ‘volunteers’ were always ready. RSS ideology even during the time of Gandhi was fascist in its leanings.
The following are the words of Vallabhai Patel, a senior Congressman, close to Gandhi and Nehru,
"Organizing the Hindus and helping them is one thing but going in for revenge for its sufferings on innocent people and helpless men, women and children is quite another thing... All their speeches were full of poison. It was not at all necessary to spread poison in order to enthuse the Hindus and organize for their protection. As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji... Opposition turned even more severe, when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji's death. Under these conditions it became inevitable for the government to take action against the RSS."5
Reply to Golwalkar's letter seeking to lift the ban imposed on the RSS after Mahatma Gandhi's assassination, September 11, 1948.


Patel himself was not altogether unfriendly to Hindutva and the RSS. Yet, even such support diminished after the assassination of Gandhi. The RSS plan to whip up religious hysteria backfired and they were confined to "cultural" work for a few years. Yet, one might wonder, without the help and sympathies of leaders and cadres in the Congress, the RSS could not have survived after their trashing in 1948? This is why, the Hindutva movement has to be seen as not merely a fringe fanatic ideological movement, but an important element in a wider betrayal of India's independence. The culpability of the Congressites in placing themselves at the helm of affairs and then rewriting the country's anti-colonial history as one long lesson in 'cheek-turning' ethics, completely diminishing the role played by the masses of India allowed for the enemies of the Indian people to gather strength over the years. Hindutvadis could always condemn the Congressites, since the latter had little or no defences against charges of corruption, nepotism, tyranny, and overall cynicism and paternalism towards the Indian people. The gradual crumbling of the Congress behemoth coincides with the resurgence of the Hindutvadis, as the false democratic pretences of the Congress give way to the blunt and megalomaniacal assertions of the Hindutvadis. It seems India's elites never intended to free India, but only intended and conspired to share power against the people of India.
Hindutva, Fascism and Zionism: alliances of convenience?
The RSS leader Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar openly admired Hitler and the idea of the ‘separation of the races.’ He saw an affinity to Nazism in the Brahmanical concept of caste purity, now applied in a religious sense to ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims.’ It is rather surprising that the Zionists of today see an ‘ally’ in the Hindutva movement, given the fascist roots of this movement. Marzia Casolari, an Italian scholar has documented archival evidence proving without doubt that Hindu extremist groups like the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha had direct links with the Italian fascist state. I quote Casolari’s conclusions at length:6
a) The main historical organizations and leaders of Hindu nationalism had a distinctive and sustained interest in fascism and nazism;
b) Fascist ideological influences on Hindu nationalism were present and relevant;
c) To a certain extent, these influences were channelled through direct contacts between Hindu nationalists and members of the Italian fascist State. No doubt, beginning with the early 1920s, and up to the second world war, Hindu nationalists looked at the political reality of fascist Italy, and subsequently of nazi Germany, as a source of inspiration.

The following quote is from a statement issued by the Hindu Mahasabha in 1939:
‘Germany's solemn idea of the revival of the Aryan culture, the glorification of the Swastika, her patronage of Vedic learning and the ardent championship of the tradition of Indo-Germanic civilization are welcomed by the religious and sensible Hindus of India with a jubilant hope. Only a few socialists headed by Pandit J. Nehru have created a bubble of resentment against the present Government of Germany, but their activities are far from having any significance in India. The vain imprecations of Mahatma Gandhi against Germany's indispensable vigour in matters of internal policy obtain but little regard in so far as they are uttered by a man who has always betrayed and confused the country with an affected mysticism. I think that Germany's crusade against the enemies of Aryan culture will bring all the Aryan nations of the World to their senses and awaken the Indian Hindus for the restoration of their lost glory.’
In a book titled "We, or our nationhood defined," Golwalkar, who became general secretary of the RSS, stated:
‘German national pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the semitic races - the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the mot [?], to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.’
Who were the equivalents of the Jews in the estimation of the author of these words? India’s Muslims without a doubt. By extrapolating German racial ideas to Indian society, Golwalkar and Savarkar recast a complex religious-cultural historical identity into blunt European racial terms. Accordingly in their eyes, ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’ became, ‘Germans and ‘Jews.’
The fact that even fifty odd years after the end of Nazism and Italian fascism, the RSS and its various Hindutva offspring like the BJP have neither denied nor repudiated these ties, or the valorization and glorification of Nazism by their founding leaders, speaks volumes about their real character. V.D. Savarkar, a militant anti-colonialist turned proto-fascist leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, regarding the goals of his organization: (quoted by Casolari)
‘But now that our interests were so closely bound together the essential thing was for Hinduism and Great Britain to be friends; and the old antagonism was no longer necessary. The Hindu Mahasabha, he went on to say, favoured an unambiguous undertaking of Dominion Status at the end of the war.’
These words from the leader of an organization that refused to participate in the Quit India movement, and which offered its services to the British War Office in support of the colonial occupier in the inter-imperialist war. In a revealing twist of irony, Savarkar in the 1950s was also full of praise for the settler colonialism of the Israeli Zionist state, and saw an affinity between Hindutva ideology and Zionism.
More recently, one Aravind Ghosh, a "Research Associate" with the U.S. based Zionist organization "The Freeman Center." This organization has a magazine called "The Maccabean" in which Ariel Sharon (who currently has cases pending against him in Belgium and Lebanon for war crimes committed in Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon) of Israel is a "frequent contributor." Aravind Ghosh’s title is "Hindu Historian & Publisher." In the center’s own words, "It is his expertize on Moslem behavior and atrocities in the Indian sub-continent that makes him a valuable contributor to the Freeman Center."7
Here is a sample of this self-proclaimed "leading historian:"
‘Hindus should thus recognise that Israel can be one of its few reliable allies. From Israel Bharat has much to learn. Instead of peace treaties it should have followed the Jewish state'' example in annexing the lands of the aggressor. Pakistan is eager for war again. This time it will be different if Hindus follow the Israeli example. The jawans should carry the saffron into Lahore, which is the natural capital of East Punjab and the city of Lav. How could Lahore become a city of Islam any more than Jerusalem? These are just two of the examples of Islam's theft of the cultural icons of others…Islamic fascists see Bharat as the soft spot to propagate their irrational creed and foment violence. India tries to placate them. Israel expels them, This is what Bharat should do. If they hate Hindu Rashtra so much they are free to leave for dar'ul Islam.’
As foul and hateful as this lunatic sounds, it is curious that he also hails Savarkar as a pro-zionist in his article. It was Savarkar who praised Hitler’s policies towards Germany’s Jews and saw in it an analogy to his own fantasies. If we were to go with the understanding that Zionism is opposed to Nazism and the holocaust, then one would wonder how come, a pro-Israel Zionist organization like the Freeman Center calls a follower of the Hindutva creed, a valuable contributor to its cause? Would Jewish people not be offended by this alliance? Or is it possible that the legacy of the Jewish people is perhaps secondary to the interests of Zionism?
In that case, Zionism rhymes and sounds like Hindutva: an ideology that makes use of a particular set of symbols and cultural ideas towards ends that not only political and territorial, but also racist and chauvinist. In other words, fascist. The enemy is clearly expressed by this alliance: the Indian Muslims and the largely Muslim Palestinians, and Arabs. If Savarkar’s two views, 1) that Hitler’s policy towards the Jews was commendable and applicable to Muslims in India, and 2) that Zionism’s policy towards the Palestinians is commendable and worthy of emulation, are not logically contradictory views, but part of the same single logic, then the Zionist alliance with Hindutva is one that will certainly offend any Jewish person. Is this an issue being raised by non-Zionist Jewish people? How can the people who suffered so greatly under the tyrannical evil of Hitler allow such an insult to their heritage by those who claim to speak for all Jewish people, the Zionists? As Hindus and Muslims who are opposed to Hindutva mobilize their opposition to this 21st century fascism, which claims to speak for all Hindus, it will be heartening to see that Jewish people also mobilize to fight the evil of Hindutva’s ally, Zionism. Nevertheless, this alliance ties Zionism with a heritage its victims have easily seen, but which Zionists unfailingly deny: that Zionism, is fascism. It is more akin to Nazism, than say to the ideology of liberal democracy. In the latter, pretences notwithstanding, there is at least no explicit assertion that one group of people have their rights enshrined under divine, man-made and whatever other laws, while another group is to be targeted and exterminated as their rights to exist are not only completely absent, but considered inimical to the favored group. There are striking parallels between the assertions made by Zionists and those made by the Nazis. Consider for example the following statements made by Cal Thomas, a Zionist spokesperson masquerading as a journalist/columnist in a 21st century American news outlet and Joseph Goebbels, the unsavoury and bloodthirsty megalomaniac who was Propaganda Minister in the Nazi regime:
Cal Thomas, 2001: "Israel should declare its intention to transfer large numbers of its Palestinian residents to Arab nations... Eviction is a better avenue to stability. Will it happen? Probably not. Should it? Yes."
Joseph Goebbels, 1942: "The Jewish question will have to be written up in a plan on a pan-European scale. There remain more than eleven million Jews in Europe. In the first place it is necessary to concentrate them all in the east. After the war we will be able eventually to assign them an island, perhaps Madagascar. In any case, there will be no peace in Europe as
long as the Jews on the Continent are not totally excluded."
(excerpted from an essay "Meeting of Minds," by this author)

To advocate the 'ethnic cleansing' of Palestinians, Cal Thomas resorts to the usual fascistic routine: declare the Palestinians as a problem that only Israeli, and American military brutishness can solve, through murder, and mayhem, in other words, a 'final solution.' This mentality unites all fascists no matter which hole they crawl out of; Hindutvadis claim a false 'victim' status as the excuse to launch a genocide against their enemies, the Muslims and minorities of India, while their buddies in crime, the Zionists dutifully proclaim that theirs is the only humanity worth worrying about since after all, they can always point to the horrors of the second world war and Nazism, even when they continue to terrorize and massacre Palestinians every day. Zionists who claim to represent all Jews should check the history of Zionism and wonder about why for a long time, the Zionists were more interested in taking Palestinian land than in fighting for the survival of Jews in Germany. Why for instance did Zionist leaders acquiese with Hitler's goal of turning a religious minority (the Jewish Germans) into a 'race,' and hence a 'nation within a nation,' the core argument propounded by the Nazis? By putting their stamp of approval on this change of discourse, did the Zionists in effect betray the Jewish people in Germany? Questions like this need to be asked when tyrants and mass murderers rampage and blabber on about their 'Jewish' cause. People of the Jewish faith opposed to the criminal racism of Zionism, must assert the fact that Zionism's reading of Jewish identity as an essentially racist one, is part of the Nazi heritage and completely at odds with the history of the Jewish people. When the idea that Jews are a race goes to hell, then the raison d'etre of Zionism, with respect to the Palestinian people, will crumble. The same goes with the Hindutvadi claim that Muslims are a separate people and that Hindus have always been victims,' arguments that are merely the routine fascistic assertions of ill-intentioned mysognists.
The rampage of the Hindutvadis; BJP and India’s current plight.
With the coming to power of the BJP in 1999, India’s last vestiges of independence have been deliberately handed over lock stock and barrel to western multinationals and the tutelage of a new colonial master, the United States. The BJP has literally sold the country down the river, having little shame in denying basic emergency food distribution to starving poverty stricken people, while government food surplus stocks stored in hygienically challenged storage containers, get eaten by rats at the rate of 10 percent per year. Privatizing at the drop of a hat as per the colonial master’s dictates, thousands of workers are losing their jobs, and the average real income of the Indian worker has been reduced to half of what it was a decade ago.
The only possible explanation for this total subservience to the dictates of the U.S. imperialists is that Hindutva ideology from its early days as a supposedly ‘apolitical’ fringe fanatic group, to its present day triumphant charade, is at the service of and most comfortable with imperialism. It is an anti-people alien ideology having no place in Indian society. What has enabled such a movement to become so powerful? The relentless pursuit of the U.S. imperialists and their lackeys in the service of global capital working hand in glove with sections of India’s capitalist classes. The BJP is the most neo-liberal of all of India’s governments to date. It is also the most U.S. friendly, and Zionist friendly of all governments so far. Its subservience to the U.S. is embarrassing to all self-respecting Indians. Yet, it is bent on both strangulating the population with the imposition of U.S. IMF neoliberal "market medicine," always willing to jump higher than the masters demand, and simultaneously communalizing the whole country in a crusade to divide the working classes who they fear, as do their masters, and creating an atmosphere of paranoia and fear, ideal conditions for fascism.
Meanwhile, politically the BJP has embraced Israel and turned a cold shoulder to the Palestinians, betraying the bonds of friendship shared by the Palestinian and Indian people in this process. Hindutva ideologues are talking about Hindu-Yahudi unity and the need to fight against ‘terrorism,’ a euphemism for Palestine’s and India’s Muslims. Hindu extremist websites gloat about the need to work together with Israel to target Muslims in South Asia. Recently a virulent organization calling itself "hinduunity.org" had its website shut down. It came back without a problem when the virulent Jewish extremist Kahane organization (Haktiva) came to the rescue. Rabid extremists working together for a common cause: Muslims are the targets, but also most importantly, the entire peoples of the Arab and Iranian nations, and the great masses of people in South Asia are targets for these two running dogs of American imperialism. Hindutvadis are happy to see such cooperation, while Israel murders Palestinians with impunity, and India reels under the Hindutva onslaught.
Israel has also been suspected of involvement in the incitement of virulent anti-Muslim activities in India, as has been pointed out by Faisal Kutty, a writer from Kerala state who noted that a meeting took place, shrouded in secrecy between BJP high officials and Israeli officials preceding a completely uncharacteristic violent communal anti-Muslim riot in the normally peaceful and harmonious state of Kerala in 1992. 8
Kerala’s Muslims are the oldest Muslim community in India, tracing their roots to the early Arab Muslim traders who plied the Indian Ocean Arabian Sea trade route. They make up 20 percent of the population in Kerala while Hindus are 60 percent and Christians 20 percent. Kerala has the highest rate of literacy in the country, in no small part due to the work of the ruling Communist Party over the last several decades to build a literate and thriving, secular state. Comparatively, the other South Indian states under the heel of chauvinistic ethnocentric parties have no comparable achievements. Faisal Kutty also notes that the first serious communal clash between Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus and Muslims occurred shortly after the opening of an Israeli interests section in the U.S. Embassy in Colombo. The section was later closed by the Sri Lankan government.
These suspicions cannot be unfounded because of similar reports about Israeli agents wandering in Kashmir as well as the BJP government’s fascination with ‘security cooperation,’ a code word for ‘how to keep the natives in line,’ and the overt statements made by Hindutva ideologues about "Hindu-Yahudi" unity. Recently the BJP has built close security ties with the U.S. and Israel under the guise of "fighting terrorism." It is certain that this is a step towards turning India into a "security" state as both the U.S. and Israel will provide technological support in terms of arms, intelligence and who knows what else. This will most definitely be used in the BJP’s attack on India’s people, especially Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and anyone opposed to Hindutva, those they call with contempt, "pseudo-secularists." The people of Kashmir will no doubt also be targeted by these new alliances, as well as Andhra, Punjab, Assam and the North East where militant struggles for human rights and freedom have continued for most of the half century following the British exit.
Organizations like the Bajrang Dal, a Hindutva version of the Storm Troopers, the same group who last year burned to death an elderly Australian missionary and his children, also find inspiration and who knows what else in Zionist Israel. The Indian Express, June 30, 2000 had an article titled "Desi Mossad is getting ready at Bajrang Dal's Ayodhya camp." In begins: "I, as a member of Bajrang Dal, swear in the name of Lord Hanuman to always remain prepared to protect my country, religion and culture," 150 young men, between 15 and 21 years of age, recite in unison. On several occasions, the cadres and their leaders mention Israel and the Mossad as their inspiration.9
‘Asked what he did at the camp, an activist whispers, ``I am from the secret service of Bajrang Dal. Israel's Mossad is my inspiration. I can't tell you more.''’
‘Dal leaders in their defence, cite example of Israel where all citizens have to undergo a mandatory training in physical fitness and arms handling. But, isn't Israel's geographical situation peculiar? "`India's even worse. Israel has threat only from outsiders while India faces threat from even those inhabiting it,'' Sharma replies.

These are words from people who frequently terrorize India’s Muslims and Christians. They are the paramilitary mobs of Hindutva, not boy scouts or martial artists.
In recent years Israeli "counter-terrorism" assistance is also being mobilized, most evidently in (though not restricted to) Jammu and Kashmir, where the government of India sees a political issue as a ‘security’ issue, in the age-old imperialistic tradition of ignoring the human, civil and political rights of the Kashmiri people while making every effort to suppress the voice of Kashmiris.10
The Times of India, Friday 22 September 2000 reports that
‘A high-level team of Israeli counter-terrorism experts is now touring Jammu and Kashmir and several other states in India at the invitation of Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani to make an assessment of New Delhi's security needs, high-level government sources said.’
‘The Israeli team, headed by Eli Katzir of the Counter-Terrorism Combat Unit of the Prime Minister's Office, includes a senior Israel Police commander and Israeli military intelligence officials. The team will prepare a "feasibility study" of Indian security needs and assess the areas in which Israel can offer assistance to New Delhi in tackling the activities of insurgent and terrorist groups.’

So this is the invitation of the Home Minister L.K. Advani, Home Minister, and an important member of the RSS. India is now open to Zionist intelligence intrusion and the various struggles in the country for human, civil and political rights among the millions of oppressed and dispossessed people in India will now be translatable to "terrorism," or the like. Zionist Israel is playing with fire by running alongside Hindutva in its war against the people of India. It is only a matter of time before secular forces mobilize under various fronts and launch an all out struggle against the anti-national and anti-people usurpers.
Uncle Sam wants Hindu fascism as long as it does his bidding, so no problem says the BJP!
Since the 1980’s the United States has encouraged and fanned the flames of Hindu upper caste revivalism. In the U.S. organizations like the "Overseas Friends of the BJP," and others have been working hard to shape the direction of South Asian studies, lending it a chauvinistic, Hindu upper caste, orientalist direction, and mobilizing the opinion and funds of Indian Americans towards what the latter, far removed from their land, often innocently see as their "culture." U.S. officials have been hand in glove with the Hindu right wing as has been evident in the high level meetings afforded to people like Jaswanth Singh, and Murli Manohar Joshi, Hindutva’s leaders, when they came to the United States even before the BJP came to power.
Additionally, Hindu right wingers have also embarked upon a campaign of warmongering that suspiciously falls within the lap of the United States’ imperialist interests in South and Central Asia. As the Times of India reported a few years ago, it is a practice that whenever the BJP’s senior leaders visit the United States, they hold meetings, often secretive, with Zionist groups, ‘experts’ from think tanks such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and State Department officials. Conspiracy is the main method of fascism since they cannot obtain the support of the people of India through honest means!
More recently, the BJP has gone so far as to invite the US armed forces to visit the Indian army’s training facilities, particularly focusing on "jungle warfare," and also holding joint training exercises in "infiltration of enemy territory." What this holds for the future well being of Indians, Pakistanis and South Asians in general is horrific to envision. The United States military is a global imperialist force; by inviting them into India is nothing short of surrendering the sovereignty of India. This is the aim of Hindutva, to crawl at the feet of imperialism so that there may arise a chance to march with jackboots, as after all Uncle Sam loves anyone who marches with jackboots as long as he marches for him. The BJP will open the markets, while the Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena and VHP will frighten the people into compliance with both violence and the threats of more violence. This is the significance of the nuclear explosions, and not the self-righteous "why should the west stop a third world country from possessing nuclear power?" posture adopted by the anti-third world and pro-imperialist BJP.11
BJP’s corruption: money for nothing, and a few lousy Barak missiles, Hindutva Zionism in action.
In the short span of time that the BJP has been in power in Delhi, its claims of being patriotic and honest have been thrown in the dustbin. Earlier this year, a team of investigative journalists videotaped a series of bribe taking and bribe negotiating episodes involving people in the highest levels of government including the armed forces. Using a fictitious arms deal the team easily bribed its way into the offices of high-ranking Indian officials in the armed forces and the government. The ease with which it was possible to bribe these officials shocked the country. Imagine what levels of corruption might be possible when very efficient efforts at the same are carried out by international professional arms dealers, mercenaries and other organizations?12
The most damaging episode in this was a videotaped recording of the leader of the BJP, yes, the party leader, taking a wad of money and also mentioning that he prefers dollars! Overnight, the BJP’s never ending charade of patriotism and honesty turned into outright guilt and defensive noises about ‘foreign conspiracy!’ As if the taking of bribes by the highest officials of the land especially for defense related deals, itself does not constitute treason and conspiracy of the highest order! These so-called ‘patriots’ of the BJP are willing to send Indian soldiers as cannon fodder to their stupid warmongering disasters, with equipment that is sub standard, and available only because the officials procuring them were bribed into doing so. Thus the so-called Barak missile found its way from Israel to India, while India’s own Trishul missile, which outperforms the Barak, got pushed out, perhaps because the Indian defense industries couldn’t match the Mossadis in bribery and intrigue!?
The internationally renowned scientist Abdul Kalam, the founding architect of India’s missile and rocket program, got a cold shoulder from these very same ‘patriots’ when he criticized the government decision to favor the Barak. So much for the BJP’s alleged ‘patriotism’ and ‘honesty.’ It proves what most progressives and leftists have been pointing out for years: that the BJP and the Hindutva movement of which it is part, is neither patriotic, nor religious, but really an alien ideology planted and nurtured by imperialism for the destruction and subjugation of the subcontinent. Its open ties to U.S. imperialism and Israeli Zionism confirms this conclusion.
Such developments pose a challenge to freedom loving and progressive Indians, Palestinians and people of all of Asia, to redouble their efforts to thwart the criminal conspiracies of imperialism, in what is now a common struggle against Zionism and Hindutva, the twin agents of American imperialism. Rather than run to a corner and hide behind like minded ideologies of hatred and ignorance, we should strive to increase the common bridges of resistance and renewal between us in this effort and expose the lies and myths of those who intend to destroy our peoples because of their ignorant self-deluding fantasies.
Unfortunately for Hindutva, the Indian people are a very resilient lot. Historically, Indian societies have always exhibited resistance to homogenizing tendencies; while the oppressive system of caste persisted for millennia, growing in strength after the Brahmanic usurpation of Buddhist India, Indian societies have strongly resisted attempts to homogenize their cultural and religious practices. More importantly, India’s masses are overwhelmingly from the oppressed, lower castes and Dalits; the greater involvement and militancy from these true owners of India will eventually turn the tables on the Brahmanists who have foisted an alien and dangerously suicidal course upon India’s people. Secular forces are not going to take the rampages of Hindutva lying down; the 1920s and 30s was a renaissance era in the Indian peoples’ efforts to bring the rulers of India to account. The 2000s should be no different as is already evident from the rumblings from within.13
Hindutva’s ideological basis and claims:
P.R. Ram succinctly sums up the Hindutva movement:
‘The core of a fascist movement is to suppress and suspend the rights of the oppressed. It is a social agenda of shaken, threatened middle class in the service of big bourgeisie. It is a mass movement, Hindutva is the political agenda of petty industrialists, sections of middle classes and rich peasantry blessed by capital. Hindutva aims to create the new ghettoized untouchables, the poor muslims, a la the shudra of the olden times and keeping this goal in mind it wants to suppress/sidetrack the social and political aspirations of dalits, workers and women.’14
Drawing inspiration from the Brahmanical religion, Hindutva has no problem dealing with the idea of an openly unequal order in society; thus it is quite well attuned to the notion of a enforcing a second-class citizenry.
413. But a Sudra, whether bought or unbought, he may compel to do servile work; for he was created by the Self-existent (Svayambhu) to be the slave of a Brahmana.
416. A wife, a son, and a slave, these three are declared to have no property; the wealth which they earn is (acquired) for him to whom they belong.
417. A Brahmana may confidently seize the goods of (his) Sudra (slave); for, as that (slave) can have no property, his master may take his possessions.
Manusmriti, the ‘Laws of Manu,’ an ancient text, which formed the bedrock of Brahmanical caste society.15

The tyrannical Brahmanical caste system has from its earliest days been an inhibiting force in Indian civilization. While most of India’s greatest achievements in the ancient past had their roots in non-Brahmanical movements like Buddhism, this ideology of caste became strengthened after the usurpation of Buddhist influenced India in the latter half of the first millennium C.E , has sanctified a life of immeasurable oppression for great numbers of Indians. Much of what became popular ‘Hinduism’ is the cultural traditions of the oppressed peoples of India, appropriated by Brahmanical movements at various stages, coinciding with the strengthening of rigid caste ideology.
In religious terms, Hindutva neither represents nor contributes positively to the religious heritage of popular Hinduism, the religious practices of the vast majority of those people classified as ‘Hindus.’ It is a concerted attempt to Semitize the religious traditions of the subcontinent under one hegemonic construction which P.R. Ram calls ‘syndicated Hinduism.’ Thus it is their aim to suppress all divergent views, which in India’s case would mean nothing short of chaos since Hindus in almost all parts of the country exhibit incredible variations and emphases in their religious practices. There is no single book of authority in Hinduism like in Islam or Judaism; but there is the Vedas of the Brahmans and Hindutva is an attempt to foist the Vedas and related texts onto the altar of respectability reserved for ‘people of the book.’
Additionally they have targeted historical monuments from the Mughal, and Sultanate era by making preposterous claims that all these monuments were built upon demolished temples. The recent barbaric destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992 at Ayodhya, took place with the active encouragement and connivance of the BJP, though the persons doing the actual destroying came from a host of fanatical groups linked to the BJP’s mother organization, the RSS. The historical claims made by the BJP on the Babri Masjid have been more than adequately demolished by archaeologists, historians and scholars in India; there is absolutely no evidence of a Ram Temple (alleged to be a temple dedicated to the God-king Rama who in Hindu mythology lived in a place called Ayodhya tens of thousands of years ago). To date there is no evidence to prove anything claimed by the Hindutvadis, as their efforts are clearly an attempt to mythologize history and obscure the past with wild claims, an unsurprising approach given their desire to obscure their own history to begin with!16
Historians of international repute who have pointed to the total lack of any archaeological evidence to suggest any truth to the claims made by the Hindutvadis have been targeted and forced out of national organizations like the Indian Council for Historical Research, and important research programs aiming to develop India’s historical databases and also develop criteria for the analysis of solid, physical data, have been scrapped, as the BJP’s fears that its Hindutva claims, made largely on unfounded assertions and fallacious myths, will definitely be relegated to the dustbin once solid, scientific reason were applied to Indian history. They seek to pull the wool over the eyes of the Indian people!
Hindutva 'Ramrajya' and Zionist 'ancient Israel': contrived myths to legitimate fascist atrocities
In defiance of the total lack of evidence, the fanatics spare no effort to claim that a Ram Temple will be built on the site of the now destroyed 16th century Mughal monument. The temple building business is suspiciously similar to the Zionist claims on the Haram Al Sharif, and needs to be seen in the general context of the semitization of Hinduism that Hindutvadis desire to engineer. While Zionist claims draw from the western intellectual tradition of biblical studies, Hindutva rests on Orientalism, the insulting western myth that India is an essentially spiritual, Hindu country. Zionism cannot expect much help from the discipline of history to support its claims to Palestine, since there is little evidence of an ‘ancient Israel’; however, as Keith Whitelam points out, they rely on Biblical studies, a field that allows for loose religious dogmatic interpretations, especially when evidence is seriously lacking! One important way this Biblical Studies approach can establish the myth of ancient Israel is by arbitrarily using the Jewish biblical tradition as the main source of interpretation; all other sources are welcome only if they confirm what is already in the biblical body of claims! Additionally, the biblical scholars, have arbitrarily excised any historical concerns with the actual ethnography, or archaeology of historical Palestine. They are not interested in investigating the culture and achievements of the people of Canaan for example. In other words, their scholarly focus is merely on legitimating the Zionist claims of the 1948 established state of Israel and its western Christian sympathies.17 On the other hand, their new friends the Hindutvadis are more or less locked within the British imperialist narrative of Indian history. They would rather believe the myths propagated by the colonizers of India than the ample evidence provided by Indian and world historians, archaeologists and anthropologists.
It was British imperialism that constructed an ideological counterpart to their military and political ambitions: the alleged fundamental distinction between Muslims and Hindus, cast as homogenous, monolithic and irreconcilable peoples. Divide and rule, a statement used so much but rarely appreciated for its historical implications. This imperialist, orientalist view of reality is what inspires and sustains Hindutva. In 1857, following the failed revolt, the British embarked on a major effort to snuff out any resistance from the remnants of the Mughal empire. Muslims were banned from the armed forces. The building up of a pliant Hindu elite was seen as a necessary colonial policy. This is the context for the emergence of the nationalists. It was also the period when British policies imposed differences with violence where there was mutual commonality and interaction among peoples. The partition of Bengal is a case in point. European scholars like Max Muller inadvertently gave a veneer of credibility to Brahmanical tradition by translating and making available to western readers the ‘sacred texts,’ of what he erroneously called, ‘the Hindus.’ Most of these Brahmanical texts were traditionally ‘forbidden’ to large sections of those categorized as ‘the Hindus.’
Hindutva is eager to establish a single central ‘holy site,’ a la Zionism’s "Temple Mount," in the city of Ayodhya. A single central ‘holy site,’ is rather silly in Hindu culture because there are literally thousands of ‘holy sites’ everywhere from monuments, to ancient Banyan trees, from sacred snake pits to small animistic shrines, from tombs of great saints to shrines containing relics. What is a holy site to one group within Hindu society might be completely irrelevant to another. Yet what the Hindutvadis want to do is to establish a semitic equivalent to the Jewish temple: a center from which their claims on the subcontinent can emanate and to which these claims can center on. Doubtless, they would equally love to create a new priesthood, a ‘church’ like organization and perhaps even an inquisition to force-march India into the abyss of medieval chauvinism.


It is of course terribly inconvenient for them to mention that Brahmanical Hindu temples were historically restricted areas, where the soul of Hindu caste segregation came alive: Dalits, and lower castes were never allowed near the magnificent temples of the Brahmans, except when they had to build them for the priests and warriors who supervised and punished as per their own scriptural obligations. So if there were any temples in India that were destroyed in the course of a rampage by Turkish, Afghan or Mughal rulers, one needs to ask, how much did the Dalits, and lower caste people, the vast majority of Indians suffer? On the contrary, once Masjids came up (if it were the case) in the place of these temples, many Dalits and lower caste people found immensely greater human dignity accorded to them within the walls of these monuments than in the forbidden shadows of the Hindu temples.

Romila Thapar points out that in Mughal, Turkish or Afghan temple-demolishing episodes, religion was a marginal factor compared to more important factors such as temples being centers of immense accumulated wealth, and also being symbols of state power and authority of kings and kingdoms. These factors were more important than religion or religious conflict; to support this argument, there is evidence of firmans issued by Mughal emperors including the much reviled, Aurangzeb, in support of temple construction and maintenance, and also evidence of temple demolition activities going back in Indian history; Hindu kings destroyed other Hindu kings’ temples, Buddhist, Jain and later Muslim religious and cultural monuments for a period of a thousand years before the Turkish and Afghan sultanates.

"Besides, when a temple is built by royalty, it is also the declaration of a political statement, it is a declaration of power. What is being said is, that I am so powerful, I’m so well established, I can now built this magnificent temple or, I can build this magnificent mosque or I can build a marvelous church, as the case may be. Thus, these religious monuments are not just religious monuments they are also symbols of economic power, political power, social status. I am not only referring to religious monuments of the past, it is the same for the religious monuments of today. Every time a new temple goes up, you must go and ask who has built it? With who’s money? How much money is it going to collect? Which caste or sect controls the management of the temple? All of this is relevant to the building of a temple, a mosque, or a church."18


Iconoclasm, bigotry and oppression were not the privileged domain of even the most tyrannical Turkish, Afghan or Mughal Sultan, as the ample evidence of widespread destruction and oppression of Buddhist and Jain India at the hands of the Brahmanical Hindu revival movement shows.

The desire to semitize Hinduism also belies a deep-seated inferiority complex with regard to the more animistic, multi-dimensional character of religious practices in India. Hindutvadis do not want to bear the shame of being associated with the notion of ahimsa (nonviolence) or the universality of humanity. On the other hand they want Hinduism to be a militaristic, aggressive, mean and chauvinistic neo-capitalist ideology, subordinate to the idea of national purity and aggression against anything that represents a challenge to the grotesque homogenization implicit in their vision. It is an ideology that runs counter to the best traditions in India’s manifold religions.

Buddhism the original force behind Indian civilization.

Buddhism was the most prominent and popular mass based religion in India for more than a thousand years; it made India’s culture traverse the world and influenced a great many nations in Asia. With its simple moral message and its criticism of the caste system, Buddhism quickly became a mass religion with the greatest proportion of its adherents drawn from the lower castes. Brahmanism never had this universalist appeal simply because with its foundations in the caste system, it was not interested in a universal emancipatory ideology. Brahmanism used Sanskrit, the priestly scriptural language, and had explicit laws forbidding Sudras and lower caste people from access to the sacred texts, particularly the Vedas.

There is one ancient Brahmanical document called the ‘Apasthamba Sutra,’ which recommends the pouring of molten metal into the ears of a Sudra (lower caste person) who willingly or unwillingly hears the recitation of the Vedas! In contrast to this, Buddhism was a peoples’ religion, it used Pali the common language of the people of the Indo-Gangetic plains and established learning centers where people from all ranks in society could learn together. While Brahmanism developed a notion of ‘Karma’ along lines of caste duties and predestined caste-fate, Buddhism developed a rich conception of ‘Karma’ as action that begets fruits, a universalistic moral basis for the evaluation of actions, opposed to predestined caste formulae as propagated by Brahmanism. These were only some of the major differences, which highlight that Buddhism was an oppositional force to Brahmanism and that the people of the subcontinent easily identified with its universalism, while rejecting Brahmanism simultaneously. From the 5th century B.C.E. to about the 6th century C.E. Buddhism established the fundamental contours of Indian civilization that today exists often unknown or grossly distorted to Indians caught in a haze of historic forgetfulness.

Brahmanism was opposed to universalistic trends in Indian history ever since the first conflicts between the invading Aryans and indigenous Indians took place about three thousand years ago. In the first millennium C.E., Brahman priests and upper caste warriors worked hard to usurp and overthrow the influence of Buddhism in India. They wanted to reconstitute societies under the rubric of a more orthodox and severely repressive caste ideology, something that had been greatly undermined during the Buddhist era.19

Thus the reversal of the universalization of Indian culture coincided with the return of Brahmin hegemony and the subsequent de-Buddhistification of India. It is also no small coincidence that when the first Turkish and Afghan invaders came to India, there were only weak, inconsequential Hindu kingdoms fighting with each other over stagnating war torn societies reeling under the resurgence of an oppressive caste order. This fact the Hindutva propagandists lament as the disunity of India; it no doubt was true that India’s northern kingdoms were weak and ineffective against the militarily efficient and zealous invaders from Central Asia. In many cases Hindu kings attempted to win favor with the Turkish or Afghan invaders by aligning themselves against a cousin or a neighboring kingdom; this was duly made use of and soon most of Northern India was under the rule of a Turkish Sultanate in Delhi. For instance, Jaichand of Kannauj, allied with Muhammad Ghori against his own cousin Prithviraj Chauhan.

While wars of conquest, plunder, and pillage were the norm of the day, especially given the fact that thousands of Buddhists and Jains were violently persecuted and numerous Buddhist and Jain monuments were destroyed to make way for Brahmanist Hindu temples, Hindutva ideologues only like to point out the excesses of the Sultanate and the Mughal empire which followed.20 This myopia is convenient for them because it is only an excuse to target Muslims in India, and establish Islam as a threat to India in the consciousness of Hindutvadis. The history of Islam in India is being recast by these ideologues as one of total oppression and destruction, a patently false and historical nonsensical idea. While Turkish, Afghan and Mongol rulers in various times committed excesses against the subject populations often in religious terms, this does not represent the totality of India’s thousand year Islamic history. Besides, Brahmanical Hindu kings in those times were neither known for their religious universalism nor were they interested in the emancipation or justice for their own subjects particularly the Dalits (‘untouchables’) or and the toiling lower caste population in general. Abhorrent practices like Sati (forcibly burning the wife after the husband’s death), and child marriage were common and commented upon by various travelers through the centuries.

Sidi Ali Reis, a Turkish Admiral who traveled to India after being shipwrecked, wrote in Mirat ul Memalik (The Mirror of Countries), 1557 CE:21

"If the deceased leaves a wife past child-bearing she is not burned; if, however, she is not past that age she is unconditionally burned. If a wife of her own free will offers herself to be burned, the relations celebrate the occasion with great rejoicings. Should the Mohammedans interfere and forcibly prevent the self-sacrifice, fate decrees that their king must die, and no other be raised. For this reason, officers of the Padishah are always present on such occasions, to prevent any act of violence."


Thus, Hindu society was under the heel of such cruel practices even under the rule of the Mughal Padishah. The need to paint Hindus as victims of ‘Islam’ as if Hindu society itself was not cruel and oppressive drives Hindutwadis to concoct facetious myths. In actuality, Hindu society greatly benefited from Islam, in many ways. First, Islam came to India initially not through Arab or Turkish invaders but through trade in South India. Arab, Turkish and African traders for centuries had shuttled their goods with their Indian and Malay counterparts along the great Indian Ocean/ Arabian Sea Trade routes. Along with their goods and wares, came their ideas, and aspirations. This was as much a cultural and intellectual trade route as it was one serving the transport of goods. Here were the origins of the transfer of the religious ideas of Arabian Islam into India. Those who converted did so under their own free will, largely in an act of defiance against the cruel and oppressive caste system; the initial converts to Islam came overwhelmingly from the poorest, most oppressed sections of society, just as had been the case with Buddhism a thousand five hundred years earlier.

As a religion Islam provided a new way of approaching the age-old problems of life facing Hindus; to the oppressed lower castes, Islam provided a break with the caste prison that crushed their lives relentlessly, while for the liberal minded upper castes, it provided new ways of thinking about the universality of humanity in the language of the spirit. Islam also brought monotheism to India, an idea that greatly influenced the development of the Sufi/Bhakti movement and the Sikh religion.

Thus Indians from marginalized and oppressed sections continued to innovate and created a renaissance culture that is commonly known as ‘popular’ Hinduism. The most striking aspect of ‘popular’ Hinduism was its explicitly reformist and universalistic outlook. Saints and poets of this tradition emphasized the unity of humanity, opposed oppressive social practices and spoke against the caste system, engendering a creative blending of Hindu and Muslim religious ideas. This took place at the popular level, and there were many great mystic saints and poets who developed powerful new universalistic and humane philosophies. Sant Kabir Das, a mystic teacher who was a Hindu orphan raised by a Muslim weaver became one of the greatest exponents of the Sufi/Bhakti tradition in the 15th century. His followers were largely poor Hindus and Muslims; his teachings went on to inspire the founder of the Sikh religion, Guru Nanak Dev, as well as the great Mughal Emperor Jalal-ud-din Akbar, a monarch who sought to truly understand the religious and cultural traditions of his Hindu subjects.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the great leader of the Dalits was also the framer of the Indian constitution. His works on the historical experience of India’s Dalits sheds light on some of the worst aspects of Brahmanical chauvinism and oppression. While the Congress and Gandhi feared the resurgence of the Dalits, Ambedkar was steadfast in his demands for full equality and rights for the Dalits. Importantly he condemned efforts that did not first and foremost question the foundations of Hinduism as the oppressive bedrock of millennia of tyrannical overlordship by the Brahmins and upper castes. Inspired by him, Dalits adopted Buddhism as their religion of choice in large numbers as a symbol of their opposition to Brahmanical Hinduism.22

"The conception of secular state is derived from the liberal democratic tradition of west. No institution which is maintained wholly out of state funds shall be used for the purpose of religious instruction irrespective of the question whether the religious instruction is given by the state or any other body."


Ambedkar’s views on caste Hinduism point out that the idea that Hinduism is essentially tolerant, or universal, in its outlook, is patently false. The change referred to here is to Buddhism.

"Hinduism does not appeal to my conscience. My self-respect cannot assimilate Hinduism. In your case change of religion is imperative for worldly as well as spiritual ends. Do not care for the opinion of those who foolishly ridicule the idea of conversion for material ends. Why should you live under the fold of that religion which has deprived you of honor, money, food and shelter?"




The framer of India’s Constitution had this to say about the contradiction between India’s modern constitution and its heritage of caste Hinduism.

"Indians today are governed by two different ideologies. Their political ideal set in the preamble of the Constitution affirms a life of liberty, equality and fraternity. Their social ideal embodied in their religion denies them."




Indian history therefore is replete with evidence that challenges the dogmas being propagated by the Hindutva movement with regard to the nature of the so-called ‘Hindu Nation,’ as well as the alleged exclusive victim status of Hindus. Therefore we can only conclude that ideologically Hindutva is a movement thriving on mass hysteria for ends that are other than religious. It is not a religious movement, but a movement that aims to create a particular Semitized version of Brahmanical Hinduism to institute a totalitarian, neo-capitalist, pro-imperialist reactionary state in India. Here it is very similar to Zionism. An ideology that is built on fabricated myths, which uses the cultural symbols and idioms of an elitist religious tradition, fusing it with a modernist, totalitarian nationalist ideology.

Imperialism’s running dogs need ‘an enemy’.

Israeli Zionism requires the creation of an enemy and the enemy is first the Palestinian native people whose land is usurped and colonized, and the Arab nation, and Muslims in general. The ‘Muslim’ as a ‘bogeyman’ used by Zionism, American imperialism and Hindutva brings the three together into a common cause, an ideologically common cause that accompanies the common cause of imperialism which is to subjugate and plunder the lands of the peoples of the Arab and Iranian nations, the targets of Zionism, and the Muslims and marginalized lower caste Hindus of South Asia, the targets of Hindutva. To this end Zionism and Hindutva seeks to enslave and serve up on imperialism’s table the spoils of treachery, colonization and war, while claiming to be defending the interests of Judaism and Hinduism. Imperialism’s dogs need ‘an enemy’ to seal their unholy alliance in the eyes of their bewildered and confused populations, while the loot flows unhindered, perhaps even accelerated, to the masters’ coffers.

The use of the ‘bogeyman’ is as old as colonialism at least. In the late 18th century, the British fought three terrible wars in Southern India, to subdue the charismatic and courageous Tippu Sultan. Tippu’s father Hyder Ali was a legendary general who fought several successful battles against the British. Tippu’s struggle with the British was one of the earliest sustained efforts of resistance against the British invaders. Eventually in 1799, Tippu fought to death within his fortress of Srirangapatnam. His famous words were remembered by Indian patriots even during the independence struggle: "It is better to live for a day as a lion, than for a lifetime as a sheep." The British popular culture of the day had references to ‘Tippu’ as an evil character in their books and plays; the name Tippu was reviled and the memory was turned into a ‘bogeyman.’ Nevertheless, in 1830 when an insurrection was hatched in Bangalore, one of the leaders of the revolt took the honorary name "Sayid Tippu!"23

Hindutva: the antithesis of Indian culture

The Hindutva ideal is to convert the multiplicity of religious and cultural practices of India into a semitized homogenous neo-capitalist ideology. Since this ideology is averse to the emancipation of the masses of people, the struggles of the various sections of the Indian population are viewed with suspicion and hatred by the proponents of Hindutva. Thus Hindutva lends itself easily to collaboration with imperialists and fascists from outside India. In this regard the United States, well known on the world for its support of despicable and fascist regimes, as well as racist Zionist Israel have emerged as close accomplices of the Hindutva movement.

By establishing an unprecedented closeness with the BJP government and elements of the armed forces, the U.S. and Israel are undermining the sovereignty, and freedom of the Indian people. Israeli arms have been sold to the Indian armed forces through corrupt defence deals that saw the marginalization of even local Indian defence productive industries in favor of the Zionist state’s products. Israeli agents are in India helping the Hindutva leadership to quash rebellious regions where the people are gradually taking matters into their own hands as it is becoming apparent that the state is now a tyrannical accomplice of the imperialists. This has been the case in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Kashmir, the North East, as well as Punjab, where popular militancy has been relentlessly opposed to the dictates of the corrupt elitist Indian state since 1947.

In short, the Indian people have a dual task at hand: to overthrow the fascist local hegemony of the upper caste Hindutva movement, and at the same time, fight to defeat the imperialist and Zionist masters who pull the strings from behind the shadows while India’s massive army of poor people suffer endlessly one tragedy after another. India’s Intifada is the only way out of this situation, as electoral rituals cannot address the entrenched power of elites who have turned traitors. There are historical precedents for the revolutionary impulse in Indian society. In fact the 1920s saw some of the most intense efforts to raise intensified armed struggle to a level of organized political struggle, a phenomenon that caused the British much anxiety, leading them to the arms of the non-violent liberal minded Gandhi. British intelligence expended tremendous resources to quash rebellious factory workers, farmers, students, and soldiers all over the subcontinent, while nurturing a ‘democratic’ alternative, the Congress movement of Gandhi.

Gandhian liberalism’s role in the non-liberation of India.

In order to keep any radical tendencies among the more militant junior cadres of the Congress in check, the British also courted and encouraged religious fundamentalists among Hindus and played them against the Muslim League, with the effect that by the 1930’s the discourse of liberation had become dominated by the new religious identity based divisive politics, which the nascent Hindutva movement took to like fish to water. Meanwhile Gandhi’s liberalism went into headlong conflict with the radical socialism of Bhagat Singh and the Socialist Republican movement which was fast becoming more popular than the Congress. In order to avert the possibilities of violent revolution in the 1920s and 30s, Gandhi’s Congress did little to press for open confrontation with the British, and in fact silently and often actively helped fan flames of religious tensions as the upper caste leadership of the Congress saw a threat in the nascent revolutionary tendencies in the Indian people.24

The movement that Bhagat Singh’s organization (The Hindustan Socialist Republican Association/Army) was explicitly non-religious, and had a proud heritage of being militant, committed to armed struggle against the British, as well as against the local agents of British power, and the internal oppression of Indian society too. Bhagat Singh expressed a clear-cut revolutionary ideology at a time when Indians were reeling under the British heel and were being stifled by decades of unfruitful negotiations with the British for demands that were timid compared to what the revolutionaries demanded. Part of the reason why India never fully freed itself from the British yoke was precisely the debilitating effects of the Gandhian Congress movement. While there is no doubt that Gandhi’s own personal views were deeply secular and universalistic, his leadership angered the Brahmins within the Congress as well as the fringe elements in the right wing.

Hindutvadis who neither participated in mobilizations against the British nor were interested in fighting for the rights of the masses of India, hated Gandhi because he was a member of a lower caste, whose philosophy drew more from Jainism (a contemporary of Buddhism, which was popular among the lower castes of India), than from the priestly religion of Brahmanical Hinduism. Non-violence (Ahimsa) is not a Hindu innovation, but an idea that formed a very important part of the Jain and Buddhist view of the world, which was historically popular among the poorer and oppressed sections of India. The fear that India’s masses, a vast majority of whom are historically oppressed lower castes and Dalits (‘untouchables’), would inevitably lead an Indian revolution, drew these elitists to condemn Gandhi, and also adopt a lukewarm attitude towards the British.



The British of course had plenty of uses for the Hindutvadis as they did for the Muslim League; religious conflicts were always useful since at the end of the day the British could always claim to be keeping the ‘communities’ in peace. Extremist organizations that had little to do with the general struggles of the masses were often unleashed on any forces that appeared to be turning the tide against the order. This pattern developed and grew into the virulent tragedies of the partition, with no small help from the ruling elites of British India, both Hindus and Muslims, working in conjunction with British imperialism to maintain and retain privileges for Hindu and Muslim elites through the two-nation concept.

Partition and the geographic dictates of imperialism

The geography of the partition is an important fact to reflect on. Punjab and Bengal were the primary sites of the partition. Both Punjab and Bengal in the 19th century were two of the largest nations in India (Nations as in a culturally distinct group of people with a political history of state formation and distinct social institutions). The populations of Punjab and Bengal were multi religious (Punjab: mostly Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu, Bengal: mostly Muslim and Hindu) and multi-cultural (for example, Muslim Punjabis use the Urdu-Arabic based script while Sikh and Hindu Punjabis use the Gurmukhi script, and Bengali Hindus use a Saka (Hindu) calendar that was adjusted to the Islamic Hijra over five hundred years ago).25

These two regions during the end of the 19th century became the centers for large-scale anti-British nationalist activities. In Bengal the British educated Indians who served in the British administration or in British institutions, became increasingly radicalized, while in Punjab, militant opposition to the British continued the resistance of the Punjabi people since the British annexation of Punjab by the British in the mid 19th century. In both cases what worried the British greatly was the unity of Hindus and Muslims in the nationalist struggle. This fear was the basis for the development by the British of a class of upper caste elites who with British education and tutelage became the core of the nationalist movement in the latter part of the 19th century. The actual historical events that lay at the core of this was the massive British-engineered famines in which tens of millions of Indians perished by starvation, while mammoth stockpiles of grains were sent to Europe. Sensing the potential for a mass uprising, the viceroy Lytton’s Secretary of Agriculture, one Alan Octavian Hume established the Indian National Congress for British liberals, and Hindu and Muslim elites, in 1885 with himself as the first president. I quote Mike Davis from his landmark exposition of British barbarism during the time of Victoria, an era the west likes to glorify as the ‘Victorian era.’ The work is titled "Late Victorian Holocausts, El Nino Famines and the making of the third world." It is a must read for anybody interested in learning about the basis for the present political geography of the world.

"Convinced, however that such famines were not only inevitable but would bring revolution on the tide, Hume again took up agitation for a political safety-valve for Indian discontent. Fearing the rise of Maratha or Bengali counterparts to Ireland’s violent republican brotherhoods, he proposed the pre-emptive organization of a moderate home-rule movement that could act as a unified interlocutor to a British Liberal government."26


This was the beginning of the Indian National Congress, which later fashioned itself as the leader of the independence movement. Practices such as singing "God Save the Queen," were common in the activities of the "Indian" National Congress, whose upper caste and elite members were neither in touch with the masses of suffering Indians, nor posed a credible threat to British imperialist interests. In order to stifle the growing nationalist militancy in Bengal, the British initiated a partition at the turn of the century. Bengal was dissected into a Hindu and a Muslim Bengal. This was the beginning of the British policy of imposing religion as a dividing line upon their subjects in order to smash their subjects’ capacity to resist. Unfortunately for the British, Bengal became even more militant, with many courageous attempts to strike at the British from within India as well as with help from Indians living overseas in the other colonies. Punjab was also leading the nationalist struggle with militant organizations such as the Ghaddar party, formed by Indian immigrant laborers toiling in the United State and Canada, and in the colonies, and also the Babbar Akalis and other groups. The greatest names among the list of Indian revolutionary martyrs include overwhelming numbers of Punjabis and Bengalis. In Punjab, the British made great efforts to stifle the Sikhs and mobilized the help of Muslim landed elites and Hindu upper castes to isolate and alienate the Sikhs.

What resulted in 1947 then, was the forced trisection of the subcontinent, specifically the dismemberment of Punjab and Bengal. The British destroyed the main centers of popular militancy and handed the keys to the landed Hindu elites of the Congress who no doubt swore by secularism and the unity of India’s Hindus and Muslims, and to the descendents of the ruling elites of the Mughal empire, who established Pakistan as a home for India’s Muslims. The partition and destruction of mainly Bengal and Punjab resulted in millions of lives being thrown into the cauldron of this macabre ‘nation-building’ exercise, and the formation of two states that never succeeded in fulfilling the wishes of their peoples even after fifty years of ‘independence,’ but on the contrary ended up chaining our peoples to the heels of imperialism and neo-colonialism.27

Historic blindspot, Gandhi and the revolutionaries

Hindutva was from its beginnings opposed to any generalized mass struggle of a revolutionary character. The British fanned the flames and then when the pogroms shook the country, they claimed to keep the peace. To this day Hindutvadis name "communists" as one of their most hated enemies, an unsurprising fact since after all anybody who resisted the divisive fascist politics of Hindutva was immediately labeled a "pseudo-secularist" or "communist." Another common term with similar connotations is "terrorist." It goes without saying that such a mindset is common to fascism from Nazism, American McCarthyism and Boer apartheid racism and Israeli Zionism. All opponents are labeled as implacable and dangerous enemies, with the object that once political power comes into their grasp, Hindutvadis are determined to physically eliminate those cast as ‘enemies.'

While the Gandhian movement did much damage to the revolutionary impulse gripping India in the 1920s and 30s, it at least openly swore allegiance to the secular ideals implicit in the struggle of the Indian people; this was a minimum they had to concede in order to maintain some legitimacy among the masses. Yet Gandhian liberalism was patronizing and out of touch with the workers and peasants of India, as the words of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association’s document "Philosophy of the Bomb" make clear in 1930:

"He (Gandhi) thinks that on the basis of his experience during his latest tour in the country, he is right in believing that the large masses of Indian humanity are yet untouched by the spirit of violence and that non-violence has come to stay as a political weapon. Let him not delude himself on the experiences of his latest tour in the country. Though it is true that the average leader confines his tours to places where only the mail train can conveniently land him while Gandhi has extended his tour limit to where a motorcar can take him, the practice of staying only with the richest people in the places visited, of spending most of his time on being complimented by his devotees in private and public, and of granting Darshan(spiritual audience) now and then to the illiterate masses whom he claims to understand so well, disqualifies him from claiming to know the mind of the masses. No man can claim to know a people’s mind by seeing them from the public platform and giving them Darshan and Updesh. He can at the most claim to have told the masses what he thinks about things. Has Gandhi, during recent years, mixed in the social life of the masses? Has he sat with the peasant round the evening fire and tried to know what he thinks? Has he passed a single evening in the company of a factory labourer and shared with him his woes? We have, and therefore we claim to know what the masses think. We assure Gandhi that the average Indian, like the average human being, understands little of the fine theological niceties about Ahimsa and Loving one’s enemy…

We affirm that the masses of India are solidly with us because we know it from personal experience. The day is not far off when they will flock in their thousands to work the will of the Revolution."28


These were words written by committed revolutionaries who were infuriated when Gandhi launched a tirade against them and condemned their activities in an article titled "Cult of the Bomb," hence the title of the response from the revolutionaries, "Philosophy of the Bomb." The self-righteous repudiation of violence when it came to actions taken by Indians against the British when thousands were being executed, tortured, and incarcerated, incensed revolutionaries and the ordinary people of India. Ghosh even points out that one of Gandhi's admitted nightmare scenarios was the unity of Hindus and Muslims for a violent overthrow of the British. He feared the rabble! Over endless cups of tea with British officials and reporters, Gandhi could engage in deep discussions about non-violence and the victory of truth, and even the emancipation of the British from British imperialism, and yet when it came to the emancipation of the ordinary Indian, his patronizing call to disarm, and walk towards the British as sheeps to the slaughter insulted most Indians, except perhaps those enraptured by the spiritual charms and saintly aura of the 'Mahatma.' Following the execitions of Bhagat Singh and comrades, Gandhi was met at the Karachi session of Congress, by a massive demonstration. Amazing facts suppressed by unending valorization that even continues today. Interestingly enough, following the executions, Nehru adopted terms like 'socialism' as part of his verbiage, no doubt an indication of reverence and perhaps fear of the revolutionaries and their mass base. Appropriation of the revolutionaries' discourse enabled Nehru to later portray himself as a radical, while towing the Gandhian Congress elitist line without much sweat. Nehru was in effect competing with Bhagat Singh for the hearts of the Indian masses.

Gandhi’s commitment to the emancipation of India’s Dalits and lower castes from the brutal tyranny of the Brahmanic social order was also ambiguous if not patronizing. E.V. Ramaswami Naicker-Periyar, the great civil rights leader from Tamil Nadu, put this aspect of Gandhi’s social activism in the spotlight in a speech in 1958.29

‘As a matter of fact Gandhi’s plans were different. He was not for allowing all the Sudras and the untouchables to bale our water from wells and tanks, along with the high caste brahmins. He was not for permitting the untouchables to enter the temples along with the high caste people. Originally he insisted on the continuance of the rights exclusively enjoyed by the high castes. He upheld the Manu code. He was for separate temples, tanks, wells and dwellings for the high caste Brahmins and the low caste Sudras. That was the original plan of Gandhi. I know it. Let anyone deny it. Today, misrepresented propaganda is carried on about Gandhi. Much is said about Gandhian way and Gandhian path.’


The point I am trying to make here is that India’s people were denied a truly liberating independence movement by the interplay of British colonialism with the elite upper caste liberals of the Congress, and also the role played by the communalist organizations like the RSS in inciting religious conflict as the linchpin that destroyed the progressive character of the independence struggle. India passed on from British hands to the Congress leadership, which through its ties to the landed elites and big business interests in India, established a system that remarkably maintained British colonial institutions without embarking upon a genuinely social revolutionary program. Little wonder then that popular movements opposed to the hegemony of the Indian colonial state never died out, as the peoples of India still await true independence and the rule by the people.

The Congress approach at best was to leave the social structures of India’s exploitative caste system intact, as challenges to this interfered with their strong supporters among the landed elites, the business classes and castes, as well as the right wing. Periyar recalls that the AICC (All India Congress Committee) provided funds for ‘social work’ while explicitly stating that the oppressed Dalits and lower castes were not to interfere with the social order in any way.

‘I was the Secretary of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee. A sum of Rs. 48,000 was sent to Tamilnadu as grant from the AICC to construct separate schools and temples for the low caste Sudras as the ‘Pariahs’, Chakkilis, and Pallars. It was strictly ordered that these untouchables should not go and create trouble at the places used exclusively by the high caste Hindus.’


Nevertheless, internationally Nehru and his heirs salvaged the best of India’s Congress-Gandhi heritage and spoke openly about the rights of all oppressed colonized peoples. In this context, India always supported Palestine in all international forums. Hindutva on the other hand, has effectively launched a virulent attack on both India’s people, institutions, and the legacy of the anti-colonialist heritage. Therefore it is antithetical to any conception of a free and internationally anti-imperialist India; it is the Yankee sponsored face of reaction, drawn from the same forces that collaborated with British imperialism to shake off the perceived threat of a peoples’ Indian state. Hindutvadis are eager to rewrite the constitution, and march the country into a supposedly ‘presidential’ form of government; a national security state with a constitution that will no doubt enshrine fascism and chauvinism, and extricate all the secular, democratic principles on which the at least marginally progressive Indian republic was established in 1950.



Conclusion

Hindutva is the most dangerous threat to the Indian subcontinent, even more dangerous than the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, especially since it is also blatantly pro-imperialistic and a willing accomplice to the imperialist plunder of India. It is not a religious movement but a political usurpation of the last vestiges of the independent Indian state, which the BJP would like to see converted into a ‘security’ state, in which democracy and freedom of thought will not hinder their objectives of establishing the supremacy of their specific version of semitized Hinduism, the Hindutva state, in which Muslims, Dalits, Christians, secularists, human rights activists, women, tribal communities, will be relegated to a new lower caste status, while a Brahmin minority in allegiance with other members of the upper castes will manage the state on behalf of American global imperialism. To this end, they will seek to use the services of Zionism, and further push India into the abyss of global war and the destruction of the entire subcontinent.

In order to avert this catastrophe, the peoples of the subcontinent, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, and Nepalis as well as all progressive forces among the peoples of Afghanistan, Iran, China, Palestine, and the Arab world and South East Asia must use every means necessary to challenge and defeat these pro-imperialist usurpers and thugs. Struggles all over India are erupting among diverse sections of society. The need of the hour is gradually becoming more apparent and will eventually lead to a decisive national struggle to reassert the peoples’ rights over the nation; in this struggle to come, Hindutva, Zionism and U.S. imperialism will be on one side. It remains for the victims of these three bloodhounds to work towards developing an internationalist front that effectively combats them and smashes the power of tyranny on the altar of the people’s will. The struggles of the Arab world are tied to the struggles of the Indian subcontinent; by smashing the myths and lies that form the basis for imperialism’s advances, the peoples of these regions must strive to establish a new solidarity building upon the best traditions and currents of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism, social, and economic emancipation. Collective feelings of disempowerment can serve the basis for a fresh look at our predicaments, and explore possible means to fight against the forces of imperialism, and its running dogs, Zionism and Hindutva.

I close with a brief note about the execution of Bhagat Singh, who is representative of the best of India’s anti-colonial legacy, and whose popularity, contrary to the muffled historical memory resulting from the loud valorization of Congress and Gandhi, threatened to upstage Gandhi, in the admission of the British colonialists themselves. In 1931, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were hanged by the British for their role in the killing of a British officer. They had initially courted arrest by carrying out a protest bombing in parliament, in which no one was hurt as they intended it to be a warning ‘to make the deaf hear.’ The cause of this action was impending legislation that sought to impose severe draconian laws under the pretext of ‘security,’ to crush growing rebellion among the Indian masses, particularly worker and peasant organizations. Bhagat Singh and the HSRA were definitely on the same beat as the Indian masses, while Gandhi and the Congress timidly towed the British line with little significant opposition, while being opposed to any form of militancy outside their restricting ‘non-violent’ purview.

Irwin’s minutes indicate that Gandhi played a more than significant role in the viceroy’s decision to carry out the executions of the revolutionaries. Fearing a backlash from the Indian masses and to divert the revolutionary fervor that was heightened in support of the revolutionaries, Gandhi worked out a deal with Irwin called the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. Suniti Kumar Ghosh points out that Gandhi negotiated with Irwin a preponement of the execution of the revolutionaries while claiming to the public that he pleaded with the viceroy to save the revolutionaries’ lives. This preponement was granted by Irwin and the three revolutionaries were hanged at 7:33 pm, March 23, 1931. Ghosh quotes the official History of the Indian National Congress:

"..The Karachi session was to meet in the last week of March, but Gandhi himself stated to the Viceroy that if the boys should be hanged, they had better be hanged before the Congress, than after. The position of affairs in the country would be clear."30


This betrayal of India’s struggle was the clear course being alluded to above. This betrayal has a long history, going back to the colonial roots of the Congress and the ties between India’s ruling castes and classes with British colonialism; the common fear of a peoples’ uprising was the uniting factor while reformist calls for ‘Home rule,’ ‘dominion status,’ were dangled at the people as substitutes for full independence of the kind which fired the inspiration of the revolutionaries. When outright collaboration failed to achieve ends, these ruling classes resorted, as the British did, to divide the people along religious lines and incite communalism. The spiritualism being offered by Gandhi was sufficient to offer a sense of false validation to colonized Indians, as westerners saw and promoted in Gandhi the mystical aura of eastern spirituality, one who appeased the natives and at the same time appealed to the troubled conscience of the west. This Gandhian spiritualism is quite overblown by Indian and western scholars, as the evidence of India’s struggles in the 1920s and 30s suggests. It alienated Muslims and lower caste Hindus as it validated the ideologies and interests of the upper caste Hindus, and the British colonialists.

Inspiration for the struggle from a true Indian Patriot

It was Bhagat Singh and not Gandhi who most closely represented the popular sentiment of the time. It was he who called on the Indian people to rise up against all predators foreign and domestic. It is his legacy that provides inspiration to the struggle ahead for the peoples of India, and the internationalist struggle against imperialism. His words apply to the universal struggle against exploitation, and in these times the linked struggle against Zionism and Hindutva, towards the liberation of South Asia and Palestine. Let us draw inspiration from this great son of India.

"...revolution does not necessarily mean sanguinary strife, nor is there any place in it for individual vendetta. It is not the cult of the bomb or the pistol. By `revolution' we mean that the present order of things, which is based on manifest injustice, must change. Producers or labourers, in spite of being the most necessary elements of society, are robbed by their exploiters of the fruits of their labour and are denied of their elementary rights.... On the other hand, capitalists, exploiters, parasites of society squander millions on mere whims.... Radical change is, therefore, necessary and it is the duty of those who realise this to reorganise society on a socialist basis. Unless this is done, and the exploitation of man by man and nation by nation, which goes masquerading as a civilising force, but in reality is imperialism, is brought to an end, the suffering and carnage with which humanity is threatened today cannot be prevented and all talk of ending wars and ushering an era of universal peace, is undisguised hypocrisy. By revolution we mean the ultimate establishment of an order of society, in which the sovereignty of the proletariat should be recognised and as a result of which the world federation should redeem humanity from the bondage of capitalism and the misery and the peril of wars.

"...revolution is the inalienable right of all men. Freedom is the improscribable birthright of all. The toiler is the real sustainer of society. The sovereignty of the people is the ultimate destiny of workers. For these ideals and for this faith we shall welcome any suffering to which we shall be condemned. To this altar of revolution we bring our youth as incense, for no sacrifice is too great for so magnificent a cause. We are content to await the advent of the revolution. "LONG LIVE REVOLUTION.""31




Bhagat Singh was 23 when he was executed by the British.




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References and Sources:

1 BJP’s assault on Education and Educational Institutions. Nalini Taneja, Delhi University

2 The Institutional Composition of Hindutva, The Progressive South Asian Exchange Net, source: http://www.foil.org/politics/hindutva/hindorg.html

3 Mahatma Gandhi's Approach to Zionism and the Palestine Question, Professor A.K. Ramakrishnan. Dr. Ramakrishnan is a senior lecturer, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala of India. He presented this paper to a seminar on Jerusalem and Palestine held in New Delhi on 13 June by the Institute of Islamic and Arab Studies, India. Source: http://www.ptimes.com/issue86/articles.html#11 (The Palestine Times)

4 Israel's killing fields, Aijaz Ahmed, Frontline Magazine, Volume 17 - Issue 23, Nov. 11 - 24, 2000

5 RSS Politics: Vajpayee Takes The Mask Off, Harkishan Singh Surjeet, General Secretary, Communist Party of India Marxist, source: http://www.ganashakti.com/old/2000/000214/feature.htm

6 Hindutva’s foreign tie-up in the 1930s: archival evidence, Marzola Casolari, from South Asia Documents, section Secularism and Communalism. Source: http://www.ercwilcom.net/~indowindow/sad/godown/secular/fascirss.htm

7 An extremist Zionist ‘think-tank’ with contributors including Ariel Sharon and BenjaminNetanyahu. http://www.freeman.org/ Among the nonsense being manufactured here is a piece comparing Native Americans with the Zionists!

8 Hindu Extremists Seek Ties With Israel and Its U.S. Lobby, Faisal Kutty, source: http://www15.brinkster.com/indiatoday/contents.htm

9 Desi Mossad is getting ready at Bajrang Dal's Ayodhya camp, The Indian Express, June 30, 2000

10 Israeli experts in Kashmir to assess security needs, Yehonathan Tommer, Times of India, Friday 22 September 2000

11 India to allow US army access to counterinsurgency school, June 27, 2001, www.tehelka.com

12 The Tehelka Expose, in which senior officials in the ruling BJP government and individuals in the armed forces were caught on camera taking bribes by Tehelka investigative journalists. The webcast of this episode as well as details about the scam are available at: http://tehelka.zeenext.com/webcast.html

13 To learn more about the Dalit struggle and its centrality to the struggle against the Hindutva movement, please visit, www.dalitstan.org

14 Hindutva Offensive: Social Roots & Characterisation, R.R. Puniyani, source: http://www.foil.org/politics/hindutva/rampun1.html

15 Manusmriti, from www.hindubooks.org, source: http://www.hindubooks.org/scriptures/manusmriti/ch8/ch8_411_420.htm

16 Communalism and History, Romila Thapar, from Indian National Social Action Forum, source: http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/ch2.html

17 The Invention of Ancient Israel, The Silencing of Palestinian History, Keith W. Whitelam, 1997, Description from Amazon.com, "A controversial and provocative work, The Invention of Ancient Israel chronicles how the true history of ancient Palestine has been obscured. Keith W. Whitelam reveals how ancient Israel has been invented by scholars in the image of a European nation state; one that resembles the state of Israel created in 1948. This book explores the prospects for developing the study of Palestinian history as a subject in its own right, divorced from the history of the Bible, and argues that Biblical scholars, through their traditional view of this area, have contributed to dispossession both of a Palestinian land and aPalestinian past."

18 Communalism and History, Romila Thapar, from Indian National Social Action Forum, source: http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/ch2.html

19 Hindu Violence against Buddhism in India has no parallel, Dr. M.S.Jayaprakash, The Dalit Voice April 16-30.The author is the Professor of History, Guru Vihar, Punnathala, Kollam District, Kerala, India.

20 Tirupati Balaji was a Buddhist Shrine, Dr. K. Jamanadas, Dalitstan.org, source: http://dalitstan.org/books/tirupati

21 Mirat ul Memalik (The Mirror of Countries), 1557 CE, Sidi Ali Reis (16th Century CE), Internet Medieval Source Book, source: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/16CSidi1.html

22 Thus spoke Ambedkar, the Quotations of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, source: http://www.ambedkar.org/Babasaheb/quotations.htm

23 History of the H.M. 13th Light Dragoons, source: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~clday/13light.htm#mutiny

24 Freedom Struggle Betrayed, India 1885-1947, Suniti Kumar Ghosh, 1997Available on the web at: http://www.maoism.org/misc/india/rupe/fsb/toc_fsb.htm

25 Islamic Star Over India, Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate, Economics, This article is excerpted from a UNESCO lecture titled "An Assessment of the Millennium" delivered by Amartya Sen in New Delhi recently. Source: www.littleindia.com

26 Late Victorian Holocausts, El nino Famines and the making of the Third World, Mike Davis

27 India and the Raj, 1919 –1947, Glory, Shame and Bondage, Suniti Kumar Ghosh, available on the web at: http://www.maoism.org/misc/india/india_raj_v2/india_raj_2.htm

28 Philosophy of the Bomb, signed, Kartar Singh, President, Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. In December 1929, HSRA revolutionaries made a failed attempt to assassinate the viceroy, Lord Irwin. Gandhi reportedly "thanked God" for the viceroy’s narrow escape, and condemned the revolutionaries in an article called "Cult of the Bomb." In response, the HSRA issued this statement, the Philosophy of the Bomb. Full text at: http://www.parwhaz.com/shaheed-bhagatsingh/bomb.htm

29 Speech by E.V. Ramasami Naicker-Periyar in Kanyakumari District, Tamil Nadu, 25th and 26th December 1958, source: http://www.periyar.org/mr/20002m8.htm

30 Freedom Struggle Betrayed, India 1885-1947, Suniti Kumar Ghosh, 1997 Available on the web at: http://www.maoism.org/misc/india/rupe/fsb/toc_fsb.htm

31 Freedom Struggle Betrayed, India 1885-1947, Suniti Kumar Ghosh, 1997 Available on the web at: http://www.maoism.org/misc/india/rupe/fsb/chap7.htm

India & Israel: A Wrong Alliance 4/4
by Shahul Hameed
2008-10-20 08:41:28
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INDIA – ISRAEL ECONOMIC RELATIONS

Since diplomatic relations were established in 1992, there has been a legal frame work for trade and economic co-operation between India and Israel. Important agreements are according most Favoured Nation status, Avoidance of Double Taxation, Bilateral Investment Protection, customs co-operation, Joint Industrial Research and Development and setting up of Agricultural Demonstration farm.

Israel Trade Center was formed in Mumbai in 2004 and will help and assist Israeli companies to penetrate the Indian Market on a business basis. In the field of information technology, the Electronic & Computer Software Council of India (ESC) and the Electronic Industries Association of Israel signed an MOU. National Association of Software & Service Companies (NASSCOM) signed an agreement for close co-operation with their counterparts Israeli Association of software Houses (IASH), while another MOU was signed between the Exim Bank and the Israel Export Institute.

The MOU is for the promotion of trade and economic co-operation, signed in May 1993 and was followed by the signing of an agreement in December 1995. The agreement provided Indian goods to Israel without import permits. Business Line newspaper reported that there are now more than 150 agreements between Israeli and Indian firms on co-operation and joint projects in field such as agriculture, communications, software and medical equipment. Illan Maor, Director of Economic Department, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, "Israel has 2,000 start-up companies, the second highest in the world after the U.S."

A number of Israeli companies such as Ness Technologies, Magic software, Amdoes, Check point software technologies, RAD data communications, Veraz networks, carpro and NDS are getting work done in India. Dr. Reddy’s Labs are keen to work with Israel. Israel and India Mutual co-operation are Research and Development, Agro technology, Bio technology and Pharmaceuticals, Non – conventional energy, nanotechnology, venture capital funding, high-end security software development, IT Products and Telecom Software, Medical equipment, Environmental technologies, home land security.

The State Bank of India has correspondent banking relations with eight major Israeli banks. A joint insurance agreement has been signed between the Export Credit and Guarantee co-operation of India and Israeli Foreign Trade Risk Insurance Company Ltd. A bilateral science and Technology co-operation agreement was signed between the Indian science Academy and the Israeli National Academy of Science.

Diamonds, which accounted for 60% of India’s exports of Israel in 1999, major export items from India include textiles, cotton, yarn, organic chemicals and machinery. Vigorous trade promotion efforts such as the holding of the first Indian Trade Exhibition in Israel in May 2000 have contributed to the increase in Indian exports to Israel.

Israel Desalination Enterprises Technologies (IDET) won two tenders to build three more desalination plants in Gujarat for $9.5 million. “Gujarath and Israel are divided by land but are united by water" Hindu fundamentalist Gujarath Chief Minister Modi said. Science and workshops are being held regularly. A number of Indian researchers are currently engaged in research activities at the Volcani as well as the Weizman institute. Samuel Neaman Institute, Haifa and Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment council (TIFAC) New Delhi Jointly organized and Indian Israel science conference from may 29 to June 3, 2005. This conference continued every year.

An India-Israel agreement a co-operation in use of outer space was signed in October 2002. During Israeli Science Minister Sandberg’s visit to India in December 2003 it was announced that an Israeli astronomical scientific telescope would be installed as a payload on an Indian scientific to be launched. The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) led a business delegation headed by the Minister of state for Industries, Ashwini Kumar, during 2007 August 5-6 to Tel-Aviv to explore trade and investment opportunities for mutual benefit.

Already NDS, specializing in digital video recorders, Inter activity and secure broad band has an office in Bangalore and more such R&D centers in other sectors are expected to come up as Israel seeks greater engagement with India. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that both countries co-operate will in the are a science and Technology.

In June 2007, the State Bank of India has become the first foreign bank to open a branch in the Israel’s diamond exchange. The central Bank of India own 59.79% of it. In July 2007, India’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) found many 'blood diamonds’ are being smuggled into Surat, the country’s polishing center. The rough diamonds from Israel are brought on fishing boats through the shallow waters of Gujarath’s west cost, they said.

Blood or conflict diamonds originate primarily from war zones where they are locally mined and later sold, secretly. The perpetrators use the profits to buy arms, fund civil wars and military coups against legitimate governments there. Surat’s gems and Jewellery industry which comprises of more than 6,000 small and big diamond cutting and polishing units, employs around seven laksh people. Being the largest processor and exporter of precious stones in the world, India with a turn over of Rs. 45,000 crore, has always been suspected of getting blood diamonds processed here, DRI Officials say.

And with nine out of every 11 diamonds in the world being cut in Surat, the city’s cutting and polishing industry is closely associate itself with Hindutva Mafia. Rough diamond actively in Israel was in high gear in June. Israel exports of rough diamonds skyrocketed to $195 million in rough diamonds in June 2006.

INDIA MUST STOP THIS RELATIONSHIP

India must stop at once this relationship with Israel. If not, these relationships become a danger of India’s feature and help to Israel crush the Palestinian people. There are many Arab and socialist countries greatly distressed over the growing Indo- Israeli ties.

One time the great Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi said, “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs, surely it would be a crime against humanity.”

Palestinians have been systematically victimized and alienated in their own land by the Israelis. India now buys half of its arms from Israel, making it Israel’s biggest customer. It is thus funding the Israeli occupation in Palestine because the Israeli economy rests on its defence industry, it is main export, as well as the inflow of U.S tax dollars.

India and Israel are engaged in hostile activities with their neighbouring states. Their defence deals are a threat to peace and stability in the south Asian and Middle East region.
Domestically India is facing severe criticism from different segments of society for its increasing collaboration with Israel. For the communist parties, seeking 'strategic ties' with Israel represented a betrayal of the Palestinians and was harmful to India’s interests. They even argued that close military ties were the result of the ‘anti Muslim agenda' of Israel.

The Muslims of India apart from the left are also the hurdles to the strategic partnership between the two countries. The Muslims of India tried time and again to voice their concerns. India is trying to split the Indian Muslim community which harbours the cause of Palestinian resistance. For this purpose the present Indian Government has sent a delegation of Muslim Scholars to Israel. Lastly, Indo–Israel Collaboration aims to assist each other in order to terrorize and subjugate Palestinians along with Kashmir forever.

PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE

Sources :
• The Hindu Jan 17, 2004
• U.S plays Match Makers to India, Israel by Ninan Koshy, The War on Terror: Reordering the world. DAGA Press
• India Israel Bilateral Relations, October 2000. Ministry of External Affairs, India press release.
• India and Israel united in defence by Sudha Ramachandiran, Asia Time online, 2002.
• India Israel tango gain pace by Srinivasan, The Hindu Business Line 20.08.2007
• Israel and India in the Era of Globalization by Ambassador at the International Forum Indian Embassy press release 09.03.2006.
• India Israel Defence Relations by Siddharath Ramana, Malmo University, Sweden.
• India-Israel Relations: The imperatives for Enhance strategic co-operation by Subash Kapila (www.southasiaanalysis.org/Papers2/Paper131.html)
• Tribune News Service 09.09.2003.
• Joined in Arms by Ramtanu Mantra, the Asia Times, 11.03.2005.
• Israel – India Defence co-operation 02.06.2008 (www.wordpress.com).
• www.defenceindustrydaily.com/India–to–buy–israeli–spyder-mobile–air–defencesystem.
• Nexus of Evil by Mamoona Ali Kazmi, Daily Mail News.com
• Why India dumped Palestinians by Ramtanu Maitra, Asia Times online.
http://www.ovimagazine.com/art/3637
Mishra proposes India-Israel- US anti-terror alliance
Author: Chidanand Rajghatta
Publication: The Times of India
Date: May 9, 2003
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=45887154
India's National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra has proposed an alliance between the United States, India and Israel, among other democratic countries, to meet the threat of terrorism.

In an address at the American Jewish Community Annual Dinner here on Thursday, Mishra said such an alliance would have the political will and moral authority to take "bold decisions in extreme cases of terrorist provocation" without being distracted by diversionary arguments like "root causes."

Preventive measures like blocking financial supplies, disrupting networks, sharing intelligence, simplifying extradition procedures can only be effective through international cooperation based on trust and shared values, he added.

The idea of a Washington-New Delhi-Tel Aviv axis against terror is not new, but it is the first time it is being proposed so openly and formally. While doing so, Mishra spoke of the "fundamental similarities" between India, the United States and Israel, including their democratic system, sharing a common vision of pluralism, tolerance and equal opportunity.

"Stronger India-US relations and India-Israel relations have a natural logic," India's foreign policy principal, who is in Washington for talks with top US officials, told the Jewish movers and shakers. Mishra also announced at the dinner that New Delhi hoped to receive Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon soon in India on an official visit.

Mishra's anti-terror proposal came even as US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage wound up his day long visit to Pakistan and headed to Kabul en route to New Delhi.

Mishra met Armitage in transit in London before his discussions here on Friday with his US counterpart Condoleeza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell, who in turn is meeting India's Foreign Minister Yashwant Singh during transit in Moscow next week as part of the continuing Indo-US dialogue.

From all accounts, the dialogue appears aimed at walking Pakistan back from the path of extremism to a more reasoned approach to the issues in the sub-continent.

In interviews with two Pakistani networks and a press conference, Armitage, who joked that he was a son of a policeman and therefore not inclined to firefight, rejected a plethora of Pakistani proposals while praising Islamabad's "magnificent cooperation" in the war on terrorism, leaving his hosts in little doubt about which way Washington was going in the ongoing spat between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.

Among other issues, Armitage said the US had no roadmap to resolve the Kashmir problem, that it was best dealt bilaterally, and there could not be any artificial timeframe for the resolving the tangle. There had been an excited babble in Islamabad on all three counts during the past week.

Armitage also dismissed General Musharraf's push for denuclearisation and no-war pact in South Asia saying "I think something like that is quite a bit down the way, in terms of confidence-building measures. There are more immediate issues."

He also didn't think any new US resolutions on the issue would be helpful, and that while Kashmir may be the core issue for Pakistan, looked at it from India's perspective, Islamabad's unrelenting hostility toward India is the core issue for India.

Armitage also gave some indication that Washington disagreed with Pakistan's "Kashmir first" policy, saying "if the atmosphere is improved on both sides on a lot of other issues, then clearly Kashmir would be able to be discussed rationally and reasonably."

He skirted a pointed question about international observers on the LoC to check infiltration, saying the most effective mechanism is the degree of confidence between Indians and Pakistanis.
http://www.hvk.org/articles/0503/106.html

Israel and India: Iran's Needless Hullabaloo
by Sreeram Chaulia

Following the launch of Israeli spy satellite TECSAR from Indian facilities, the publicly-aired criticism of India's ties with "the Zionist state" by Iranian government officials should have produced outcries of gratuitous interference. However, no one has asked why Iran chose to go to the media with its unhappiness instead of resorting to the standard diplomatic practice of issuing a demarche to the Indian ambassador in Tehran. Nobody has challenged Iran's presumed right to dish out veiled warnings to India over its foreign policy preferences.

Sovereignty in world affairs springs largely from the ability of a country to conduct its foreign relations free of external meddling. Actual global power differences, of course, reduce this principle to mere theoretical worth. India has often been pressurized by larger powers to take foreign policy decisions that it would not countenance in an ideally free environment.

For instance, it is now known from the horse's mouth that the US forced India to vote against Iran at the IAEA in September 2005 and February 2006. Stephen G. Rademaker, the former US assistant secretary for non-proliferation, declared: "I am the first person to admit that the votes were coerced."

Despite the touchiness about American influence on Indian foreign policy, it is an undeniable reality. India's frequent attempts to negotiate with Pakistan even when the latter is sponsoring cross-border terrorism are believed to be at the prodding of the US.

That the US had enough leverage over India to ensure that it "did not vote the wrong way" on Iran's alleged nuclear misdemeanor may seem self-evident, given the power differential between Washington and New Delhi. A somewhat similar situation existed during the later part of the Cold War when Moscow often prevailed over New Delhi through a systematic strategy of bribing Indian political parties, individual politicians, newspapers, trade unions and intellectuals.

The Mitrokhin Archives, released in 2005, revealed that India was a veritable "playground" of Soviet intelligence. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's refusal to condemn the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 was just one obvious manifestation of Soviet coercion on a putatively "non-aligned" country.

Iran's pot shots at India over its relations with Israel are more surprising, given that it is a relatively weaker state compared to the US or Russia. Tehran has even threatened New Delhi to speed up or miss the bus of the delayed Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline.

Earlier in February, Iran's foreign affairs spokesman announced that China was ready to replace India if the latter does not put its act together and sort out technical differences with Pakistan. What is the leverage point that Iran enjoys over India to be so aggressive? Iran accounts for a little more than 7.5 percent of India's crude oil imports, far behind Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates.

The likelier source of confidence that Tehran can deter New Delhi from developing relations with Tel Aviv comes from its acute understanding of vote bank politics, which has frequently plagued Indian foreign policy. Iran's objections to the TECSAR launch were phrased in a manner that appealed to the friendly sentiments towards Muslim countries that move a particular section of Indian society.

The cultural affinity thesis, closely allied to vote bank politics, was indeed one of the root causes of India's belated normalization of relations with Israel. For decades, the argument went that befriending Tel Aviv would enrage Arab states and, by extension, hurt the feelings of minorities in India.

Notwithstanding the concrete benefits that an opening to Israel would accrue to India, fear of losing votes held back politicians in New Delhi for a very long time. Iran draws leverage from this internal weakness of India and finds support for it's posturing on TECSAR from some Indian political parties, most of which have never been immune from foreign inducements of one shade or the other. Ironically, Iran did not protest the rising interactions between Pakistan and Israel that are being brokered by the US!

Tehran was apparently "jolted and horrified" by the news of Pakistani and Israeli foreign ministers meeting in Paris in 2005. However, unlike the TECSAR case, Iran did not publicly castigate Pakistan. If the overall intent of Iran's trespassing in the TECSAR case is to isolate Israel, it has failed to realize that Tel Aviv has managed to break the ice with numerous Muslim countries, what to talk of India.

Israel's cooperation benefits India. Tel Aviv has equipped New Delhi with the Phalcon early warning radar system. This state-of-the-art technology enhances the Indian Air Force's reconnaissance and interception capabilities. But for American stymieing, India would already have received the Arrow-II anti-ballistic missile defence system from Israel. The Indian Army uses Israeli aerial vehicles and electronic sensors to fence the border with Pakistan. Israel supplies India with sophisticated counter-terrorism expertise to tackle infiltration from Pakistan.

With so much to show on the credit side of the balance sheet for India-Israel relations, the Iranian hue and cry over TECSAR pales. For the record, India has expressed concern about the humanitarian crisis engulfing Palestinians in Gaza. India has never approved of disproportionate use of force by Israel in its disputes with Muslim neighbors. The charge that India is adding diplomatic license for Israel to continue its impunity does not stand. All India has been doing since 1992, when it formally recognized Israel, is to look out for its own interests.

(Sreeram Chaulia is an analyst of international affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship, Syracuse, New York. He can be contacted at sreeramchaulia@hotmail.com)

February 18, 2008
http://www.boloji.com/opinion/0509.htm