Modi’s Visit To Israel: Embrace Of Two Deadly Ideologies, Zionism And Hindutva

by Binu Mathew

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is visiting Israel. It is a historical visit. It is the first time an Indian Prime Minister is visiting Israel. Putting aside all protocol norms Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Ben-Gurion Airport to welcome Modi.

Let’s step back and take a broader view of this historical visit.  The Israeli Knesset (parliament) recently passed a bill that defines Israel as the “national home of the Jewish people.” According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the Arab population in 2013 was estimated at 1,658,000, representing 20.7% of the country’s population.  1.65 million Palestinian Arabs have become second class citizens in the Jewish national home.

So Modi is visiting the dreamland of his Guruji Golwalkar, the second Sarsanghchalak (supreme leader) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh who wrote in his book,  “We or Our Nationhood Defined”

“The foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment — not even citizen’s rights. There is, at least, should be, no other course for them to adopt. We are an old nation; let us deal, as old nations ought to and do deal, with the foreign races, who have chosen to live in our country.”

So Modi is visiting a land where the RSS dream has come to fruition. It is not surprising that both Modi and Netanyahu are calling each other brothers and embracing each other repeatedly.

Zionism is a Jewish supremacist ideology. It came into existence through the existential anxiety of the Jews living in Europe.  A secular Austrian-Jewish journalist, Theodor Herzl, was the first to turn rumblings of Jewish nationalism into an international movement around 1896. Aided by the prevailing political climate in Europe, the Zionist movement encouraged Jews to migrate to the British domain of Palestine and used their money power, political power and military power to establish a nation called Israel in Palestine, ethnic cleansing 700,000 original dwellers of the land. This project continued with the 1967 Six Day War and still continues with the settlement of hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews in the occupied land in clear violation of international laws and U.N resolutions. Israel is a colonial, rogue, apartheid state. It is this rogue nation that India is embracing. Modi not visiting Ramallah, the headquarters of Palestine Authority is a clear message to the Muslims of the world and to Muslims back home in India.

In the same way, RSS was launched by some Nagpur Brahmans due to the existential anxiety created by the growing freedom movement and to ensure the hegemony of the upper castes when India got freedom from the British. The collusion of RSS with the British and Savarkar’s mercy petitions are legends that RSS wants the nation to forget. Some history will come back to haunt them forever. RSS agenda was to make India a Hindu Rashtra with Manusmriti (Manu’s Code) as the underlying principle when the British left India. When they found that Mahatma Gandhi stood in their way, their henchman Nathuram Godse pointed his gun at him and gunned him down. When Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, as RSS claimed, after 1000 years of foreign domination, they found it an opportune moment to make their dream a reality. The mob violence, lynchings, violation of food rights, human rights, livelihood rights are part of this larger plan.

In Israel RSS has found a natural ally and a role model who put their grand vision to fruition.  In Modi’s embrace of Netanyahu we see the marriage of two evil ideologies, Hindutva and Zionism. Israel with its tried and tested military technologies and tactics to subdue the freedom strugglers of Palestine, will be ever ready to pass on their know how to Modi. Muslims, dalits and other minority groups in India, beware of this deadly embrace.

Binu Mathew is the editor of www.countercurrents.org.