Gandhi and the State

The 78th death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the Nation, who was shot dead on 30 January 1948 by the Hindu fanatic Nathuram Godse, coincides with the proposed renaming and restructuring of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) by the Modi government. The initiative has sparked intense political debate, with opposition leaders accusing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of attempting to marginalise Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy. The initiative involves replacing MGNREGA with a new framework, the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB–G RAM G), which critics argue is part of a broader ideological effort to diminish the influence of Gandhi. A brief analysis of India’s policy on Israel reveals how the Indian government had totally abandoned Gandhi’s views on Palestine and Israel after his killing on January 30, 1948.

Mahatma Gandhi opposed a Jewish nation-state in Palestine. Notwithstanding that he was deeply sympathetic to the plight of the Jewish people in Europe, Gandhi was against Zionists and the attempt to create a state of their own by force in Palestine, which was already inhabited by the Palestinian Arab people. “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English, or France to the French,” Mahatma Gandhi wrote in Harijan on November 26, 1938. He also rejected the British claim that Jews would become a “wandering people” without control over Palestine. In Young India (1921), he wrote: “The idea that Jews must dominate Palestine to avoid becoming a stateless people is flawed. Such control should not be achieved through deceit or by undermining moral principles.” His views on Zionism influenced his colleagues in the All India Congress Committee (AICC). In September 1938, the AICC called for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, urging Jews and Muslims to collaborate without British interference. The resolution also warned against the dangers of the Zionist movement’s reliance on British imperialism.

Gandhi’s critique of Zionism was rooted in his broader philosophy of ahimsa (non-violence) and his opposition to colonialism. He rejected terrorism and violence and called for a just and peaceful resolution to the Palestinian issue. In a 1931 interview with The Jewish Chronicle, Gandhi stated: “Zionism in the spiritual sense is a good idea. It means keeping Jerusalem in mind. But the political Zionist idea of colonising Palestine does not appeal to me at all.” In an interview with Reuters on May 18, 1947, he said, “If the Jews want to live in Palestine, they can do so only by making the Arabs their friends; they do not need to accept British and American help.”

Unlike Mahatma Gandhi, Hindu nationalists held a fascination with Jews and Zionism. Proponents of Hindutva, from Savarkar to Golwalkar, admired Zionism, as both are characterised by ethno-nationalist ideologies that prioritise factors like race, territory, and nativism. V. D. Savarkar expressed deep sympathy for a more comprehensive understanding of the Jewish race and underlined its appropriateness for the Hindutva ideology. He was not only inspired by Zionism and praised illegal colonial settlement but strongly believed that Hindus and Jews shared a history of oppression at the hands of Muslims, as observed by Christophe Jaffrelot and Kalrav Joshi in Indian Express (2023).

Despite huge sympathy for the Zionists among Hindu nationalists and external political pressure, mainly from the USA, India followed the Gandhian argument and voted against the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution on the two-state solution of Palestine, adopted by the UNGA on November 29, 1947. The resolution recommended the creation of independent but economically linked Arab and Jewish states and an extraterritorial “Special International Regime” for the city of Jerusalem and its surroundings. Along with India, most Arab states voted against the 1947 resolution of the two-state solution. The resolution got 33 votes in favour, 13 nations voted against it, and 10 member nations abstained from voting. Thus, the state of Israel was established in Arab land as two-thirds of the members of the UNGA voted in favour of the resolution. Within two months of this historic UN resolution, which India opposed, Mahatma was assassinated on January 30, 1948. Since then, India’s policy towards the Zionist state of Israel has taken a radical shift.

In September 1948, after the second Arab-Israeli ceasefire was signed, India’s Ambassador to the US, BN Rau, mentioned the possibility of recognition to his Israeli counterpart, Eliahu Eilat, in Washington. In September 1949, following the acceptance of Israel as an official member of the UN, the then Indian Ambassador VL Pandit (Pandit Nehru’s sister) assured Eilat that India was moving towards recognition of Israel. On September 17, 1950, India officially recognised the State of Israel. Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru stated, “We would have recognised Israel long ago, because Israel is a fact.” In 1953, Israel was permitted to open a consulate in Bombay. After Gandhi’s death, even India’s socialist leaders embraced Israel. Jayaprakash Narayan met Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv in 1958. Full diplomatic relations between India and Israel were established in 1992, when both countries opened their embassies in Tel Aviv and New Delhi, respectively.

India and Israel came closer when Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a nationalist Hindu leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), became India’s Prime Minister for the second time in 1998 and conducted the Pokhran-II nuclear test. As Delhi faced Western sanctions in light of the atomic test, Israel came to India’s aid. The Kargil conflict of 1999 strengthened the India-Israel defence relationship. However, the bond has achieved new milestones since 2014, following Narendra Modi’s election as India’s Prime Minister. In 2015, Pranab Mukherjee, the then President of India, visited Israel for the first time. During his visit, he met President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and addressed the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), focusing on strengthening bilateral ties in technology, agriculture, and defence. Then in 2017, Narendra Modi became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Israel. In September 2025, India signed a bilateral trade and investment agreement with Israel at a time when Israel was overseeing genocide, ethnic cleansing, and famine in Gaza that had killed more than 64,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children. A new report released by the Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA) raised serious questions about the role of Indian corporations and the Indian government in supporting Israel’s military and occupation economy. The study, titled Profit and Genocide: Indian Investments in Israel, claims that both state-owned and private companies in India are not just commercial partners but active participants in what the report describes as Israel’s “economy of occupation and genocide.” Adani, TCS, Infosys, and Reliance Jio are named in the report exposing India’s role in Israel’s war economy.

Between 2020 and 2024, Israel supplied 13 per cent of India’s total arms imports, while India accounted for roughly 34 per cent of Israel’s defence exports. Now Israel looks to shift defence manufacturing to India as bilateral ties move beyond the buyer–seller model, reports The Hindu Business Line. At a function marking India’s 77th Republic Day, Israel’s Culture and Sports Minister observed: “India is more than a good friend, a trusted strategic partner.”

The BJP and its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), have long admired Israel’s Jewish supremacist policy, where majoritarianism is enshrined in the constitution. Israel’s exclusionist policies inspire the Sangh Parivar’s Hindutva supremacist ideas. The Modi government’s controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which gives citizenship rights to Hindus from neighbouring countries while denying this right to Muslims, echoes Israel’s discriminatory Law of Return, which bestows the right of citizenship to Jews across the globe. Israel’s 1950 Law of Return grants all Jews, along with their children and grandchildren, the automatic right to immigrate to Israel and obtain citizenship, while Palestinian refugees expelled or who fled between 1947 and 1949 are denied a similar right to return to their homes. Israel, a rogue nation, extended vigorous support to India’s CAA law in the face of international criticism.

Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of ahimsa (non-violence) and his opposition to colonialism have no taker in the Modi administration.

Views expressed are personal. The writer is a professor of Business Administration who primarily writes on political economy, global trade, and sustainable development