From construction sites in Tel Aviv to primetime TV in New Delhi, Hindutva and Zionism are learning from each other. This alliance is not just about trade or arms; it’s about exporting an ideology of supremacy.
Far-right governments never exist in isolation. They inspire, emulate, and strengthen one another. The ethnonationalist projects of Hindutva and Zionism are no different. Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power in 2014, India has become more than just the most reliable buyer of Israel’s military complex. It is now a co-partner in leading the fight for nationalist projects based on supremacy and exclusionary political sentiments.
India’s recent vote in favour of a resolution on the peaceful settlement of the Palestine question and implementation of the two-state solution, and condemnation of the attack in Doha, illustrates how India’s relationship with Israel has evolved beyond bureaucratic votes and press releases. Their alliance is aimed at a larger long-term goal of leading far-right movements on a common understanding of nativeness, race, culture, and the villainisation of a common enemy.
The forefathers of Hindutva openly and unironically admired both Hitler’s fascism and the Zionists’ relentless guilt-free pursuit of statehood based on religious majoritarianism. Owing to these core values, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has matured the admiration into statecraft. He continues to use the BJP’s well-oiled machinery as a tool and economic leverage to create stronger ties with Israel.
The integration of these projects in the hope of propagating both as sister initiatives fighting for a common understanding of statehood operates through multiple primary mechanisms. This ranges from labour exploitation, narrative production, and disinformation campaigns. Each diplomatic state-level tie translates into popular consciousness, pushing both far-right supporters to see the shared identity, struggle, and kinship.
Hosting banned political leaders
Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich visited India for a three-day trip in early September. He met several top officials and signed the Bilateral Investment Agreement. The far-right politician has been a key supporter of the Gaza genocide and a significant obstacle to ceasefire negotiations. He faces a pending warrant from the International Criminal Court. He also faces a travel ban from all 29 Schengen Area countries and the United Kingdom. Despite this growing international alarm over Israel’s far-right leadership and its role in the massacre of the Palestinian people, the Indian government hosted him the same day as the launch of the new phase of the military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
Within India, several political parties, activists and journalists condemned the BJP government for this move. Chief Minister of India’s southern state of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, took to X (formerly Twitter) to write, “At a time when a genocide is unfolding in Gaza, entering into agreements with representatives of the Netanyahu regime is nothing short of a betrayal of India’s historic solidarity with Palestine.”
The bilateral trade between the two countries stood at 3.9$ billion in 2024. The signed agreement assures mutual protection and non-discrimination towards investors of both countries. It will also provide an independent forum for dispute settlement through arbitration. During the signing, the Indian Finance Minister Sitharaman mentioned “The shared value of the civilizational ethos of the two countries, which contributed to global peace.”, according to PTI.
This scenario of hosting an extremist far-right politician paints a worrying picture of India strengthening ties with a rogue state to make the most of a politically shifting international climate. The timing helps deepen the belief of two ethnonationalist states that they’ve got each other’s backs, irrespective of the narrative pushed by Western countries. Mr Smotrich enunciates this multiple times during his trip: “We have to deal with the hypocrisy of international communities that attempt to stop us from addressing these (Islamic terrorism) threats. These commonalities should manifest into intensive economic cooperation.”
This high-level acknowledgement and validation between extremist leaders creates the political cover necessary for deeper integration. Zionism and Hindutva may not share many similarities in terms of theory regarding labour or asset management; yet, the political projects recognise that the lack of historical commonality in theoretical beliefs shouldn’t prevent them from solidifying their agendas through investments and trades.
Beyond diplomatic gestures, both governments have systematically created economic dependencies that bind their populations together.
Workers as pawns in labour export
In early November 2023, thousands of Palestinian workers who form the crucial, yet invisible backbone of the Israeli economy were deported to war-torn territories. Around the same time, India signed a bilateral agreement with Israel to send its own workers. By January, thousands of young men lined up outside job centres, hoping to replace the deported Palestinians in Israel. Today, around 20,000 Indians are employed in Israeli construction and care sectors.
Government advertisements promised them salaries higher than in the UAE or Qatar.
Anoop Singh, a college graduate and construction worker, told AP News he would earn about $1,600 a month in Israel compared to $360 to $420 for the same work at home.
Despite these promises, ten prominent Indian trade unions representing over a million workers condemned the agreement, calling the move “inhumane” and urging the government to refrain from exporting vulnerable workers to Israel and to continue to shape the country’s foreign policy in accordance with support for Palestine. However, the government continued with the labour deal, turning India’s high unemployment rate and cheap labour into political leverage to strengthen its alliance with Israel.
This agreement benefited both right-wing governments and contributed to creating shared solidarity in uplifting each other’s economies. For many of India’s upper-class voters, for whom the recruitment deal was not a job opportunity to be considered, the agreement was seen as a simple economic exchange. They saw the exploitation as a favour by the foreign right-wing government and a cunning, economically self-indulgent move by the far-right government at home. Across the ocean, Israelis were reassured that their lives would not be put on hold by the mass deportation and killing of Palestinians; cheaper, alternative and replaceable labour will always be available.
For ideologies to be seen as complementary, the common people need to feel economic benefits in the alignment. It helps in strengthening reasons for a desire for shared solidarity.
Ambani and soft power
Beyond labour as pawn, research and academia are essential tools in building alliances, and this hasn’t gone unnoticed by the big businesses funding the Observer Research Foundation (ORF).
Mukesh Ambani, a key player in the Indian economy and owner of Reliance Industries, played a major role in establishing ORF. Although the foundation claims not to be run by the interests of its investors, the work proves otherwise.
Its annual flagship conference, Raisina Dialogue, organised in partnership with the Ministry of External Affairs, hosts several Israeli scholars and politicians along with other world leaders. This multilateral geopolitical conference sets the tone of the country’s stance in global politics.
In 2018, the third year of the conference, the inaugural address was given by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. He spoke about his love for soft power and distaste for bureaucracy:
“If you want to have economic power, you must reduce taxes, simplify taxes, and you must cut bureaucracy. In our cases (India and Israel), we don’t have any bureaucracy to begin with, as you know. We must cut it with a machete.”
Such events allow for validation of each’s agenda. In 2018, PM Modi was still riding the saffron wave and putting down his roots across the world. The same year, the citizenship status of four million residents of Assam State, largely Bengali-speaking Muslims, was omitted from a draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC). At the same time, the Israeli parliament passed the controversial law singling out Hebrew as the official state language and stating that Jews have a unique right to national self-determination.
It is not new for power structures to assert their might through academic events. This soft power lends intellectual legitimacy to the ideological convergence occurring at the grassroots level.
Inaugural addresses and guests of honour aim to highlight the close ties, similarities, and growing acknowledgement between the two nations. It helps in controlling the narratives among the ruling educated elite, which, over time, is hoped to trickle down to the masses, when mixed with other forms of narrative production.
Idolisation by journalists
In August 2025, several Indian journalists from a variety of media publications across the political spectrum met with Israeli spokesperson to India Guy Nir and PM Netanyahu at a junket organised by the Israeli foreign ministry. While such media events are usual newsroom practice, the lack of questioning on the genocide, halt of aid, and restricted media access gave more of a fan meet & greet aesthetic.
Siddhant Sibal of WION, a media publication owned by Zee Entertainment Enterprises, posted on X (formerly Twitter) an autograph by PM Netanyahu. This goes beyond restricted reportage by government-controlled media outlets. It highlights personal affiliations and values of journalists of such organisations who, outside office hours, beyond headlines, prefer to idolise political leaders. This excitement to boost the physical proximity to a faraway country’s leader, a man accused of corruption and war crimes, sells both an aspirational dream to the country’s population and an idolised political leader.
The dream strengthens the state-affiliated media by illustrating that working in organisations funded by those close to the government can put you in rooms with world leaders, not to quench your curiosity or report, but to boost your ability to social climb.
The idolisation is a direct trick from the authoritarian playbook practised well in India. The alienation of a leader by glamourisation, giving them a celebrity-like status, helps in isolating them from their policies and conduct. This has been happening to PM Modi since 2014.
While these actions do not directly relate Hindutva to Zionism in an ideologically theoretical way, they help the modern political projects strengthen. It projects both leaders as similar, faraway entities of power and a force of admiration.
Beyond this, the Indian TV media has spent hours of prime-time news to draw parallels between the struggles of the Zionist and Hindutva movements.
Mythification through media
A day after the militant attack in Indian administered Kashmir in April 2025, Indian news anchor, owner, and founder of Republic TV, Arnab Goswami, said on live television, “This is a Hamas-style attack. The 22nd of April is to India what October 7th or 17th is to Israel. People of India must wake up. There are Hamas supporters in our country.”
He couldn’t remember when the gruesome attack in Israel happened, but he knew it was like the attack in Indian administered Kashmir. The language he uses flattens history by equating two distant, complex geographical conflicts to fit a framework easier to understand and sell.
While Goswami might have said it on a whim to garner viewers through shock value, the Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich was steadier and calculated with the comparison. During this trip to sign the investment agreement, he repeated multiple times that both nations must deal with “lethal attacks by Islamic terrorism”. He claimed that the massacre in Pahalgam and the October 7th attack should remind everyone that the two nations are fighting a common war against evil.
Throughout post-Pahalgam attack coverage, Indian news channels enunciated that the ultimate threat is the Pakistani nationality. The veiled message, however, remained the same, which is that the Indian identity equates to the Hindu identity, which continues to be under threat by the Islamic identity, whichever nationality it prides itself on. This directly plays into India’s repositioning in global politics, where it now presents itself as a frontline ally in the global fight against Islamic extremism, rather than previously, when it prided itself as the leader of the Global South.
In Israel, more direct methods are deployed. In a YouTube video put out by an Israeli media platform called Facts For Peace, an Indian and an Israeli arrange a sit-in with a huge placard reading, “Hindus & Jews have more in common than you think. Ask us why!” They claim that the world is treating both communities as “aggressors” when they are the ones being attacked. The Indian mentions violence of partition, and being a native to the Indian subcontinent, a culture that they claim is like the lived Jewish experience. This manufactured kinship transforms complex geopolitical conflicts into a simple narrative of shared victimhood.
These new forms of media target the younger generation. The current youth have grown up in the digital age and consume all information from either social media apps or the internet at large. In this sense, mythmaking becomes not only an ideological exercise but also a digital product. It targets youth as young as early teenagers by presenting itself as a genuine attempt to educate the viewer.
Disinformation machinery as leverage
A week into the October 7th attack on southern Israel, Prateek Sinha, co-founder of AltNews, an Indian media organisation aimed at debunking misinformation posted on X (formerly Twitter), “With India now exporting its disinformation actors in the Indian mainstream media and on social media in support of Israel, hopefully the world will now realise how the Indian right-wing has made India the disinformation capital of the world.”
The same month, BOOM reported that they found many verified Indian accounts on X spreading a disinformation campaign against Palestine. Out-of-context videos with misleading claims, such as the use of behind-the-scenes footage of a Palestinian short film, ‘Empty Places’, with captions claiming Palestinians are staging a crime scene using child actors, were reshared multiple times. This is content that has been used time and again to delegitimise the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. It is also similar to the disinformation template shared regarding the plight of minorities in India.
A lot of the propaganda in Israel about the Palestinians’ lifestyle choices is also similar to that of Indian Muslims. Both revolve around stories of a growing population and a sedentary work lifestyle. The BJP information technology cell, which plays a strong role in this, is a notoriously growing online platform that pushes state propaganda to either distort the truth or create an illusion of disproportionate support for right-wing policies. Their accounts have become increasingly verified since Twitter’s takeover by Elon Musk, increasing their likelihood of being shared. This is part of a larger machinery that has been building since before PM Modi came to power in 2014. It includes media personnel, state-backed news influencers, disinformation tools, on-ground cadre, and think tanks, creating the power structure possible for the right wing to continue to govern and alienate any forms of oppositional voices. It’s a massive economic leverage for the BJP in global politics as it enables the government to control the narrative economically, academically and ideologically.
Both Modi and Netanyahu have systematically deployed tactics to integrate Zionist and Hindutva beliefs, transforming the global expression of Hindu nationalism and establishing sympathies across the global right while strengthening the Zionist ideology using Indian manpower, both physically and digitally. As this alliance deepens, both movements are becoming more internationally networked, sophisticated in their messaging, and successful at presenting exclusionary nationalism as a defensive necessity.
Sadia Ahmad is an Indian journalist currently based in London who writes about politics, digital culture, and identity.
