About the Book

WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GROWING INDIA-ISRAEL ALLIANCE?
In the past decade, under the Narendra Modi-led government, India has changed dramatically. As the world attempts to grapple with the country’s sharp turn towards authoritarianism and Hindutva, little attention has been paid to the way India has leaned on Israeli weapons, military tactics and technical support to build its own ethnonationalist state.
As a leader of the much-lauded Non-Aligned Movement, India was once perceived as a pillar of pro-Palestine solidarity. New Delhi had equated Zionism with racism, after all. It was the first non-Arab state to recognise the Palestinian Liberation Organization. How, then, did Israel become a cornerstone of India’s foreign policy? If India was an opponent of colonialism and apartheid, why does its agenda in Kashmir look so similar to Israel’s settler-colonial project in Palestine? And how did a traditional supporter of the Palestinian cause become such a willing partner to Israel’s genocide in Gaza?
Hostile Homelands puts India’s relationship with Israel in its historical context, looking at the origins of, and connections between, Zionism and Hindutva. It examines the nature of India’s changing position on Palestine and its growing military-industrial relationship with Isreal from the 1990s onwards. Lucid and persuasive, Azad Essa demonstrates that the India-Israel alliance spells significant consequences for democracy, the rule of law and justice worldwide.

About the Author

Azad Essa is an award winning South African journalist and writer based in the New York metropolitan area. He is currently a senior reporter for the Middle East Eye, focusing on social movements, culture, and resistance. He is the author of The Moslems are Coming and Zuma's Bastard and has written for Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy and the Guardian. He is a research associate at the Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg.