I said to the [Indian] foreign minister that the partnership between Israel and India is a marriage made in heaven but consecrated on earth.
Netanyahu in an interview for IndiaToday
India’s growing partnership with Israel is based upon a convergence of both security interests and ethnonational ideological perspectives and supremacist views.
The public deepening of ties took place under the ruling party of Narendra Modi’s BJP because, unlike the Congress Party, it did not have the same ideological commitment to the Palestinian cause and the Arab world, and not the same concerns about the Muslim electorate in India.
Israel has become a major supplier of military equipment and sophisticated weaponry to India, standing second to Russia, and reaching about 40% of Israel’s total arms export between 2000 and 2010 (source: SIPRI).
Back in the 90s the trade relations were mostly based on diamonds, which constituted at the time close to 40% of the bilateral trade (source: Indian MEA).
The two countries’ cooperation extended rapidly to space, research and development innovation, cyber surveillance, oil & gas, water technology, agriculture and film co-production.
For example, during Modi’s 2017 visit to Israel, India purchased the Pegasus software used to hack into around 300 digital accounts of activists, journalists and opposition leaders.
Since 2015, Indian Police Service officer trainees have been trained by the Israel National Police Academy every year.
As part of the “Make in India” initiative, Israeli weapons are directly produced in India.
The collaboration has particularly grown in the areas of water and agriculture since 2017.
Indian authorities have partnered with Mashav, Israel’s government Agency for International Development, specifically in the occupied region of Jammu and Kashmir to build “Centres of Excellence” for training farmers.
These centres are greenwashing Israel’s apartheid in Palestine and support the attempts of Indian authorities and corporations to alter the land use and demography of Kashmir. There are 29 CoEs in 12 states across India.
Indian-American hindu nationalist groups developed and modeled themselves on the most fierce Pro-Israel lobby in the US (AIPAC) forming the Indian American Centre for Political Action (IACPA), and the United States India Political Action Committee (USINPAC).
The two groups have nurtured a constant dialogue since then.