“The Indian defense and security establishments have been unabashed votaries of India’s strategic ties with Israel,” but that is now over, Amb. M. K. Bhadrakumar, a career Indian diplomat now retired, wrote in his Punchline blog Dec. 26.
In his view, “India has reverted to its traditional stance on the Palestine problem and jettisoned the tilt supportive of Israeli interests…. The incidents of October 7 have been an eye opener for Indians, which has exposed not only Israel’s frailties as a modern state but also its military’s bluster and intelligence’s failure. The acolytes of Israel in the Indian strategic community feel utterly disillusioned. Simply put, an influential constituency in India and the interest groups that it spawned are no longer calling the shots in Delhi. This is going to be consequential,” he wrote.
He points to three Indian policy stances that reflect this shift: Delhi’s refusal to declare Hamas a terrorist organization, despite “repeated Israeli entreaties” to do so; the Dec. 13 vote in favor of the UN General Assembly resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire (India had abstained on the earlier resolution with that call); and on Dec. 19, being one of only 30 states along with Russia and China, which voted against a UN resolution on “the human rights situation in Iran.” This, Bhadrakumar writes, showed Delhi “has marked its distance from the U.S.-Israeli campaign branding Iran as the instigator of the extremist groups against Israel.”
