Operation Sindoor: Both Hindutva backers and leftists are wrong in claiming India-Israel parallels
The escalation of hostilities between India and Pakistan and the ceasefire announced on Saturday have hurled the countries into the global news cycle. As India sought revenge for the terrorist attacks in Pahalgam on April 22, some Hindutva supporters called for it to emulate Israel-style attacks on Gaza.
Mirroring these calls are allegations by Islamists and misguided Leftists that draw parallels between India and Israel. These parallels are erroneous and must be corrected.
Products of Partition
The subcontinental version of Israel is Pakistan, not India. Both were created by partitioning existing countries on the basis of religion. Pakistan was the product of the Two Nation Theory which, as Pakistani Army Chief Asif Munir reminded us in April, postulated that Hindus and Muslims could not live together within the same nation-state owing to their vast cultural differences and antagonistic worldviews.
Pakistan was established in 1947 as the homeland of Indian Muslims, even as a third of the subcontinent’s Muslim population rejected its foundational worldview.
Israel was the product of Zionism, a movement that claimed a homeland for Jews in historic Palestine, even as over half the world’s Jews live outside it. These parallels led the historian Faisal Devji to call Pakistan a “Muslim Zion”.
India and Palestine neither claimed nor intended themselves to be mono-religious,...
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