In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, the Jewish state received the usual outpouring of sympathy from the craven leadership classes of the West. That is to be expected from politicians who are bought off and extorted by Jewish interest groups.

That said, Israel also received a deluge of support from the least likely of the places — the Indian Subcontinent. Thousands of Hindu nationalists took to social media to express their sympathies with Israel after Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel. One could go on X/Twitter to see threads brimming with pro-Israeli posts from the social media platform’s large base of Indian users.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a staunch Hindu nationalist, offered his support to the Jewish state immediately after the Hamas attack, declaring, “Deeply shocked by the news of terrorist attacks in Israel. Our thoughts and prayers are with the innocent victims and their families. We stand in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour.” Curiously, Modi became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Israel in 2017, further accelerating a growing economic and security relationship between the world’s largest democracy and the Jewish state.

Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, lit: “Indian People’s Party”) is notorious for its hyper-Zionist sympathies. The ideological progenitor of the BJP, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has long wanted to emulate the Zionist project. RSS intellectual Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a source of ideological inspiration for many present-day BJP leaders, published a book “Hindutva” in 1923, where he advocated for the formation of a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu state). Savarkar also waited in anticipation for the Jews to achieve the “Zionist dream” of transforming Palestine into a Jewish state. The RSS ideologue wrote effusively about the prospect of a Jewish state: “If the Zionists’ dreams are ever realised — if Palestine becomes a Jewish state — it will gladden us almost as much as our Jewish friends.”

There is a growing synergy between Israeli nationalists, Hindu nationalists, and pro-Zionist interests in the West. In fact, the gate-keeping, Israel First “National Conservativism” movement backed by the Edmund Burke foundation recently featured two BJP politicians Ram Madhav and Swapan Dasgupta at National Conservatism’s July 2024 conference. Madhav and Dasgupta have expressed pro-Israeli sentiments on multiple occasions. The former is open about using the Indian diaspora, which numbers over 30 million, as a tool for advancing India’s interests abroad.

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