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Amnesty Warns India Risks Complicity in Gaza Genocide by Selling Arms to Israel
“The Indian government must immediately stop authorizing exports of weapons, ammunition, and parts to Israel."
Jul 30, 2026
Continued weapons exports to Israel could make India, members of its far-right government, and the country's arms firms complicit in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, an investigation published Thursday by Amnesty International warned.
Amnesty's report, Made in India: The Supply of Weapons and Ammunition to Israel, documents sustained exports of military components and materials to Israel by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite mounting international legal warnings that states must halt arms transfers where there is a substantial risk they could facilitate genocide or other grave violations of international law.
“Our research reveals India’s continuing support to the Israeli military and defense sector despite the genocide in Gaza, which has been broadcast worldwide on an almost daily basis for years,” Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard said in a statement introducing the report.
The investigation analyzed shipment-level trade data between India and Israel to reveal how Indian arms, ammunition, and other military components have been exported to large Israeli companies that supply the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as it wages a US-backed war that Amnesty and many other rights groups, national governments, and experts—including a United Nations commission of inquiry—contend is a genocide.
Amnesty researchers found that the 2,596 shipments of weapons, ammunition, parts, and components sent from India to Israel since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 include 390,516 small arms parts for military-grade weapons, 564,970 parts of explosive ordnance like drone warheads and artillery shell casings, and 298 components for military vehicles.
"While the Israeli military was inflicting widespread death, destruction and suffering on Palestinians in Gaza, Indian companies continued to profit by supplying components and munitions destined for Israel’s defense sector," Callamard said.
While nowhere near the scale and scope of the tens of billions of dollars in armed aid the US has sent Israel since October 2023 under the Biden and Trump administrations—or even what other countries like Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and France export—India's military shipments to Israel have still exposed New Delhi to charges of complicity in the death or injury of more than 250,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians; the physical annihilation of Gaza; and the forced displacement and engineered starvation of millions of its people by Israel.
"India manufactures and supplies arms transferred to Israel through its ownership and control over key supplier companies," Callamard said. "Not only has India failed to regulate arms exports to Israel by private companies in line with international law and standards; it has also deepened its defense partnership with Israel."
“In light of the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures orders recognizing a plausible risk of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, the Indian authorities cannot credibly argue that they did not know that continuing to authorize and facilitate arms transfers to Israel carries a substantial risk of contributing to serious violations of international law," she added.
The ICJ is currently weighing a genocide case filed by South Africa against Israel, and has issued a series of provisional orders to prevent genocidal acts that Israel is accused of ignoring.
While India formally recognized Israel in 1950, for decades New Delhi maintained limited relations, partly due to its support for the Palestinian cause, leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement, and domestic political considerations. Full diplomatic relations weren't established until 1992.
Since then—and especially since the rise of Modi and the Hindu nationalist BJP—bilateral ties have expanded rapidly. Israel has become one of India's largest arms suppliers, selling radar systems, drones, missiles, surveillance equipment, and air defense technology. Joint military research and production have increased, as have public security, intelligence sharing, and other efforts against what both countries call terrorism committed by people resisting Israel's illegal occupation in Palestine and Indian repression in the parts of Jammu and Kashmir that New Delhi controls.
Modi and Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—have also forged close personal relations. Both leaders are right-wing nationalists who utilize religious supremacism to exclude or marginalize Muslims, and both have been accused of increasing authoritarianism, just like their common ally, US President Donald Trump. Protests against Israel's Gaza onslaught have been violently suppressed in both countries.
Prominent left-wing Indians have long condemned their government's ties with Israel.
“At a time when the ceasefire is being used as an excuse to bomb and vaporize Palestinians and occupy Gaza, the Indian government is choosing to stand with genocidal Israel and its imperialist masters like America and is working overtime to benefit the corporations from the occupation of Palestine," Indian People in Solidarity With Palestine and the India chapter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement said earlier this year in a joint statement coinciding with a Modi's visit to Israel.
Famed Indian author Arundhati Roy warned two years ago that if India did not stop arming Israel, “it will forever be complicit in aiding and abetting a genocide that is being telecast live for the world to watch.”
In her statement Tuesday, Callamard said that “the Indian government must immediately stop authorizing exports of weapons, ammunition, and parts to Israel."
"It must also ensure that companies operating under its jurisdiction do not contribute to crimes under international law," she added. "All companies have a responsibility to respect human rights throughout their global operations, which includes taking proactive and robust measures early on to ensure that their products are not involved in serious violations of international law."
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'Cockroaches Won!': Youth-Led Protests Called Off After India's Education Minister Quits
"Don't mistake the beginning for the end," said the Cockroach Janta Party, which vowed to press for further reforms and government accountability.
Jul 26, 2026
India's Cockroach Janta Party ended its five-week multi-city protest on Saturday after the youth-led movement's key demand—the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan—was met.
“We have done it,” CJP spokesperson Saurav Das told a jubilant crowd at New Delhi's Jantar Mantar. "Pradhan has sent in his resignation, which means that our first demand has been met."
Das said that the protesters' second main demand, the withdrawal of criminal investigations targeting CJP members, was also met. However, members and supporters of the movement noted that some cockroach protesters remain in detention and vowed to continue pressing for their release.
Pradhan's resignation is the first such surrender to public pressure during the 12-year tenure of Hindu nationalist Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“Considering the situation at Jantar Mantar and elsewhere in the country, and so that anti-national forces do not take advantage of the circumstances, national unity is maintained, no student’s future gets entangled in legal complications, and our children can focus on their studies and building their careers, I have submitted my resignation," Pradhan said in a statement.
Pradhan's tenure was marred by repeated leaks of National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) papers in a scandal that has upended the lives of millions of students by forcing them to retake the grueling exams and delaying their university admissions. CJP organizers said more than 20 students have killed themselves over the matter.
The now-ex education minister had dismissed the protesters as “the B-team of terrorists.”
On Sunday, Modi said he would authorize the creation of an examination reform task force headed by Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Indian tech giant Infosys.
“The government of India is continuously taking various measures for the future of students," the Bharatiya Janata Party prime minister said in a video posted on social media. "However, we must look to the future. Our examination system needs to be reliable and transparent, and it must make maximum use of technology."
The protest movement began in May after Chief Justice of India Surya Kant reportedly compared unemployed young people to “cockroaches.” The protesters, led by political strategist Abhijeet Dipke, satirically reclaimed the slur as the symbol of a movement that has grown into a broader challenge to Modi’s increasingly authoritarian rule, which has seen mounting repression of protest and dissent, including restrictions on journalists and activists, and the use of "lawfare" to target critics.
Last week, tens of thousands of youth-led protesters marched in New Delhi, where they were met and attacked by police batons and tear gas. Indian media reported thousands of injuries.
The mood was markedly different following Pradhan's resignation.
"Cockroaches won!" many CJP members and supporters said.
Others added, "Democracy Won!"
"This is democracy," said the CJP.
"Now that the cockroaches have won their first battle, may they win many more," Tavleen Singh, a columnist for The Indian Express, wrote on X. "May they become a real political party in the near future."
Sonam Wangchuk, an environmentalist whose hunger strike was a focal point of the cockroach protests, was released Sunday from a Gurugram hospital, where he had been recovering from his 26-day fast since Thursday.
Emboldened by the CJP victory, members of the Communist Party of India (CPI)-affiliated All-India Youth Federation and All-India Students' Federation marched on the Chennai residence of Tamil Nadu Gov. Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar demanding the abolition of the NEET. According to Indian media reports, police detained more than 200 of the demonstrators.
"The struggle will intensify," said CPI.
"Don't mistake the beginning for the end," echoed CJP.
Asked Sunday what's next for the cockroach movement, Dipke told an ANI reporter that "we will soon share the next strategy."
"This has just ended yesterday," he added, "please give us a little time."
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'Black Day for Democracy': Indian Police Bash and Gas Youth-Led 'Cockroach' Protesters
“It’s just shocking to see that the people we elected have turned a blind eye to youth dying," said one protester.
Jul 20, 2026
Indian protesters rallying Monday in New Delhi under the banner of the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party were brutally attacked by police as they marched toward the country's Parliament demanding the resignation of the country's education minister and denouncing the right-wing government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of the Indian capital despite police bans, barricades, internet shutdowns, and a heavy security presence. Police, some of them in plain clothes, attacked the overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrators with baton charges and tear gas. Delhi police are controlled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled central government.
The Wire reported that thousands of people were injured—some seriously—by police. Despite video footage and photos showing officer brutality, Delhi Police denied "sporadic use of violence" against protesters.
The protesters are seeking the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan following repeated leaks of National Eligibility Entrance Test papers that have upended the lives of millions of students by forcing them to retake the grueling exams and delaying university admissions. Protest organizers say more than 20 students have killed themselves over the matter.
Late last month, Pradhan dismissed the protesters as "the B-team of terrorists."
“Already more than 20 students have died by suicide, but this government is not done yet," Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke said on social media. "This government has resorted to hooliganism now.”
Protester Rhythm Katoch told The Guardian on Monday: “They are calling this protest illegal, they are calling us anti-national. But I am 22 years old, and I am standing here to fight for our education system, for the rights of the young people, and for our democracy. Is it too much to ask for the government to listen to us?”
The CJP and other student groups have been leading hunger strikes at the Jantar Mantar, an 18th-century astronomical observatory designated as the protest site. Three students from the leftist All India Students' Association ended their fast on Monday, while environmentalist Sonam Wangchuk, who has been on a hunger strike since June 28, was taken by authorities on Saturday to Safdarjung Hospital, where he continues his fast.
“I am touched and moved by how the youth have held on to peace despite provocation,” Wangchuk said Monday.
The movement began in May after Chief Justice of India Surya Kant reportedly compared unemployed young people to “cockroaches." The protesters satirically reclaimed the slur as the symbol of a movement that has grown into a broader challenge to Modi's increasingly authoritarian Hindu nationalist rule, which has seen mounting repression of protest and dissent, including restrictions on journalists and activists, and the use of legal measures to target critics.
On Monday, protesters chanted “Go, Pradhan, Go, Saat Mein Modi Ko Bhi Lo! (Take Modi along with you too!),” banging plastic bottles on the ground to keep the beat.
“It’s just shocking to see that the people we elected have turned a blind eye to youth dying… because of their incompetency,” Sajal, a 22-year-old law student, told The Straits Times.
Another protester, yoga instructor Jyoti Rajput, told The Associated Press that she joined the demonstration because “this rotten system refuses to take action.”
“It cannot see the pain of students, and that’s why so many people have joined this movement,” she added.
Amid Monday's demonstration, CJP leaders met Union Minister JP Nadda at his Delhi home.
"The minister assured us he will discuss this at the appropriate level,” CJP spokesperson Saurav Das said on social media. “However, no commitments have been made so far.”
Responding to the brutal crackdown, Amnesty International India board chair Aakar Patel said in a statement that “the images and reports emerging from the protest at Jantar Mantar show how peaceful dissent is being suppressed in India."
“The role of the authorities is to protect and facilitate peaceful protests, not to suppress them," he continued. "The right to freedom of peaceful assembly is recognized under international human rights law and the Indian Constitution."
"The Delhi Police’s actions raise serious questions about whether their response met the requirements of legality, necessity, and proportionality under international human rights standards," Patel added. "We call on the Delhi Police to exercise restraint and immediately cease the use of unlawful force against peaceful protesters. Authorities must ensure that all allegations of unlawful conduct, including the reported excessive use of batons, tear gas, and stone-throwing by police personnel, are promptly, independently, and impartially investigated.”
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'Like an Obedient Servant': Indian Opposition Blasts Modi's Response to US Killing of Sailors
One Indian politician called President Donald Trump "a cowardly, cold-blooded murderer" and vowed he "will be held accountable for the Indian lives lost."
Jun 15, 2026
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is taking heat from his political opponents for his response to the deaths of three ship workers who were killed in the Gulf of Oman last week by US forces as part of President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran.
Fury in India has only grown over the past few days as the US has refused to apologize for the deaths of the three men, who were killed by missile strikes as they were working aboard commercial oil tankers.
Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition National Congress Party, took to social media on Sunday to blast Modi, leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, for remaining "silent" over the killing of the sailors by the US.
"Just days after the murder of three Indian sailors in American attacks—no remorse, no apology," wrote Gandhi, who accused Modi and his allies of behaving "like an obedient servant" by not confronting the Trump administration over the incident.
Indian politician Arvind Kejriwal, who previously served as the chief minister of Delhi, vowed that Trump "will be held accountable for the Indian lives lost," going so far as to call the US president "a cowardly, cold-blooded murderer."
"It is unfortunate that PM Modi remains silent," Kejriwal added, "but soon, India will have a strong prime minister who will make you pay for your misdeeds."
Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor took aim at US Secretary of State Marco Rubio for emphasizing, in the wake of the killings, that all ships operating around the Strait of Hormuz "should immediately comply with orders from US forces" or else risk becoming targets.
"Deeply shocking to read this official US statement, which contains absolutely no expression of regret or condolence for the loss of innocent Indian lives," wrote Tharoor. "How can a 'friend' and strategic partner be so deeply insensitive?"
Tharoor added that "practically every merchant ship navigating these crucial waters has Indian crew on board," and asked whether they are "all considered fair fame for US missiles now?"
The US Central Command claimed last week that the ship where the three slain Indian crew members worked "repeatedly refused to comply with directions from American forces," after which US aircraft "fired precision munitions into the ship's engine room."
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DOJ Reportedly Set to Drop Fraud Charges Against Billionaire After He Hired Trump Attorney
"The way to avoid fraud charges under the Trump administration is to hire Trump's personal lawyer and engage in bribery," said one critic.
May 14, 2026
The US Department of Justice is reportedly preparing to drop charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani shortly after he hired one of President Donald Trump's personal lawyers to represent him.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that the DOJ—now headed by former Trump attorney Todd Blanche—is working on ending its case against Adani, who was indicted in November 2024 along with two colleagues for alleged conspiracies to commit securities and wire fraud, among other charges.
The Times noted that the DOJ's reversal came after Adani hired a legal team headed by attorney Robert Giuffra Jr., who is currently leading efforts to overturn Trump's 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records.
According to the Times, Giuffra's work for Adani "culminated in a previously unreported meeting last month at the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington" that included an offer that "if prosecutors dropped the charges, Mr. Adani would be willing to invest $10 billion in the American economy and create 15,000 jobs."
Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the DOJ could announce it's dropping charges against Adani "as soon as this week," and added that the Securities and Exchange Commission "is also moving to settle a parallel civil fraud case it brought against Adani and others in November 2024."
The DOJ alleged that Adani, whom Forbes estimates is worth at least $82 billion, "orchestrated an elaborate scheme to bribe Indian government officials to secure contracts worth billions of dollars," and then subsequently lied about the scheme to secure funding from US investors.
Given Trump's past pardons of white-collar criminals—including a cryptocurrency magnate who helped boost the value of the president's personal meme coin—some observers were quick to label the DOJ's move to drop charges against Adani an act of corruption.
University of Arkansas economist Jeremy Horpedahl commented that the Adani case shows that "the way to avoid fraud charges under the Trump administration is to hire Trump's personal lawyer and engage in bribery."
Manish Sharma, leader of the Indian Youth Congress, suggested Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also involved in the effort to get charges dropped for Adani, a longtime political ally.
"Perfect timing, just months after Modi signed that one-sided trade deal with Trump," wrote Sharma. "Quid pro quo delivered: Compromised PM sells out Indian interests, Trump admin returns the favor to Modi’s favorite billionaire."
Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation, criticized the New York Times for describing the quid pro quo proposed by Giuffra on behalf of his client as an "unusual offer."
"'UNUSUAL OFFER??' No, headline writers," wrote Mystal, who then suggested a more accurate headline: "Charges Dropped Against Indian Billionaire Accused of Bribery, After Offering Trump A Bribe."
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'Cowardly and Despicable': Hegseth Condemned for Sinking of ‘Defenseless’ Iranian Ship
"If the United States is at war, then Pete Hegseth is a war criminal. If the United States is not at war, then Pete Hegseth is a murderer."
Mar 05, 2026
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday was condemned for his boasts on Wednesday about sinking an Iranian military ship after allegations emerged that it was "defenseless" at the time it was torpedoed in international waters by a US submarine.
Military.com reported Thursday that the Iranian ship had been departing from a biennial multinational naval training exercise that it had been invited to participate in by the Indian government.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has so far remained silent on the US attack on the ship, but other politicians in India delivering sharp condemnations.
According to the Times of India, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi tore into Modi for not speaking up after the US torpedoed a boat that his government had invited into its waters.
"The conflict has reached our backyard, with an Iranian warship sunk in the Indian Ocean," Gandhi said. "Yet the PM has said nothing. At a moment like this, we need a steady hand at the wheel. Instead, India has a compromised PM who has surrendered our strategic autonomy."
In a social media post, former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal said there was no way that the Iranian ship could have been perceived as any kind of military threat.
"I am told that as per protocol for this exercise ships cannot carry any ammunition," he wrote. "It was defenseless... The attack by the US submarine was premeditated as the US was aware of the Iranian ship's presence in the exercise to which the US navy was invited but withdrew from participation at the last minute, presumably with this operation in mind."
Drop Site News reporter Ryan Grim noted that, in addition to striking what appears to have been a defenseless boat, the US also didn't help rescue any of the shipwrecked men who were aboard the vessel.
"The Sri Lanka Navy was left to pull the dead bodies from the water," Grim commented. "I am hard pressed to think of any other nation throughout history that would do something so cowardly and despicable. We are genuinely in a league of our own, and American media—mostly shrugging off the bombing of a girls school and acting as if carpet bombing Tehran is a normal military tactic—is deeply complicit."
Author Bruno Maçães also pointed to the decision to leave the shipwrecked crew at sea as an act of historic depravity.
"Really quite extraordinary that the US bombed an Iranian ship and then left the surviving sailors to drown," Maçães wrote. "There are many many accounts of the Nazis or Imperial Japan saving survivors at sea. I see we have now dropped below that level."
Mohamad Safa, executive director of PVA Patriotic Vision, an international multilateral organization with special consultative status at the United Nations Economic and Social Council, said that the US attack on the Iranian ship constituted either a war crime or straight-up murder.
"What Pete Hegseth ordered the military to do violates international law," he wrote. "The Iranian ship was near Sri Lanka, in international waters outside the combat zone and on a training exercise. Under the Geneva Conventions, you are obligated to rescue the crew of a ship that you sink during war. Abandoned any survivors and leaving them to drown is illegal and a war crime."
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'Disgraceful Act of Complicity': Indian Left Denounces Modi's Israel Visit
"Modi's embrace of Zionist Israel amidst its relentless genocidal assault on Palestine is a betrayal of India's anti-colonial legacy," said one leftist leader.
Feb 25, 2026
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's arrival in Israel on Wednesday sparked widespread condemnation among his country's leftists, many of whom accused the Hindu nationalist leader of complicity in Israel's annihilation of Gaza.
Modi was warmly welcomed at Ben-Gurion International Airport by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara to kick off a two-day state visit that is expected to focus on issues including military cooperation and arms sales, as Indian purchases of Israeli weaponry have increased exponentially in recent years.
The Indian leader was also joyously greeted at his place of accommodation, the King David Hotel, where in 1946 Jewish militants seeking independence from British occupation carried out a bombing that killed 91 people, including at least 15 Jews.
Modi addressed the Israeli Knesset, or Parliament, lamenting the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 in which 1,195 Israelis and others were killed and 251 abducted. But he said nothing about the more than 250,000 Palestinians killed or wounded by Israel's genocidal retaliation.
He did say that "no cause can justify the murder of civilians." But he was talking about Israeli, not Palestinian, civilians.
"Modi endorsed the brutal killing of 71,000 innocent Palestinians from reckless Israeli bombing," Calcutta-based journalist Seema Sengupta said on social media in response to the Knesset speech. "The death on both sides should've been mourned by him. Instead, he sounded like a partisan leader of a party which gained prominence through disharmony, violence, and bloodshed."
The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M)—which leads the ruling Left Democratic Front that currently heads the Kerala state government—said it "strongly opposes" Modi's visit, which it called "a betrayal of the Palestinian cause" that "legitimizes the murderous Netanyahu regime."
"The visit comes at a juncture when Israel has been waging a genocidal war in Gaza," the party continued. "Despite a ceasefire, there are daily violations by Israel which conducts strikes killing scores of Palestinians. In the occupied West Bank, there are stepped up attacks on Palestinians and a spurt in illegal settlements."
"The declared intent of the visit is also to deepen strategic, military, and economic ties with a Zionist expansionist regime which seeks to dominate the region with the help of the United States," CPI-M added. "The visit is all the more inopportune because it is taking place at a time when the United States is preparing to attack Iran militarily at the instigation of Israel."
CPI-M General Secretary M A Baby said that "Modi's embrace of Zionist Israel amidst its relentless genocidal assault on Palestine is a betrayal of India's anti-colonial legacy."
The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, whose stronghold is in the eastern state of Bihar, said that it "condemns Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel as a disgraceful act of complicity in the ongoing genocidal assault on the Palestinian people."
"At a time when Palestinian civilians are being massacred, displaced, and starved under a brutal Israeli occupation, this visit amounts to political endorsement and profiteering on Palestinian blood," CPI (ML) Liberation continued. "After mortgaging India’s sovereignty and strategic autonomy to [US President Donald] Trump's racist agenda, Modi is now completely surrendering India’s historic legacy of anti-colonialism and solidarity with the oppressed by visiting Israel."
"Since assuming office in 2014, the Modi regime has systematically imported Israeli models of repression to consolidate its own politics of hate at home," the party added. "From bulldozer demolitions and collective punishment tactics against minorities and marginalized, to the expansion of illegal surveillance infrastructures, the [Bharatiya Janata Party]’s fascist politics has found a role model in Israel."
Israel and India have deepened ties since Modi and the BJP were elected over a decade ago. Both Modi and Netanyahu are right-wing nationalists who utilize religious supremacism to exclude or marginalize Muslims, and both have been accused of increasing authoritarianism, just like their common ally Trump.
Center-leftists including members of the opposition Indian National Congress—which has been criticized for its "pragmatic" engagement with Israel—also condemned Modi's visit.
Left-leaning members of Indian civil society and academia also decried the visit.
Rebuffing Modi's claim that this week's shirtless anti-BJP demonstrations by members of the Indian Youth Congress were an embarrassment for the nation, Delhi School of Economics professor Nandini Sundar said on social media that visiting "genocide-committing Israel has embarrassed and shamed Indians more than a 1,000 shirtless protests."
The activist group Indian People in Solidarity With Palestine and the India chapter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement issued a joint statement accusing the "fascist BJP government" of working "hands-in-gloves with genocidal Israel" to "suppress voices of dissent while maintaining a facade of being democratic."
Members of Indian People in Solidarity With Palestine and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement demonstrate against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to India. (Photo by Indian People in Solidarity With Palestine)
“At a time when the ceasefire is being used as an excuse to bomb and vaporize Palestinians and occupy Gaza," the groups said, "the Indian government is choosing to stand with genocidal Israel and its imperialist masters like America and is working overtime to benefit the corporations from the occupation of Palestine."
Update: This article has been updated with additional remarks from Modi.
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'Escalation Risks Catastrophe': Restraint Urged as Pakistan Vows to Avenge Indian Strikes
"An armed conflict between India and Pakistan would be catastrophic for the world and must be avoided at all costs," warned U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
May 07, 2025
Observers around the world sounded the alarm Wednesday over the risks of escalation between nuclear neighbors after Pakistan retaliated for Indian airstrikes that reportedly killed over 30 civilians including children in response to last month's Pahalgam massacre in Indian-occupied Kashmir.
The Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that India bombed six sites in Punjab's Sialkot and Bahawalpur, as well as Azad Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday night as part of Operation Sindoor, a response to the April 22 militant attack on a tourist site in Pahalgam that killed 26 people. India blamed Pakistan for supporting "cross-border terrorism" after a front group of the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba claimed responsibility for the attack.
Officials in Islamabad said the Indian strikes this week skilled 31 civilians, including several children. In retaliation, Pakistan carried out artillery attacks across the so-called Line of Control on the border with India. The shelling reportedly killed at least 15 civilians. In a televised address, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the attacks a "reply" to India's airstrikes.
"When elephants fight, it's the grass that gets trampled."
Pakistani forces also shot down five Indian warplanes and attacked several Indian checkpoints, according to Pakistani military spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry.
On Wednesday, Sharif claimed his government offered to cooperate with India to investigate the Pahalgam attack.
"Instead, they fired missiles inside our territory, thinking we would back down and will not retaliate," he said of India, vowing that "every drop of blood" will be avenged. Sharif added that India "must suffer the consequences" for its "cowardly" attacks.
Mirza Waheed, a Kashmiri journalist and award-winning novelist, told Democracy Now! on Wednesday that "this is a dangerous escalation."
Asked about the increasingly Hindu nationalist rule of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Waheed said "it is a different regime" than under previous New Delhi administrations, one that is "more open to armed response."
Noting that civilians have borne the brunt of cross-border clashes between Indian and Pakistani forces, Waheed said, "When elephants fight, it's the grass that gets trampled."
Foreign Policy South Asia analyst Michael Kugelman noted on social media that "India's strike on Pakistan is of much greater scale than the one in 2019."
"Pakistan's response, which according to many reports included downing several Indian jets, has also exceeded the scale of 2019," he added. "They're already higher up the escalatory ladder than any time in '19 crisis."
Echoing Wednesday's warning from a Nobel Peace Prize-winning nonproliferation group, British Green Party Member of Parliament Ellie Chowns said: "I am deeply alarmed by the overnight strikes between India and Pakistan and the tragic loss of civilian lives on both sides. As two nuclear-armed neighbors, escalation risks catastrophe."
"I urge both governments to step back from the brink in order to prioritize dialogue and lasting peace," Chowns added.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that it is "concerned about the current developments" between the two nations. China controls about 15% of Kashmir.
"China opposes all forms of terrorism. We call on both India and Pakistan to prioritize peace and stability, remain calm and restrained, and avoid taking actions that further complicate the situation," the ministry said. "China finds India's military operation early this morning regrettable… India and Pakistan are and will always be each other's neighbors. They're both China's neighbors as well."
In the United States—which backed Pakistan's 1971 genocide in Bangladesh that ended following an Indian invasion—President Donald Trump called the escalating situation between the nuclear neighbors "a shame."
"I hope it ends very quickly," Trump added, offering to mediate a deescalation between the two countries, as the U.S. has repeatedly done in the past.
U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said on social media that "an armed conflict between India and Pakistan would be catastrophic for the world and must be avoided at all costs."
"The United States and our allies should be doing everything we can to stop another escalation and pursue all possible diplomatic avenues to resolve this peacefully," Omar asserted.
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Arundhati Roy: India Must Stop Arming Israel or 'Forever Be Linked to Genocide'
"It is our responsibility to show that as people of India, we refuse to be complicit in that, even if our government wishes to continue with what it does."
Aug 02, 2024
Acclaimed Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy this week joined prominent jurists, diplomats, artists, and others in urging their government to stop selling weapons to Israel, which they called "abominable" and "a serious violation of India's obligations under international law and our Constitution."
Speaking Thursday at an event organized by the Press Club of India, Roy—winner of the 1997 Booker Prize for her debut novel The God of Small Things—said that Indians must "at least show that we do not support that murder in Gaza, we do not support our government's support of that."
"What is happening in Gaza, it is not just the murder… of tens of thousands of women and children," she continued. "It is the bombing of hospitals, the destruction of universities… the attempt to erase the very memory people have of that place. It is a genocide like no other because it's taking place on live TV."
"The Indian government is complicit in the genocide that Israel is conducting in Gaza."
"India used to be a country that supported the people of Palestine in their struggle for freedom," Roy noted. "Everywhere, even in the United States… people are standing up against their government's support for [Israel]. But we are not standing up… and that is such a shame."
"We must stand up. We must refuse," she asserted. "We will not support the export of weapons of any kind."
"The Indian government is complicit in the genocide that Israel is conducting in Gaza," Roy added. "It is our responsibility to show that as people of India, we refuse to be complicit in that, even if our government wishes to continue with what it does. We want these weapons exports to stop immediately."
Roy is one of more than two dozen former Indian Supreme Court justices and other judges, foreign service officers, academics, artists, activists, and others who on Wednesday sent a letter to Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh urging him to halt the licensing of arms sales to Israel, whose military forces have killed or wounded more than 140,000 Palestinians while obliterating and starving Gaza.
"The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has clearly ruled that Israel is in violation of obligations under the Genocide Convention and further that Israel is in illegal occupation of the occupied Palestinian territory," the letter states. "In light of these rulings, any supply of military material to Israel would amount to a violation of India's obligations under international humanitarian law and the mandate of Article 21 read with Article 51(c) of the Constitution of India."
Among the weapons India has sent to Israel are Hermes 900 unmanned aerial drones, which are co-manufactured with Israeli arms company Elbit Systems. The letter notes that the drones "have been extensively used in the Israeli Defense Forces' military campaign in Gaza."
"Several [United Nations] experts have warned that the transfer of weapons and ammunition to Israel may constitute serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian laws, and risk state complicity in international crimes, possibly including genocide, reiterating their demand to stop transfers immediately," the letter's signer wrote.
"In short, the grant of licenses and approvals for export of military material to Israel, coupled with reports of such exports by Indian companies, constitutes a serious violation of India's obligations under international law and our own Constitution," the letter stresses.
"International law aside, we consider such exports to be morally objectionable, indeed abominable," the signatories added. "We demand, therefore, that India should immediately suspend its collaboration in the delivery of military material to Israel. Further, India must immediately make every effort to ensure that weapons already delivered to Israel are not used to contribute to acts of genocide or violations of international humanitarian law."
The letter came ahead of planned nationwide protests by Indian leftists on Saturday calling for an end to arms sales and "all forms of complicity with Israel's illegal occupation and genocide."
India—which in 1971 invaded Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) in large part to end a U.S.-backed Pakistani genocide mostly targeting Bengalis—voted in favor of the December U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate Gaza cease-fire.
However, the administration of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and many lawmakers from his right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party have expressed steadfast support for Israel and its Gaza onslaught. Critics have noted that both Israel and India are occupying Muslims, the former in Palestine and the latter in Jammu and Kashmir.
In an interview with Middle East Eye published Friday, Roy—who faces prosecution in India over comments she allegedly made nearly 15 years ago regarding Kashmir—said that India could "forever be linked to genocide" if it does not change course.
"India needs to stop the export of weapons to Israel and ensure the return of Indian workers who have been sent to Israel to replace Palestinian workers," she said.
"If it does not do so at once, it is in violation of the orders of the ICJ," she added. "It will forever be complicit in aiding and abetting a genocide that is being telecast live for the world to watch."
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What the Attack on Arundhati Roy Tells Us About Fascism's Rise in India
The novelist and activist forewarned that "economic totalitarianism" would run riot over the lives of the poor and that political promises for "development" would act as cover for extraction, exploitation, and colonization. Those predictions have now come to pass.
Jun 27, 2024
On 14 June, Indian authorities gave the go-ahead for the prosecution of acclaimed Indian novelist Arundhati Roy over her comments about Kashmir made back in 2010.
Roy, a Booker Prize-winning author and activist, was accused of sedition and disrupting social harmony under Section 45 (1) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), India's counterterrorism law.
Delhi's Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena also named 70-year-old Kashmiri former professor Sheikh Showkat Hussain for his comments on Kashmir made at the same event in New Delhi.
There would have been others who may have been named, but they are either already in jail or dead.
Even if the absurd case against Roy is meant to rile up the Hindu nationalist base and manufacture a media spectacle and the state does not proceed with arrest or prosecution, how do Indian liberals and the international community expect to explain the hundreds of people already in jail, mostly held without charge, under the UAPA or Public Safety Act (PSA) in Kashmir?
The farcical developments in New Delhi come just days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned to power, albeit with a lesser margin, what some liberals in India had hoped would taper the country's descent into fascism and authoritarianism.
Instead, the Hindu nationalist state is already back to the business of stirring up its right-wing base by reminding them of the "anti-national" demons that continue to lurk in its midst.
Yesterday, it was "infiltrator" Muslims. Today, it is one of the world's most celebrated literary icons.
And as the state is well aware, little can be done to stop it.
The assault on 62-year-old Roy has already prompted a media spectacle in the Indian and international press.
But other than repeating ad nauseum statements about the "death of democracy" and the absurdity of India's Hindu nationalist government's policing of free speech, what this attack on this extraordinary writer and thinker tells us about the Indian state and the effort it has made to hide its own history, is likely to go over everyone's heads.
Let me explain.
An Event on Kashmir
It was, by all measures, an historic event.
Those who attended the event, "Azadi: The Only Way," in October 2010 at the Litte Theatre Group auditorium recall it as being packed beyond capacity.
They stood on their toes at the back, sat cross-legged in the aisles, and craned their heads to listen in. The venue, designed for 327 people, easily held more than 500.
Whereas the rise of Hindu nationalism has also reached Western shores and drawn naive surprise, it is unlikely that liberal discourse over the attack on Roy will focus on what she said about India rather than her right to speak.
Organised by an India-based group called the Committee For the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP), the event came as an urgent intervention following months of unrest in Kashmir against Indian rule during the summer of 2010.
The killing of 17-year-old Tufail Mattoo brought people to the streets in an uprising that was met by a vicious crackdown by the Indian state.
The boy was walking home from school when a tear gas canister fired by an Indian police officer tore a hole through his skull.
More than 120 young civilians, mostly boys, were killed on the streets by Indian troops.
In their communique about the event, the CRPP said they had organised the public discussion to inform Indians about how their government had misled them about Kashmir. In his introduction, SAR Geelani, a Kashmiri and the then-working president of the CRPP, said the committee had sought to clarify the terms of the dispute, to explain what azadi (freedom) meant, and to make clear it was up to the people of Kashmir to determine their future.
Several speakers were present, including Hussain, Roy, and Syed Ali Shah Geelani, leader of the Hurriyat Conference, whose mandate was a call for freedom from India.
There were other speakers, too, who reminded the audience that Kashmir was not the only anathema to the "Indian nation."
There were, after all, other areas like Manipur, Nagaland, and Assam that faced immense state repression.
When Roy eventually spoke, she laid out the facts.
In her charismatic, rhapsodic style, she narrated how she had been asked repeatedly if Kashmir was integral to India, to which she answered unequivocally: "Kashmir has never been an integral part of India," adding that Delhi had admitted as much itself by taking the issue to the United Nations.
She then proceeded to underscore how India had emerged from the ashes of colonial rule to become a colonising entity of its own.
"The British drew the map of India in 1899—so that country [India] became a colonising power the moment it became independent, and the Indian state has militarily intervened in Manipur, in Nagaland, in Mizoram, in Kashmir, in Telangana, during the Naxalbari uprising, in Punjab, in Hyderabad, in Goa, in Junagarh," Roy said.
She continued, poking at India's self-image as a "secular state."
"We know today that this word 'secularism' that the Indian state flings at us is a hollow word because you can't kill 68,000 Kashmiri Muslims and then call yourself a secular state," Roy said, referring to the death toll in Kashmir since 1990.
The event, of course, was recorded and reported widely in the Indian press.Weeks after the event, Roy, along with Hussain, SAR Geelani, and Syed Ali Shah Geelani, were reported to the police for sedition.
In response, Roy penned a remarkable riposte in the Indian daily, The Hindu.
In her article, "They can file a charge posthumously against Jawaharlal Nehru too," she listed all the times Nehru, India's first prime minister, had conceded that Kashmir was not an integral part of India during the early stages of the dispute in 1947.
At the time of partition of the subcontinent in August 1947, Kashmir was a princely state that hadn't yet decided to join either the states of India or Pakistan.
But two months later, the Maharajah temporarily acceded to India in exchange for help against Pathan fighters who had come to the region to challenge his assault on the majority Muslim population in what became a series of massacres and ethnic cleansing that cost more than 200,000 Muslim lives and displaced hundreds of thousands more.
Historians refer to this horror as the Jammu Massacre.
At first, India agreed to the principle of a plebiscite, but over time that changed. The Indian nationalist slogan "Kashmir is integral to India" became no different from "Algeria is France," as uttered by French President Francois Mitterand.
In her response to claims of sedition, Roy alluded to communication between then-Prime Minister Nehru and the Pakistani government.
"In his telegram... Nehru said, 'I should like to make it clear that the question of aiding Kashmir in this emergency is not designed in any way to influence the state to accede to India. Our view which we have repeatedly made public is that the question of accession in any disputed territory or state must be decided in accordance with wishes of people and we adhere to this view,'" Roy wrote.
"In another telegram to the PM of Pakistan, Pandit Nehru said, 'We accepted Kashmir's accession to India at the request of the Maharaja's government and the most numerously representative popular organisation in the state which is predominantly Muslim.' Even then it was accepted on condition that as soon as law and order had been restored, the people of Kashmir would decide the question of accession. It is open to them to accede to either Dominion then," she added.
She went on to list several other communiques from Nehru that confirmed the facts of India's forced dominion over Kashmir.
It didn't matter. As someone who has consistently opposed big dam projects, objected to Delhi's nuclear tests, and refused literary awards from the government, she was nonetheless condemned by the mainstream, including both the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party.
But then, the media storm eventually passed. The case was neither pursued nor withdrawn; it was a card left for another day.
Along Came Modi
When Modi became prime minister in 2014, his newly installed Hindu nationalist government immediately embarked on carving away at the remaining vestiges of democracy that had, at the very least, given India the illusion of being a democracy.
The judiciary was attacked, the media was captured, and civil society was hounded into submission. Under Modi, India moved from a Hindu majority state (despite its touted secularism) to a Hindu Rashtra, or a Hindu state, in the mould of an ethnocracy, much like Israel.
And like Israel, India continued to evade democratic processes and institutions, like elections, civil society, the press, and the judiciary. These were hollowed-out institutions operating to the dictums of Hindu majoritarianism.
As much as this is a case about targeting Roy (and Hussain) for their dissent, this story is incomplete without locking horns with the original myths of Indian democracy or reckoning with the ways in which India routinely demonises Kashmiris or those who dare sympathise with their cause as a way to foment social cohesion.
In Israel's case, it is a nation for Jews. In India, it is a nation for Hindus. All those outside these categories are second-class citizens and disposable. Modi managed to push through the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and make citizenship for refugees contingent on religion.
The government used the UAPA as a means to quash dissent under the pretext of "national security."
The levelling of civil society under Modi was so dire that even Amnesty International's India office was forced to shut down. The only other Amnesty country office to shut down was in Russia.
Several human rights organisations, too, have either downgraded India's democracy or issued warnings of rising authoritarianism, even raising the prospect of genocide of Muslims in India.
Even the U.S. State Department's most recent Religious Freedom Report slammed India for its treatment of religious minorities. A year prior, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum cautioned that the risk of mass atrocities in India against religious minorities was rising.
In other words, India's "democratic descent," though still poorly reported in the mainstream Western press, is no longer a well-kept secret.
As the mainstream media would attest, it is especially difficult to ignore visuals of vigilantes parading through the streets lynching Muslims for marrying a Hindu woman or on suspicion of carrying or eating beef, or more recently, when the prime minister himself publicly calls Muslims "infiltrators."
But whereas the rise of Hindu nationalism has also reached Western shores and drawn naive surprise, it is unlikely that liberal discourse over the attack on Roy will focus on what she said about India rather than her right to speak.
The knee-jerk reaction to reduce India's so-called recent travails to one specifically linked to the rise of Hindu nationalism does little justice to the India that Roy has committed so much of her life to exposing.
This is more than a mere matter of a right to free speech.
The Kashmir Exception
It will soon be nine months since Israel's genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gaza began.
One of the key revelations from this war in the West has been the consolidation of what is known as the "Palestine Exception" to free speech.
University professors have been placed on leave, students suspended, protesters arrested, cafe staff discharged, and award-winning nurses fired, all in the name of opposing the genocide.
In India, even prior to Modi, the exception has always been Kashmir.
Roy is part of a legion of deviants whose recollection pokes at the sentiment of the nation built on a myth of anticolonialism and Gandhi and Nehruvian egalitarianism.
Of course, under Modi, these faultlines have deepened—use of the UAPA has expanded—as the fascist state has become even more insecure, desperate to clasp on to a uniformity of thought, behaviour, and loyalty to the dear leader.
Ending Kashmir's semi-autonomous status and annexing Kashmir—as he did when he ended Articles 370 and Article 35A—represented a central plank of Modi's electoral campaign in 2019.
Kashmir, as Hindu nationalists have made clear, remains foundational to the Hindu nationalist vision of an Akhand Bharat or Undivided India. Modi's actions in 2019, therefore, paved the way for Indians to become legal residents in Kashmir.
It would facilitate the Indian nationalist dream of demographic change in Kashmir. In late 2019, an Indian envoy in New York boasted as much, promising to emulate the Israeli settler model in Kashmir. Some days ago, in the midst of the genocide against the Palestinians, a right-wing Indian commentator called for an "Israel-like" solution in Kashmir.
Yet, as much as this is a case about targeting Roy (and Hussain) for their dissent, this story is incomplete without locking horns with the original myths of Indian democracy or reckoning with the ways in which India routinely demonises Kashmiris or those who dare sympathise with their cause as a way to foment social cohesion.
The question has to be asked: Even if the absurd case against Roy is meant to rile up the Hindu nationalist base and manufacture a media spectacle and the state does not proceed with arrest or prosecution, how do Indian liberals and the international community expect to explain the hundreds of people already in jail, mostly held without charge, under the UAPA or Public Safety Act (PSA) in Kashmir?
For decades, there have been special laws in Kashmir, like the Armed Powers Special Powers Act (AFPSA), which allow the Indian army to shoot to kill or arrest persons on the grounds of "mere" suspicion. And that they have. Tens of thousands have been killed. Thousands of others have been disappeared. Since the 2010s, Indian troops have used pellets to maim and blind.
What will be the fate of those famous and not-so-famous civil society activists like Khurram Parvez, journalists like Irfan Mehraj, and several others? What of the Kashmiri female political prisoners in Tihar, like Asiya Andrabi, Sofi Fehmeeda, and Nahida Nasreen? How about the stripping away of Kashmiri journalists and activists' passports for daring to report on the situation or the criminalisation of several civil society organisations on the ground?
In 2022, more than 36% of all cases involving the UAPA took place in Jammu and Kashmir alone.
Men and women are merely picked up and held for months without reason.
And if we move away from Kashmir for a moment and consider that adjacent to these are several Indian prisoners of conscience, like Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, both accused of sedition under the UAPA; human rights activists Rona Wilson, Arun Ferreira, Hany Babu, and Surendra Gadling, all charged with planning an insurgency against the government, during the Bhima Koregaon violence, back in 2018.
Their cases are so obviously absurd, too, that The Washington Post even found that two of the accused—Wilson and Gadling—had material planted by a hacker on their electronic devices and still nothing changed.
The drift towards fascism that Roy had forewarned, one in which "economic totalitarianism" would run riot over the lives of the poor, and prompts like "development" would cover for extraction, exploitation, and colonisation, has come to pass.
It was Roy, among a spirited handful in India, after all, who alluded to the collusion between big capital and the expansion of Hindu nationalism, highlighted Delhi's closeness with Israel and the U.S. on matters of military and geopolitical ambitions, and warned about the march toward a military state.
In this way, Roy is part of a legion of deviants whose recollection pokes at the sentiment of the nation built on a myth of anticolonialism and Gandhi and Nehruvian egalitarianism.
But in the end, India is just a big bully, built on both fragments of selective memory and collective amnesia.
If charged, Roy faces time in jail. And this could become an arduous, tiresome, even gruesome fight.
But as she would tell you herself, this seditious heart is not alone. Hers is one part of a fight for truth in a land of a thousand fictions.
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