Ep61: Azad Essa on India & Israel; Kashmir & Palestine

On the show this week, I'm speaking to journalist and author, Azad Essa about his latest book, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance between India and Israel. At the time of recording this episode, the genocide in Gaza has been going on for over 90 days, with over 30,000 people having been killed, and 1.9 million people forcibly displaced from their homes.  The population of Gaza is being starved amid relentless bombardments targeting journlists, authors, institutes, hospitals and schools. Right now, more than ever, it it important for us to take a deeper look at the world around us. 

In his latest book, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance between India and Israel, Azad Essa brings to the fore the important relationship between the two countries, discussing the occupations of Kashmir and Palestine, as well as the attacks in India on Muslim and minority communities. He encourages us to not turn away from this critical relationship, expanding our understanding of major players within the political arena. This is more important than ever now, as at the time of recording, Israel’s attacks and genocide in Gaza relentlessly continue. Over 22,000 people have been reported dead, and with thousands trapped under rubble, the real figure is likely to be much higher.  

Azad Essa is a senior reporter for Middle East Eye based between Johannesburg and New York City. 

Azad previously worked for Al Jazeera English between 2010-2018 in which he was part of a team that won numerous awards for our breaking news and in depth coverage of the Arab Spring. Azad has reported from across the African continent, as well as South Asia, covering politics, development and poverty.

His four-part investigation into the shocking behavior of peacekeepers in war zones, titled: Why do some peacekeepers rape? won the 2017 UN Correspondents Association International Prize (Silver) for coverage on UN activities.

Azad has also written for The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, among others.

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Transcript

Samia Aziz: 0:01

Hello, and welcome to The Diverse Bookshelf with me, Samia Aziz. On this show, I interview incredible authors doing a deep dive into important themes and issues while talking all things books. In a time of increasing uncertainty, hardship and suffering around the world, many of us find ourselves looking to make sense of the world around us. In his latest

book, Hostile Homelands: 0:24

The New Alliance Between India and Israel, Azad Essa brings to the fore the important relationship between these two countries, discussing the occupations of Kashmir and Palestine, as well as attacks in India on Muslim and minority communities. He encourages us to not turn away from this critical relationship, expanding our understanding of major players within the political arena. This is more important than ever now, as at the time of recording, Israel's attacks and genocide in Gaza relentlessly continue. Over 22,000 people have been killed, and with thousands trapped under rubble, the real figure is likely to be much higher. Azad Essa is a senior reporter from the Middle East Eye, based between Johannesburg and New York City. He previously worked for Al Jazeera English, in which he was part of a team who won numerous awards for breaking news and in depth coverage of the Arab Spring. Azad has reported from across the African continent, as well as South Asia, covering politics, development and poverty. His four part investigation into the shocking behaviour of peacekeepers was titled, 'Why do some peacekeepers rape?' won the 2017 US Correspondents Association International Prize for coverage on UN activities. Azad has also written for The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, among others. Now, before we get on with today's episode, I just wanted to remind you that you can support the podcast. If you like these episodes, come and join me on Patreon and support the show. With every subscription, you will get access to a monthly exclusive podcast episode delivered right to your inbox! Now, on with the show. Hello, Azad! Welcome to the diverse bookshelf podcast. It's so lovely to have you on the show today. How are you doing?

Azad Essa: 2:12

Thank you so much Samia for having me. I'm very happy to be talking with you. And, you know, given everything that's been going on, we're all oscillating between distress and horror and denial. We can't imagine that all of this is happening, and for such a prolonged period of time as well. And so it also makes you wonder, what's the point of everything at this at this time? So yeah, I mean, I'm obviously in a very privileged position compared to others, especially those in Gaza and the West Bank or in Kashmir or in other parts of India. So I don't have anything to complain about, obviously, but it is a very distressing time.

Samia Aziz: 3:05

I think one doesn't have to have to be Palestinian, or from a place that is going through difficulty or hardship, to feel that or to have that same sense of grief out that we're experiencing. But I'm interested to know, because you are a journalist. And I think what we're seeing from the ground, especially from Gaza is very young journalists reporting from the front line every single day with really distressing images and footage. But we're also seeing a very targeted attack on journalists, and other forms of writers and creatives and institutes that preserve culture. I wondered as a journalist, what you think and what you feel about that?

Azad Essa: 4:02

I have a lot of thoughts on that. And I don't know if they will be, linear in a way in terms of where I'll start and where it'll end. To be a journalist in the global South, the so-called Global South, being South African, being Muslim, being brown, and to watch the sort of disdain in which Palestinian journalists in particular have been treated during this time, has been absolutely horrific, and very, very hard to digest. And I say this, knowing that it's been like this for a very long time. So none of this is surprising, but the level of - I'll use the word again - distain in which they have been treated and the ways in which they their bodies have been attacked and assaulted and targeted so outlandishly so openly by the Israeli army. And the ways in which the Western media has ignored or has not used the opportunity to see if journalists are attacked in this way, how that represents a larger attack on society. So they have not used that opportunity to try and tell a bigger story. And that has been really disgusting, to be quite honest. We all know journalist in Gaza who are working there, and they are emerging from the rubble every second day, if they are emerging, and they picking up the corpses of their colleagues, of their brothers, of their own families. And they are expected to work, and, they expect themselves to work, because they know that part of the story is that when you commit the genocide, you try to destroy the people, you try to annihilate them, you also try to destroy the story itself. And when you destroy the story, then there's a vacuum. And that story then is filled in by the oppressors who are conducting that genocide. And so they have to do it. It's the obligation that they feel, and as journalists on the outside, you correctly say that you don't have to be Palestinian to understand some of these things. But we are able to switch off at night, to some extent, you know, we're able to have a meal, able to sleep without bombs going off around us, they don't even have that escape. And for us in our spaces, to not be more mindful, and to be not be more sympathetic, or at least more useful in terms of trying to amplify those voices, has been quite outrageous to watch and to bear witness to. As I said, this hypocrisy has been going on for a long time - it's the basis of the colonial the settler state. It's the basis of Western journalism, unfortunately. But we are all very obsessed with Western journalism, and Western platforms. So if tomorrow one of us is offered an opportunity, or one of these big Western platforms, it will be hard for us to turn those things down, given the power that they have. And yet we know what they represent and how they treat people, whether it is this themselves or all the rest of the world so it's, it's this power dynamic that is replicated, like the power dynamic of the world, and society is replicated through the media.

Samia Aziz: 7:49

Absolutely. I think it's so interesting, everything that that you've just said is just a really poignant reminder that ethnic cleansing and genocide is not just that about killing people, it's about erasing the identity and history of a big group of people. It's about claiming that they were never a people. And that for history to say that this land was always theirs, or they were never people that are whatever it is, or just completely eliminate them from history. And the targeting of journalists, and we've seen it with with writers, and we've seen it with libraries and museums and archives, in Gaza as well. It's a very systematic and very obvious and intentional move. And I think if we don't stop and take stock of that, and we don't realise how dangerous that is, I think it's really harmful for how we'll move forward and how we'll understand and think about this time right now and in years to come. And so yeah, thank you for sharing your thoughts on that. I can imagine that you must feel an affinity with other journalists all around the world, almost like a union. So I can imagine that it feels somewhat even more strange, or I don't know, like that sense of dissociation, perhaps, as well. But you've written this book called 'Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel.' Now I have many questions about this. I really enjoyed reading it. I thought it was really interesting and informative, and has been something that actually I have been really concerned about over the last few years, especially looking at the worsening conditions in India for minority communities and in Kashmir. But what has sparked your interest in this area because as you said, like, you're not from Kashmir. You're not based in India. You're South African. So what sort of sparked your interest in this particular area?

Azad Essa: 10:02

Yeah, it's a question that I get asked quite often as in Why were you interested in the relationship between India and Israel? As opposed to, an Indian or an Israeli, Palestinian Kashmiri? And the answer is that a lot of people are interested in that, not just me. Right, yourself, you have noticed that there have been the shifts taking place, that there's some kinds of stories, some kind of alliance that has been emerging between India and Israel, people have noticed it. Kashmiris have understood that this is something that has been happening for some time. And of course, they, if they raised this kind of hypothesis, that something is happening between these two states, and that they that they have noticed it in Kashmir itself. They are often gaslit, you know, say, Oh, you being anti semitic, you know, you're just coming up with a conspiracy theory sort of thing. But for my, for my point of view, right from the way the story merged in my imagination, and in terms of my intellectual interest regarding this, as well, more than that, it was more a story about how these oppressors are working with each other, as a means to give people the opportunity to organise against it. That evolves to a large extent, from my changing idea of India. As a person growing up in South Africa, we were told, and we were taught that India played a major role in the anti apartheid movement. And to some extent, that is true. And in some cases, it's a little bit inflated, right. But they did play a role in the anti apartheid movement, they were the first countries to talk about racism in South Africa at the UN, for instance, one of the first countries to impose a boycott of South Africa, apartheid South Africa. And as a person of Indian origin, as in my, my grandparents, parents have come from India, or what was the subcontinent at the time to South Africa. I was also proud of that heritage, that people somewhere else that were connected to me, were caring about the situation in South Africa. And so that also sparked an interest in sort of global solidarities,and that an idea of boycott and the idea of sanctions, and you can act on behalf of another people to help. And so this is something I was brought up with. And what happened after apartheid ended, was that we also understood through the words of Nelson Mandela, and the rest of the ANC members and leadership, that the freedom in South Africa was not complete, because the Palestinian freedom hadn't come yet hadn't arrived. And so that was also linked to our understanding of solidarity and internationalism, as well as liberation. But when I discovered the story of Kashmir, some years later, as a graduate student, I was quite shocked to see that a country that will talk about being anti colonial, that will push these ideas of non aligned values to be, you know, Gandhi and to be against apartheid, and to be so called Pro Palestine will be also running an occupation, right in its own neighbourhood. And I find that hard to reconcile with. And so I went down a rabbit hole of trying to understand what was going on in Kashmir. And subsequently, I became a journalist. And, you know, I started writing about several things. And I went to Kashmir, and I was quite shocked at the militarization and the level of brutality that was playing out there. And I then went to Palestine, and I immediately saw some of these connections. And it was hard not to see. And, but then the weird thing is that when, you know, we understand that there's a censorship when it comes to Palestine, in the Western media. But in those places in which you were allowed to write about Palestine, I found that people were not that open to talking about India, or talking about India's sort of crimes, India's human rights violations, the ambiguities or the ambivalence of an Indian democracy, right, the so called Indian democracy. And I found that also very disturbing and very hard to understand as well. So there was a moment where I was working at AlJazeera, and some of the difficulties were there, and it wasn't structural, it was individuals at the channel that would kind of block things and which is what happens in many places, right. And so, having done some work on Kashmir for Al Jazeera, the Indian government, and this is the pre Modi period, Indian government came down very hard on Al Jazeera and blocked visas for staff, they summoned our Managing Director, whom at the time was trying to open a channel, an Indian version of Al Jazeera or something of the sort in India. And he summoned our managing director to come to Delhi and show him every piece of work that we've ever done on Kashmir, like very, very authoritarian, ridiculous, kind of absurd stuff. And this is all again, pre Modi. And, so this, long story short, but there seem to be a kind of dissonance when it came to looking at India, you know, in the same way that you would look at any other country, there's some kind of exceptionalism when it comes to India. And so what happened when Modi became prime minister in 2014, just as when Trump became the president of the US in 2016, the mask for several people who would refuse to see it, came off, basically, when he came to India. And so it became very clear that India was on this path to become the Hindu nationalist state, that Modi was part of a right wing movement, and that he embraced Netanyahu quite overtly from the start. And then that gave me an opportunity, then to start looking into the relationship between India and Israel, because it was a lot more obvious now. And so, now, to cut a long story short, and so the point being that it was something that I was noticing, or been watching. But it also meant that others who were not so open to the story would be now more open to it, because they could see it, right. And this is the bizarre thing about news and media, they have to see things for them to believe things, you know, immediately, right, they don't want to dig below the surface. Now, what happened in 2019, is, is the crucial part, in that there was a senior diplomat in New York who made this comment at a special gathering at his home, that was put on to Facebook, in which he said that India would be following the Israeli model in Kashmir, in terms of building settlements in Kashmir. And when he said that, that was the first open ambition, that we could spot and we could hold on to and to tie things together. And the moment that he did that, a few weeks later, I wrote a proposal to write this book, basically.

Samia Aziz: 17:46

surprise me that you have been interested in this particular area, actually, also as a South African as somebody whose country has had decades of apartheid and oppression. And the country has seen a liberation movement. And it doesn't surprise me that there is interest in this. And I think the understanding of the situation in Kashmir is globally, massively under recognised and it's just, it's just not there. It's just not spoken about the occupation of Kashmir. There's not talks about as an occupation, even though there is military occupation. And there's no other word that really explains that. And I often think that it's it's because of, of the mess left behind by Britain, which is what really interests me, and I find almost laughable with former British colonies that are now not understanding or not viewing Israel as a colonial project and not and not understanding that it's the same thing having gone through decades of colonial rule and seeing the catastrophe and the disaster that happens, or has or had historically happened when Britain decided to withdraw from its former colonies. And you know, I think when it comes to Palestine, it seems, at least publicly anyway, that the most critical relationship globally is with that of the US. And then the other important relationships are with the UK and France and Germany. I would, I would say, and I think the US is the major one that we're seeing currently with the US vetoing resolutions in the UN calling for a ceasefire or allowing aid in and there's a whole like there's a whole load of other stuff that we don't even know that's happening with regards to how far the US is supporting Israel but As you rightly write about in your book, we should not turn away from the relationship with India. And I just wondered if you could reflect on what is so critical about that relationship and why we should be more alert to it, and perhaps what the implications of that will be. And you've already sort of, I think indicated that when it comes to Kashmir,

Azad Essa: 20:25

Yeah, that's a good question. And it's a very broad question as well. And I'll try to summarise a few points regarding this, because then I don't want to go on and on for like, four hours. Okay, so the first thing to consider when thinking about why we need to, you know, ponder about the relationships that Israel has with other places, and other people's and other governments, beyond the usual suspects, right, is because the world is changing. To a large extent, the US is losing ground, the US is not as important as it used to be, right. When you think about the rise of the BRICS nations, when you think about the rise of India, for instance, with regards to GDP, and think about China, as well, there is a shift taking place in the world. And that's why you have these wars that are all taking place with regards to this economic war that the US is now waging on China, trying to try to ensure that China does not become that hegemonic, right, that would, you know, overcome overwhelm the US. So there's a shift taking place. So that's the first thing. Now, the second thing is that a country like India, is considered the world's largest democracy to many people. The problem there is that even though it runs an occupation, it has immense communal, communal fault lines across several parts of the country. You have an authoritarian regime now running it, you have civil society dismantled in many parts of India, as well as in occupied Kashmir, you have the media that's completely, you know, marginalised, or at least become stenographers for the state. So democracy in many ways, is just the name in India. And it has been for a long time. But the very mere title of being considered the world's largest democracy means that India is able to get away with a lot of things. And it's not just about getting away with it. But it's also about becoming a becoming a state in which it's able to justify its actions under the name of a democracy. Because what does it mean to be a democracy and democracy doesn't mean that you just have a population that votes and select the leaders, it means that you have institutions that are able to self correct that's the point of a democracy, that you don't just have a dear leader that makes decisions, you have the judiciary, you have the media, you have civil society, you you have the potential to self correct when things go wrong. So when you label something a democracy, then it kind of undercuts the possibility for the rest of the world to pass judgments about that place. Because they can easily say, Hey, we're not North Korea, right? We're not Iran, you know, we're not Saudi Arabia, we're not XYZ, right? We have institutions that can self correct, which is how Israel also pushes its agenda saying that we are democracy. And so I think that that is one of the major things here in that, with India endorsing Israel and India's relationship with so many of the global south nations, it means that it potentially is now putting this major incident that has taken place over the past eight weeks aside, because Israel has lost a lot of ground, right diplomatically over this, this major genocide it is embarking on on the Palestinian people. But with India pushing or presenting itself as friends to the Israelis. What it does is that it in it enhances Israel's credibility amongst other countries in the world. And so that's what it does to an extent. The other thing what it does is that it creates the impetus for other nations and other governments and other regimes to become authoritarian and follow the models of India and Israel, because they noticed that they just have to play a certain game of being a so called democracy and then they can get away with them. They can ally In themselves in certain states, and no one's going to hold them to account, so then it becomes a model in that way. So that those are the major sort of considerations here is that while we are talking about the UK, Australia, the US, much of the world, you know, many people around the world understand these countries to be bogus states, but they have not caught up to the idea that maybe India is one of those bogus states, in many ways, they're still thinking of India, as you know, the land of Gandhi, the land of Bollywood, the land of cuisine, the land of culture, the land of history, the land of civilization, land music. Now, the point there comes to my third or fourth point, which is the point of soft power, India soft power, has, has created the impression in that it's like the mother of the world, in many ways, like, you know, and so it can't, it can't be evil, you know, it will take a lot of work for you to, to explain to someone that actually, you know, India has is going down a kind of Nazi Germany type of route, how are they going to understand that, right, it's very, very difficult. So that's the danger is that while while we are focusing on the US, there are these other players that are coming on board, and, and sort of extending the authoritarian model and expanding on it. Now, my final point is that what India has also done is that is, it has been helping Israel integrate into the Middle East. And by doing that, it is now you know, investing heavily in Israel. And so it's investing in into the occupation, right. And so it means that Israel is diversifying the occupation in terms of the stakeholders around occupation. So it makes the occupation harder to dismantle, because there are so many different players involved. So you have the Haifa port that's now control 70%, owned by an Israeli by an Indian company. And that will now become or potentially become a kind of hub in the eastern Mediterranean. So as the US tries to force out China, or try to force up the supply chains from China, they will move those supply chains to India, or to other places, and then use India as a conduit to move those goods and move those, you know, labour and all of that to the Western world. Right. So there's a shift taking place. And, and we don't want to wake up too late and understand that there's a new villain in town, basically. Right? And you know, in Sunday, it'll be too late. Absolutely.

Samia Aziz: 27:39

So, I mean, India, if we look at India, pre partition, one of the driving forces of partition was the fact that there was a well from within the country for, you know, a place for Muslims to live and a place for Hindus to live. And I mean, it's a very simplified thing to say. But, you know, I think that there was that will politically end from people as well. Now, my question, my question about that is, if that has always been a desire for there to be a Hindu state, initially, when the issue of Palestine arose, and you've had this, you talk about it in the book, we see that India's relationship with India stance hasn't always been clear. So at the moment, it's quite apparent if you if you look for it, and if you understand it, but India is an ally. But initially, India didn't seem to be in favour of the creation of the State of Israel in the way that it was created. The you know, the leader, the leader said that it was the Arab that had about over the land, and but the position changed. It changed over time, it changed what it looks like incrementally. But do you think that India's opposition to the creation of the State of Israel in 1947 1948, was it ever sincere? And do you think even back then, it was thought about in the same way, as the creation of the state of India, as a country for people of the Hindu religion? Yeah,

Azad Essa: 29:27

You know, it's, it's always difficult to, to conclude with a matter of certainty, you know, over some of these historical events, because they are ambiguities around many of the things that take place. And one thing for sure, is that we, we have this understanding that India was poor Palestine as a matter of certainty. Many people have that as a matter of certainty. But The point being now is that we've got to reconsider that as a point of certainty. Now, to the extent to which they were, they were committed to it, the extent to which that there was sincere the extent to which they were committed, is is difficult to answer. Because they, they were the International Congress was an internationalist organisation that cared about certain values. But they were also an organisation that was very much upper class Hindu in nature. And they were committed to establishing a state in which their dominance will not be eroded. So there's, there's enough ambiguity there to make it clear that this was not an organisation that was completely focused towards cost eradication, or completely focused towards equality for Muslims, completely focused on, you know, creating a socialist state that would, you know, become an egalitarian for everyone. So we have to move away from that, because that's, that's what we understand about the Indian story, right. And so this is about creating or adding that layer of complexity that actually this was not the case. And the proof of that is that Gandhi was not great on cost, right. And that many people in the Indian National Congress sort of move between right wing Hindu organisations, as well as the Indian National Congress, right. And that, when the Muslim League spoke about trying to create spaces for Muslims to have some kind of autonomy, they did not initially talk about creating a an entire separate states at the time that all they spoke about was a kind of federal solution in which Muslim majority areas in Punjab and Bengal for instance, would have some level of autonomy, so they don't get swallowed by this now, created majority, that just like some decades earlier or decades prior had become a majority, right, because it was due to the British senses, that it created a Hindu majority, meaning that they they not everyone even considered themselves Hindu, but if they were under this umbrella, there was no Christian not Muslim, and not seek for instance, they will be planted under the banner of Hinduism and that created this majority. And so Muslims were afraid that they would be swallowed by this majority and Brahmins and upper caste Hindus wanted to keep their dominance by because they would be at the top of the hierarchy of that, you know, of that of the category. So there was a lot of things going on. And Hindu nationalists, the sort of rabid Hindu nationalist who the equivalent of a Jabotinsky, you know, the revisionists Zionists, in in Palestine, they did not get the mileage, you know, they did not get the space at that time to seem that they had, you know, a chance to dominate the country. And it was more about the British leaving the country to a set of elites that were British enough, but communally enough, Hindu nationalist enough, but also secular enough to continue, you know, the project, essentially. And I can't remember your question now, to be honest, but but the sincerity, the question about sincerity is that the Gandhi spoke about Palestine, having been, you know, belonging to the Arabs belonging to Palestinians, and that they had a prior claim. But, you know, later, towards the end of his life, you know, there are statements that he made that contradict that, you know, and so we're not entirely sure what he thought at the end, right? The way Nero treats persuade, for instance, is very colonial. And yet at the same time, he talks about Palestine, you know, being being is a place that belongs to the Palestinians as well. So there's a contradiction that then seeps into the consciousness of of many left and secular Indians for decades to come, where they have this duality, you know, they see Kashmir in one way and they see Palestine and other places and other way. Now, my final point regarding this is that no matter what they thought as a movement in the 20s and 30s, no matter how sincere they may have been towards certain values, when India becomes a state in 1947, right, when India when partition takes place, it becomes a state it becomes a state with interests, then the state has to make decisions for its own interests. And that means that it then looks at this new state of Israel coming into being. And it looks at the Arab world and decides that, hey, we need oil, we need energy. So why would we compromise our energy resources in our relationship with the larger Arab world for this small Jewish state? We're not going to compromise on that. So. So the meaning, meaning that India, India's policy was not based primarily on some kind of sincerity or commitment to Palestine, but it was based on on real politic, that they wanted energy. So they didn't want to change it, then they were considering the fact that they were opposed to the idea of Pakistan, right? And so why would they accept partition of another place so easily. So they didn't want to endorse the idea of partition so easily on the subcontinent. So they didn't want to, you know, endorse the partition in in Palestine. Then the third thing is that the occupation of Kashmir had started by them, you know, and so the Arab world was aware of what was going on in Kashmir. And so, India didn't want the Arab world to move towards Pakistan, when it comes to the support of Kashmir, right. So these are decisions that were made for the interests of the state. And then, when we think about how India then moves on, in the following decades, and there are some examples where I'll just focus on one right now, or two is that in the early 60s, when India goes to war with China, if they were that committed to Palestine, then they would not have approached Israel to help them in a war with China. So they, they get weapons from Israel in 1962. And when they get those weapons, they actually asked David Ben Gurion, the Prime Minister of Israel, to send those weapons in ships that are unmarked, that shows a very crass kind of duplicity on the Indian side, it's very, it's very pathetic when you think about right, but but that's the level of, of the duplicity. Then in the, in the late 60s, Indira Gandhi, you know, you know, rises, and she then sets up raw, which is the Indian foreign intelligence agency. And when she sets that up, she sets up direct relations between RA and Mossad from her office. Right. And this is the same time and this the same administration, then then that then goes on to recognise the PLO as the as the representative of Palestinian people. It welcomes Yasser Arafat, you know, routinely, to Delhi. Alright, so this, it becomes a state that's playing both sides in a way. Now, of course, they might be a traditional, might be a commitment to the Palestinians that they're somewhere, but they're also looking after their own interests. So they're not going to take on Israel in any way. They're going to operate and cooperate. And then you can ask yourself, Okay, fine. So, why does it fall into India, then to make this distinct kind of stance towards Israel, but if they present themselves as being totally pro Palestinian, then how is it that they are working with Mossad right, how is it that they are training their offices, you know, that means that they are part of the occupation that they are subsidising on a lower level, right? And then when India normalises ties in the 90s, in over the next 20 years, India becomes the biggest purchaser of Israeli weapons. Now, what is that? Right, becomes the biggest purchase of Israeli weapons when you purchase something. You're subsidising the industry. Alright, so you it's not some benign exercise. If I if I'm trading with you, right, I'm helping you. Right. And I'm if I'm, and if I'm trading with you on weapons, I'm helping your military industrial complex, right. And it means I'm endorsing your military industrial complex, and now I'm now complicit in the work that you do with the money that you, you know, that you're earning from those sales. So, so in a way, India has tried to position itself that it still cares about Palestinian statehood, it still cares about Palestinian rights, but it actually has now become a case of like them offering charity to the Palestinians and you know, give you this two $3 million, you know, build a camp, build a school, build a law, medical centre, and then purchasing $1.8 billion worth of weapons from Israel and then producing those weapons in India as well. And selling them to the rest of the world like It's an absolute travesty. And it's also an absolute mockery of all solidarity as well.

Samia Aziz: 40:07

Absolutely, absolutely. And before you, you were talking about the fact that India is known as, or maybe even self declares itself as the biggest democracy in the world. And Israel does the same as being, you know, one of the best, the best democracies in the world.

Azad Essa: 40:29

And the only the only democracy in Middle East.

Samia Aziz: 40:34

Oh yes, that's it. And so Israel especially will say, Yeah, because look, you you know, we're so supportive of the LGBTQ community. You know, everybody can vote, etc, etc. And they talk about all these freedoms and liberties, so to speak, and India. And I think that is our idea of a democracy, that if you live in a democracy, everybody is free, you have a free press, you have your minor, your minorities are not persecuted. Everybody can vote and you have free and fair elections. But obviously, that isn't, I don't understand how you can be a democracy if you're an occupier, if you're a colonial project, but one of the things that is happening in India is that the press has been severely targeted and censored. And also there is a huge attack on minority communities. So we've seen it in India with Muslims and also with with Punjabi Sikhs as well. So I wondered, because I do feel like this isn't something that is talks about massively. I wondered if you could just spend a little bit of time just talking about the human rights abuses that are happening in India, and why it's so important in understanding sort of what what that is trying to achieve.

Azad Essa: 42:05

So when we think about human rights violations in India, or what has been going on, especially with the past decade, it's important to remember that India has never been a full on democracy, there has never been a full on secular state. And there have been periodic attacks on Muslims, periodic attacks on Christians, as well as Sikhs, even Dalits, as well. And so it's, it's always been an upper caste state that has, you know, focused on dominating, you know, the so called minorities in India. And, you know, as you rightly pointed out yourself, there's been an occupation taking place from the late 40s, in Kashmir. From the 50s, there have been special laws in places like the northeast of India, in which the army is able to act with impunity. And they're not liable, you know, they don't, they don't need to be held accountable. Because these zones are called kind of disturbed areas, right, quote, unquote. And so you, you've also seen several governments prior to the Modi government, you know, exercising immense violence on communities, to kind of get them to vote for them, right. And so they're gonna cause some chaos in a community, and then they'll come in and support the majority in that community, and then that community then leans on the party to support them. And, you know, it becomes very clear how it is that you will survive in a place, right, if you support a particular party, right. And so, so the, the important thing op listeners will get out of this is that this is not a question about Modi, only Modi is taking the country to another place. But that place is recognisable, to a large extent, to many people who have been under the butt of the gun, or under the butt of an army officer under the boot of an army officer rather, you know, and what's been going on in the past, you know, 10 years and it's going to be 10 years this year, since Modi became prime minister in 2014. Is that, you know, under Narendra Modi, India has been moving towards becoming a full on Hindu nationalist state, they call it the Hindu Rashtra. And the point being here is that they are following the this idea or this ideology called Hindu Hindutva. And Hindutva is a concept like Zionism that believes that this place is meant to be for one people, you know, so there'll be one religion, one language, one culture, One Nation. One way of doing Things All right. And that if you don't fall within the ambit of that religion as you're not if you're not Hindu, right, in the case of India, and in the case of Israel, you're not Jewish, right? Then you are an outsider. Right? You are, you are a traitor to that place, just by definition, just by just by the definition of being Muslim or being Palestinian, right, you are an outsider and you need to be disciplined, you need to be subjugated, you need to submit basically, to the majority. And that has now see, I mean, so this has manifested itself in kind of laws that outlaw eating beef in places, right. It is, it has seen kind of people being lynched for just transporting animals, right. And it just, it's just the Miss just on the suspicion of, of transporting cows, for instance, you could be you could be murdered, or you could be killed on the streets, then there's been all these other campaigns that like love jihad, like, the idea being that the you know, this falls into that into the paranoia of the, of the Ethno nationalist imagination, right, in which they believe that they're going to be outbred by Muslims. And that there's this there's this structural policy towards converting everyone in India to Islam, right. And so, if you are a man who falls in love with the Hindu woman, they call it love jihad. And they will, they are now accusing you of trying to lead or seduce in the woman with the purpose of converting them and you could be lynched for that. And then there's other things that have been taking place in especially states like up and whatever Pradesh or in Bihar, for instance, in which if you are living in a Muslim, like neighbourhood, you would have people coming in, as they do in some of the Palestinian towns and villages where people come in and kind of like Knock, Knock Muslims go into the mosque, and sort of like, you know, desecrate the place, come in and start chanting, like Hindu slogans, you know, Hindu religious slogans coming in disturbing you, while it's like the fasting period is from dying, for instance, coming in intimidating and provoking, you know, the community. And if you respond in any way, whether you throw a stone back, or whether you, you know, you respond physically or you respond verbally, as in going and speaking to the media, for instance, you will be picked up and arrested and held and detained, and you might find it your house is sort of like demolished afterwards. So there's also there's a lot of like passive, so called passive aggressive kind of attacks on the Muslim community, which makes it very clear in certain areas that they do not belong, or that they shouldn't get too comfortable, essentially. And so many Muslims are feeling like second class citizens in these places. Now, in the in places like, you know, in places like Kashmir as well, you've had new laws coming into place in which Indians are now you know, following the events of 2019, when Kashmir lost its semi autonomous status, you have a situation now where Indians can go to Kashmir and become residents and buy up land. And the idea there is that you can kind of like, attempt to change the demography of the place in which then it'll be no longer Muslim majority place would be a possibly a Hindu majority. And then you have elections, and then you kind of vote out the dispute in a way to say there is no issue here anymore. Everyone's happy with India. Now, likewise, that there are other communities who are also targeting or you have Dalits, as well, who are also targeted when no matter of their diet, you have Sikhs who are targeted, because they are seen to be part of the Khalistan movement, you know, looking for a separate homeland for themselves in Punjab. And this has also seen kind of a kind of transnational attacks taking place in which a lot of the stuff is a lot of the activism may have moved to the UK or to the US and EU and in many of these diaspora communities are actually not safe. They're either in which is foreign intelligence agencies and are working in in these places. They're targeting them and they've been assassinations and, you know, the it's endless, essentially. So So India is moving in a very, very dangerous direction. And it's, it's been buoyed by the support that it gets by the Biden administration. And it also gets a lot of support from the UK Government as well obviously, and and now with its with its relationship with Israel, It kind of joined this kind of elite Western club in a way in which it can, it can disguise its activities under the banner of defending itself. So everything's about, I'm defending my country, I'm defending my nation, from these outsiders by these crazy Muslims, by these crazy Sikhs who want to separate, you know, everything's about us being attacked, essentially. So there's an there's an immense psychosis regarding that, you know, where there's this, this fantasy of being attacked all the time, is instrumentalized, for you to conduct attacks, essentially, and for you to dominate. And so, so that's where we are. So

Samia Aziz: 50:39

just listening to you speak, I mean, that that was a very interesting, I mean, a lot of a lot of which, unfortunately, a, I have been watching the developments in India over the last few years, especially with like, so much fear, because I, I just don't know what's going to happen to them to Muslim communities, especially in India. And just seeing the ways in which people are, as you've described, as well, being lynched and being denied access to certain spaces, you know, I can kind of see like, the attack on her job that the can kind of come with that and all kinds of stuff. So it's very, very scary. And it definitely is something that we should not be turning away from. I mean, especially for a country that prides itself on being democratic. But you're talking about in Kashmir, the fact that article 370, was revoked, which has now given non Kashmiris the ability to buy land in Kashmir, and basically have that is very systematically a way of changing population. And I think the reason why that is so important is because because we've is at some point, entitled to a vote to decide the Mexican the fate of of its own position, I guess, or sovereignty, I don't know what the right because I don't think it is, I don't think it will ever be given a vote for its own freedom. But just having some choice about who is administered or governed by, but I was thinking a lot about how this change in population is exactly how occupation and colonialism works. And we have seen it play out in Israel and in Palestine. So initially, when the Israeli the when the in the State of Israel was created, it was majority Palestinian Palestine was, you know, it was a majority of Palestinian community living in that country. And yet it still Israel was given the majority of the land. And what they have done over time, is change the population by forcing out Palestinians and bringing in people from outside Jewish Jewish people from from other countries, which is what has changed the demographic. And so eventually, they can say like, Well, no, this is, this is our land, and this is the land for our people. And I think one of my favourite parts of your book is actually chapter five, which you've called the story, or a story of two occupations, Kashmir and Palestine. And I wondered if you could just take a moment just to reflect a little bit more on on why these two are so similar, almost how, you know, I mean, you've talked about it a lot already. Her like, in India is almost learning from Israel and Zionism, about how to act in Kashmir to to have more control over it. But I think it's it's really, it's really important. And it isn't something that we that we think that much about about Kashmir this heavily militarised, I think it's isn't there like an army personnel for every 10 citizens or something that is heavily militarised, one of the most militarised zones in the world, and I think we are the only other one is Gaza. So yeah, I just wonder if you could reflect a little bit on the story of these two occupations.

Azad Essa: 54:30

Yeah, sure. So the story, you know, when it comes to Kashmir and Palestine and people, some people are interested in this, I believe not enough people are aware of, of Kashmir, as you have pointed out as well and kind of the similarities between Kashmir and Palestine. And this is not to say that they are the same. And it's never meant to mean that right? When we think about apartheid in Israel, right and the way Israel operates as an apartheid state We don't mean that it's exactly like South Africa. But there are elements, you know, that replicate the South African model. So African apartheid model. And apartheid, when it comes to the Israeli context is only in a one arm of a larger settler colonial project, right? It's just one element of it one tool, right, one technique. And one of the first things I think it's important to know about Kashmir and Palestine, is that both of them start off at almost the same time, you know, and I don't mean that there isn't a story that predates 4748. But in terms of, you know, these two countries that are created, right, there's a partition that takes place in the subcontinent, India is India, Pakistan is created. You have a partition of Palestine, the State of Israel coming into being in 48. And both these questions are one of the earliest questions at United Nations. And both of these questions have not been resolved, right. That's one of the first things the second thing is that you have a Nakba, that takes place, you know, in the late 40s 4748 4950, around that period, in which 750,000, Palestinians are expelled, and several 1000 also killed. And these Palestinians, you know, have become refugees in all these different places, you know, including Gaza, in which then they are now being made into refugees again, or they're being, you know, obviously killed. But there's also a math major massacre that takes place in Jammu around 47, in which historians say around 200,000, Muslims were killed, another 500,000 or so were displaced, and many of whom were pushed into Pakistan. And that's when a demographic change takes place in Jammu, for instance. That's that's one of the first elements of that when people think about demographic change in Kashmir, Kashmir is we'll talk about the demographic change that took place in Jammu in which that changed to him the majority in 47. Now, since 47, since 48, you have these occupations that begin and some form of settler colonial project that that starts and you have the Indian Army in Kashmir, and you have the Israeli militia, or the Jewish militia, that becomes the Israeli army and starts taking over places in Palestine. And since that time, you have, you know, this idea that of tactics that are very similar, and there's this tactic of collective punishment, right that Israelis and Indians use, there's also the tactic of maiming protesters, right, so they will shoot Palestinians in the legs and render them disabled later on. Kashmiris will be shot in the eyes and be blinded, right with pellets. You've had also the destruction of homes without any kind of judicial sort of like, you know, oversight just completely, you know, destroying people's properties you've had or just the refusal to return bodies or fighters, right. And so not even given the dignity to those resistant fighters. You've had the criminalization of civil society, and, and journalism. And so these are tactics that they've shared for, for for for quite a while. Now, in terms of one of the differences, or one of the world is sort of not full on difference is that Israel has always looked upon the Palestinians as as a people that they want to destroy, or the people that they want to annihilate or people they want to push out. India has looked on, looked onto Kashmiris as a people, they've tried to assimilate. So, they have, you know, they gave them passports, they gave them freedom of movement in terms of the rest of India. Right. But that has never worked, you know, that that development that India has brought into Kashmir has never moved Kashmiris to feel that they want to be part of this of this place. And so the tactic now has shifted, in which they are now taking on the sort of Zionist model in which they are happy to, to isolate them to take over to conduct more demographic change, to create more checkpoints to create more difficulties with travel to kind of go in and just take over spaces of land or property without much sort of oversight, right. Today. They've they've also started using Israeli tactics of like creating fences on the border with Pakistan as well with sensors. They've also gone in and started using this sort of counterinsurgency operations of building in major collaborative or sorry, major collaborative networks in Kashmir as well, in which it becomes a very poorly Each state where everyone's watching each other, and everyone's sort of like reporting and telling on each other. So it becomes a very, very paranoid space. One of the differences that Israel has also had an approach that differs to India in that, whereas India is a lot more, sort of like subtle, or very much shy to do things in the in the open, you know, it will cut the internet, it will cut the electricity, it will cut telephone lines, it will do things in the dark, Israel is very much into the idea of a spectacle. And so, it's it's, it's military industrial complex is also designed, and sort of contingent on the spectacle, so he can sell weapons to other places. So it's a laboratory to show others. This is how, you know, we watch how we deal with these people. This is how we govern this light. And I think slowly, we're going to see India taking on that model as well, where it will also become open to the spectacle in Kashmir, where it will be a lot more bold, for because it's not, it's not something that they have done in which they, they will do something for the world to see kind of thing. But as they become more emboldened, that might change as well, in which if if Kashmiris start fighting, you know, if the armed resistance starts again, and India then brings on this Israeli model of like self defence, right, then they are going to go into Kashmir and, and be very, very harsh with Kashmir is going to be very, very violent for the world to see. So these are kind of the things that are shifting as well on the ground.

Samia Aziz: 1:01:49

That's really interesting, because I think that what kind of gives strength to Israel's actions, in terms of how it is justified is that there is a history of persecution. And there is a an argument of self defence that keeps on being brought forward. I mean, it's completely null and void, really, but it's there. And it's very loud. And it will be interesting to see if India is able to adapt something similar. And I think what what is interesting, I mean, Rashid hardly talks about this as well is that Israel, that usually like a colonial project is a form of expansion. So you have a mother country that is occupying in order to expand in one way or another. And we have that with Indian Kashmir. And I guess, to an extent, we don't have that in the State of Israel, there was no quote unquote, mother country, because you just had a Jewish population in in Europe or wherever that was being persecuted, that man wanted a home. So you haven't you don't have expansion in the same way. So obviously, like this, the situations are not the same. But it's very interesting to see how India is, I guess, in some ways, potentially learning from Israel, and that there are similarities and you write about this in the book as well between Hindutva and Zionism, which cannot be ignored. And I think, if you listen closely enough, is quite apparent. And also, obviously the the situation in Kashmir, the Kashmiris will tell you, how devastating and house how scary it is. I have from my husband's family family in Kashmir. And so we know, the kind of issues that they face with freedom of movement and their lack of having access to food issues with internet and technology and load shedding. So the reduction of electricity, but I do think that, as you said, like it is very covert is very, it's not something that a lot of people will know about. It's not something that India is making a spectacle about. So thank you. That's a really very interesting, it's given me a lot to think about really, and we have been speaking for a really long time. I would happily continue, but I do know that we have to stop. So just actually just to end, what was your experience of writing this book? And what do you what do you hope that it will achieve? What do you hope for anyone that picks it up? So

Azad Essa: 1:04:42

thank you for the question. It was difficult to write. Because, you know, a lot of Indian historiography underplays the role of the Indian state when it comes to regional politics when it comes to sort of really analysing a How the Indian state has conducted itself with its minorities as well. So there's, there's this perception of the Indian state. And then there's the reality of Indian state. And then, and it's like like that for many places in many countries, right. But there's a kind of exceptionalism that exists when it comes when it comes to talking about India. And even today, even as India become so close to Israel become so aligned to the west on many things. I mean, except this Russia story, right. And that's also a bit more complicated, because it's not actually necessarily neutral, right? It's actually making money out of it. Suppose you try to teach selling Russian oil, and it's doing all kinds of things. But the point being is that there's this, there's a lot of hubris that I had to go through until a lot of things that I had to unpack, to try and push back against accepted narratives regarding India's foreign policy. And that took a lot of time to do. And a lot of the work that has been done on Indian Israel, for instance, has been written from the perspective of the Indian state, and the Israeli state and neoliberal International Relations scholarship, in that, the idea being that India and Israel being close is actually good. For India, it's good for Israel, it's good for the world, in a way. But that's also really problematic, because, you know, as we know, scholarship is not unbiased, right. And the scholarship is actually meant to assist businesses and authoritarians to actually become closer to each other. So actually, it's not actually geared towards helping people, or helping people's movements are helping fix the environment, you know, these relationships, you know, between these authoritarian states have major implications for the environment, it has major implications for people everywhere, for indigenous movements everywhere. And as I said to you that India and Israel, they have become models for places elsewhere. That's the key part here is that we have the, I'm hoping that people will pick up the book and and look at how, you know, narratives are made to sell a particular type of story. Meanwhile, they are actually conducting themselves in a very dangerous manner. And, and, and I'm also hoping that people pick up that these tactics are very similar. They're actually quite old, a very colonial in nature. And so it's not hard to guess the direction that they will go next. And so that should give people some optimism that they can tackle these things. But we have got to stop pretending that it's only the US and these other places, Western places that are the villains in all of this. We've got to start recognising that it comes in all kinds of shades as well. Yeah, and I think that's, that's where I'll end off.

Samia Aziz: 1:08:07

Yes, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much as it has been really wonderful speaking to you on the show today.

Azad Essa: 1:08:13

No, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Samia Aziz: 1:08:16

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