It has become increasingly apparent that more must be done to strengthen Jewish-Hindu friendship. With Narendra Modi's election as prime minister of India in 2014, the potential for a strong relationship between the Jewish and Hindu peoples was never greater. Trade is increasingly growing between the two countries and Indians, as a nation with a history dating back to antiquity, feel that they have much in common with the Jewish people, whose ancient biblical history is admired across the globe.
To further enhance the strategic relationship between India and Israel, a new Indo-Israel Friendship think has been formed that will enable enhanced cooperation between the two countries. This cooperation also strengthens India's socio-economic development.
According to Abhishek Gupta, the national co-convener of the Modi for Prime Minister organization and one of the organizers of the Indo-Israel Friendship think tank, "Israel is looked on as one of the successful nations in many critical areas like farming, water conservation, innovation and automation. With limited natural resources, Israel has been able to come up as a role model for many countries to follow."
"I know that India and Israel are natural close friends and they share warm relations," he added. "They also share the same concern for Muslim aggression." During the partition of India between a Hindu state and a Muslim state, several hundred thousand people were killed, at least 75,000 women were raped, 83,000 women were abducted, many Hindus were forcefully converted to Islam and 12 million people became refugees.
Since India declared independence, it has been fighting a bitter struggle over Kashmir and faces much violence from radical Islamist groups, who have committed numerous atrocities against the Hindu people, such as the 2008 Mumbai massacres, the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament and more recently, the 2017 ISIS-inspired terror attack targeting the Bhopal-Ujjain Passenger train.
Many Islamist terror groups view Hindus very similarly to how they view Jews and treat India's national sovereignty as lacking legitimacy for the same reasons that they deny Israel's rights to exist. In both cases, non-Muslim countries were established in territory that was once controlled by Muslims, which strikes at the very heart of radical Islamist ideology according to which, once a land is Muslim-ruled, it must remain Muslim-ruled.
Given the joint struggle experienced by Hindus and Jews against radical Islamists, it is time to take Hindu-Jewish cooperation to the next level. "Our group wishes to take this relationship forward under the title Indo-Israel Friendship," Gupta emphasized. The think tank now has 12 members – half from India and half from Israel. Gupta leads the Indian part and Israeli Druze diplomat Mendi Safadi leads the Israeli part.
Indo-Israel Friendship member Shipan Kumar Basu, a West Bengali leader who currently heads the Hindu Struggle Committee, has said, "I personally thank Mendi Safadi and Abhishek Gupta for this important initiative and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for developing a new India. I am personally very glad for we hope to make a new ideology and a new world order, where Hindu people and Jewish people cooperate on technology, innovation, security and a variety of other issues. Many Hindu people come to Israel and many Israelis come to India. I hope immediately that India and Israel will work on many issues for Hindus and Jews are brothers."
A pilot project will begin shortly. The project will start by focusing on farming. Basu believes that Israel can provide the right model for improving the quality of farming and advancing the market for farming projects, thereby helping farmers to earn their livelihood.
According to Safadi, agriculture and water are important issues in India and Israeli assistance could greatly improve agricultural output, dramatically raising the standard of living for Indian farmers. Israel has recently been very receptive to helping India on this particular issue as a token of strengthening the friendship between the Jewish and Hindu peoples.
With global power shifting eastward toward Asia, Indo-Israel friendship is the need of the hour. If we work based on the priorities of the common person, we will begin to see positive changes in the relationship between the two countries.
