An Indian Friend of Israel-Introducing Devesh Jha

Jews have lived in India for more than two thousand years. Their diverse communities have contributed to Indian society in a variety of ways. For example, scores of Indian Jews and particularly women, became big stars in the rising 20^th century Indian film industry now called Bollywood.

Ask any Indian film buff and they will praise the talents of former female film stars such as Sulochana, Romila, Pramila, Rose, and Nadira, all of whom were Jewish.

And just to break the stereotype about Jews and show business, let us not forget the Jewish General David of the Indian Armed Forces whose swift campaign to liberate eastern Pakistan in the early 1970s resulted in the independence of Bangladesh.

Simply put, not only were India’s Jews tolerated by their mostly Hindu and in some cases Muslim host societies, but they also contributed to the cultural, social, and economic development of what is now a major Asian power.

Although the Jews of India were never more than 50,000 people at any one time, on a subcontinent that contained hundreds of millions of Hindus and millions of Muslims, modern Indian intellectuals have given much thought to Jews, Judaism and the rise of the state of Israel.

Professor Julia Ergova has authored an entire book on how Indian thinkers have perceived and continue to perceive Jews, Judaism, and Israel. The interest is disproportionate to the number of Jews who have ever made India their home.

For example, during the struggle for independence before WWII some moderate Hindu nationalist leaders who supported Ghandi and Nehru often looked at the “Yishuv,” the Jewish community in Israel during the League of Nations Mandate, “managed” by the British, as a good example of a soon to be successful movement of national regeneration.

India and Israel became independent about the same time, during the late 1940s. It was the hope of Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion that Israel and India would become trading partners and allies but that did not happen. The Islamic lobby in India prevented this with support from the left leaning Congress Party that saw Zionism as a “colonial movement. “

With the fall of the Soviet Union, 9/11 and the tilt of younger Indians towards the West, major changes in Indian society and politics have contributed to a growing alliance between Israel and India, and which continues to this day.

However, there are some dark clouds on the horizon. They are mostly digital. Although the Indian government is more and more pro-Israel, as is much of the newly established middle classes (400 million people) the “wilderness” of the Internet has allowed three anti-Semitic tropes to grow in the Indian digital world, so much so that one Indian researcher, Devesh Jha, has concluded that there has been a disturbing rise in digital anti-Semitism largely seen on open forums such as X, YouTube as well as on closed networks such as WhatsApp and Telegram.

Devesh Jha is a young Indian undergraduate who studies history and political science. He is a good example of a young Indian, Western-oriented, and sympathetic to the Israel-India alliance.

And so, he volunteered to offer his developing research skills to an NGO that monitors and fights online antisemitism called FOA (Fighting Online Anti Semitism). Working under their academic supervision, he provided them with an initial analysis of the situation that has allowed for the growth of digital antisemitism among Indian users of the Internet.

You can read his full report at this link: https://foantisemitism.org/reports/

I would like to highlight his three major observations and put them in historical context for the interested reader.

In his focused and succinct paper, Jha identifies three elements within a specific Indian context that encourage anti-Semitism. This is despite the millennial tolerance of Jews in India, and taking into account various Muslim political movements unsympathetic to Zionism, in India Jews have been allowed to live freely and flourish in both pre-independent and independent India.

This new digital anti-Semitism is first and foremost an expression of the Islamic movement in India. Radical Indian Muslims argue for the independence of an Islamic state on both the Indian and Pakistani parts of the Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

They argue that the Jews have “occupied” Palestine as have the Indians occupied eastern Kashmir. So, any flare-up in Kashmir is often framed in a pan-Islamic idiom with a focus on Palestine.

Then of course, there is the larger Pan-Islamic movement itself within India (and Pakistan) that believes that according to Islam, Jews should not be allowed to comprise an independent state as this is contrary to Islam’s notion of Jews as a non national religious minority who should be content to live under Islamic law. In their eyes, a Jewish state is a sin against Islam.

The second factor is sadly the intellectual heritage of Pandit Nehru the first Prime Minister of Independent India. During Nehru’s studies at Cambridge University in the UK before WWII, he picked up some old British anti-Semitic tropes and, then as a major player in the Congress Party, denied the historic and political legitimacy of an independent Jewish state in the land of Israel in poorly thought-out solidarity with the nonaligned movement that later left India open to a terrifying invasion by the Chinese Communists in the Himalayas in the early 1960s.

This political heritage became a founding principle of the academics at institutes of higher learning in and around New Delhi, many of whom to this day foment pro Palestine and anti Israel ideas and political platforms among their impressionable students.

Finally, there is what some might call the “Indian far right,” bloggers and such who believe right wing conspiracy theories that mirror or take their inspiration from Nazi ideology both pre and post WWII.

Although this may seem strange to the outsider unread in Indian history, it is an echo of the Indian National Movement of Subhas Chandra Bose who during WWII cozied up to Hitler and fought with the Japanese in the hope that they would defeat the British and hand India an early independence.

At the end of the report, Jha outlines some of the recent legal and administrative efforts of the Indian government to monitor the Internet while still allowing for free speech. He points out that the authorities try to draw a line between anti Semitism and political debate on the fate of Israel and its neighbours.

To what degree the Indian authorities will be able to put a damper on this rise of this new wave of digital anti Semitic anti Zionism stemming from these three sources remains to be seen.

However, as someone who was born and raised in India, who studies there and who has conducted his research under the auspice of FOA, Jha believes that the sources of modern Indian digital anti Semitism and Zionism are largely external-Islamic, leftist and nostalgia for Bose.

At the end of the report Jha modestly points out that he is merely scratching the surface of the Indian digital world with regards to Israel and India. He writes that there is more work to be done. Let us hope he is given the opportunity and support of organizations like FOA to do so, as such research takes time and money and so far, Jha has acted in a volunteer capacity.

I managed to contact Devesh as he is a blogger for the Times of Israel. He responded to my request for an interview, and we have had some lively telephone exchanges. Here is a short profile of this talented Indian friend of the Jewish state.

Devesh Jha was born in 2005 in Silvassa, the capital of the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, India. He comes from a family of modest means.

His father came from the extremely poor area of Bihar and moved to Silvassa in the early 1990s in search of better employment opportunities. This allowed Devesh to complete primary, secondary, and higher secondary education at Lions English School, a private English-medium institution in Silvassa, where he studied until Class XII.

In July 2024, he began his university education at Adamas University, Kolkata, where he is currently pursuing a BA (Honours) in Political Science and International Relations. He is in his third year.

Devesh is a young literate Indian who wants to know how decisions taken by powerful states, political leaders, and international institutions influence the lives of ordinary people, like his own family, especially those living far away from the centres of global decision-making.

And so, he reads about geopolitics, diplomacy, international organisations, and regional conflicts, particularly those concerning the Middle East and West Asia.

Like so many Indians before him Jha has a longstanding curiosity about Jewish history and the historical experiences of the Jewish people. Through his reading he has also been trying to better understand the persecution, discrimination, and resilience of Jewish communities throughout history.

He has concluded that the history of antisemitism cannot be understood exclusively through the Holocaust, but requires a broader examination of centuries of discrimination, displacement, and persecution followed by the unexpected rebirth of the state of Israel.

On the phone he told me,

My assessment is that although antisemitism in India has historically manifested differently and is comparatively less widespread than in several Western societies, it is now increasingly visible in certain digital spaces. I am particularly concerned about how younger audiences encounter and sometimes absorb anti-Jewish and anti-Israel narratives through online platforms.

One of the remarkable things about Devesh is his age. He is 21 years old and has not yet travelled outside of India. He told me that most Indians dream of studying in Europe and America. Instead, he wants to do graduate work in Israel. He believes that the India Israel alliance is long term and he wants to build his career within that framework.

Devesh is one more example of the long-term resonance between Jewish and Indian culture and civilization. I believe that he will not only contribute to his own country’s development, but as an articulate graduate student studying at an Israeli institute of higher learning, Devesh will have much to share and teach his fellow Israeli and international students about what one scholar once called “The Wonder that (is) Was India.”

I hope that he will be given that opportunity.