IF one wants to understand how extreme and religiously fuelled nationalism can lead to damage and devastation, we need only look at the example of two leaders — India’s Narendra Modi and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Indian prime minister’s Hindu supremacist ideas, which he has pursued at least from his days of sponsoring pogroms when he was chief minister of Gujrat, have fostered a delusional Hindutva identity. His belief is pushed by every government institution. A purged media tows the ruling BJP’s party line.
In Israel, the genocidal PM Netanyahu has killed tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians in the process of claiming all of Gaza for his state and pursuing a belief that Jews are entitled to the land. He, too, has cracked down on media and purged government institutions of his opponents. Recently, the New York Times detailed how Netanyahu prolonged the Gaza war in order to extend his own time in power.
However, recent events suggest that the edifice of lies and bloodthirsty greed may finally be crumbling in the case of both leaders. Ironically, one indication of this lies in the words of another authoritarian leader. The mercurial US President Donald Trump recently went against Netanyahu by reiterating that the people of Gaza were experiencing starvation. He also denounced India’s “obnoxious tariff regime” and imposed 25 per cent duties on all Indian goods, essentially rolling his eyes at the bromance Modi had boasted about.
This week, the argument over whether India faces a foreign policy debacle began in the Lok Sabha which debated the topic of “India’s strong, successful and decisive Operation Sindoor in response to the terrorist attack in Pahalgam”.
Despite the self-congratulatory name given to the debate, facts about Operation Sindoor were finally said out aloud. The truth-teller, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi underscored facts the rest of the world already knows.
India and Israel are starting to feel the effects of their wrongdoings.
He pointed out, for instance, that Pakistan had indeed taken down five Indian aircraft and that the government had pushed Pakistan and China into a close military relationship.
His speech also implied that Modi had used the military not as a tool of defence but as a means to prop up domestic support — most of the world already knew that the intention behind Operation Sindoor had a lot to do with Modi wanting to whet nationalist fervour and thus support for himself. Online polls taken after Gandhi’s speech showed that the opposition leader had been listened to by a significantly larger number of people than Modi’s speech.
Such an indictment of the Modi government’s foreign policy may have been forgotten had the Trump administration not slapped enhanced tariffs on India and even punished Indian companies found buying Iranian oil. To really get at India, the American president added that India now had a “dead economy”.
It is becoming increasingly clear that India has been kicked to the kerb not just by China but also by the US. While Modi’s virtually state-controlled media is unlikely to fully admit to the tremendous setback that this represents for India, it is likely that the economic interests of that country will begin to squirm in a way that they have not before. In brief, India has been left in a supplicant’s position before both the existing and ascendant superpower.
Netanyahu is also losing. France, Canada and the UK have or are about to recognise the State of Palestine. Second, the entire world is increasingly becoming united on the position that the Israeli state is committing genocide in Gaza and is busy in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Even Israel’s own human rights organisations have begun to acknowledge that Israel is carrying out genocide.
The New York Times piece mentioned earlier in this column also underscored how Netanyahu rejected a proposal in April through which the war could have ended (the Israeli state would then have been recognised by Saudi Arabia) simply because he needed to prolong the war so he would not have to face trial on account of the criminal charges against him.
The cases of both PMs reveal the limits of bloodthirsty religious nationalist leaders. If domestic politics were all there was to consider, feeding their publics delusions would continue to deliver. This is not the case; countries ultimately must deal with other countries and no one likes to associate with people who think they are somehow inherently chosen by a higher power to be superior and special.
In this case, the whole world is telling both India and Israel to withdraw and take their delusional self-importance, entitlement and sense of supremacy with them.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
rafia.zakaria@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, Aug 2nd, 2025