In the history of foreign policy, seldom have relations between any two nations blossomed as fast as they have in the case of India and Israel. Discuss. (2014, 15 Marks)
Full diplomatic relations between India and Israel date only from 29 January 1992. Within a decade Israel had become a front-rank defence supplier, and after Narendra Modi’s 2017 visit, the first by an Indian Prime Minister, the relationship came, in a phrase widely used at the time, “out of the closet”. The statement is largely true, but part of the speed is an illusion created by a long period of hidden contact.
Evidence of rapid growth
- Trade rose from about US$200 million (1992) to a record US$10.77 bn in 2022-23.
- Defence: from no formal security content in 1992 to Kargil supplies (1999), the Phalcon radars (2004) and DRDO–IAI co-development of Barak-8/MRSAM. On SIPRI’s 2021–25 data India took 29% of Israel’s arms exports, its largest customer.
- Breadth: agricultural Centres of Excellence (35 operating by 2026, over a million farmers trained), counter-terrorism, space (RISAT-2, 2009), and, in the February 2026 Special Strategic Partnership, AI, cyber, labour mobility and an FTA negotiation.
- Political visibility: the first Israeli President in India (1997), Ariel Sharon in 2003, prime ministerial exchanges in 2017–18 and, in 2026, the first address by an Indian Prime Minister to the Knesset.
Why it moved so fast
- Push factors for India: the Soviet collapse of 1991 broke India’s arms pipeline; liberalisation made ideological refusal of a technology partner untenable; and decades of deference to Arab opinion had brought little Arab support on Kashmir.
- Complementarity: what India sells Israel rarely competes with what Israel sells India; the 2026 joint statement paired Israeli innovation with Indian talent and manufacturing.
- A permissive region: the Madrid process, Egypt’s and Jordan’s treaties with Israel and later the Abraham Accords (2020) cut the Arab cost of closeness.
- No hostile memory: India’s NSA Brajesh Mishra told an American Jewish audience in May 2003 that India had no history of anti-Semitism. Israelis read India’s earlier coolness as post-colonial principle and calculation, not enmity, and waited.
Qualifying the claim
- Older than it looked: P. R. Kumaraswamy (India’s Israel Policy, 2010) documents functional contact long before 1992, including Israeli arms in 1962; Moshe Dayan flew secretly to Delhi in 1977. The “blossoming” was partly the public admission of an existing tie.
- Gradual, not sudden: Nicolas Blarel (2015) traces an incremental erosion of India’s ideational objections rather than a single break.
- Not linear: trade fell to US$3.75 bn in 2024-25, and there is no mutual-defence commitment.
- Comparisons cut both ways: India–UAE ties and China–Israel ties in the 2010s also expanded quickly; what is distinctive here is the depth of defence co-development, not speed alone.
- A ceiling remains: India’s vote for the New York Declaration (September 2025) shows that Arab and Palestinian stakes still bound the relationship.
Conclusion
The relationship did grow unusually fast because a strategic need, the loss of a Soviet supplier, met a willing provider as the region’s taboos dissolved. Its speed reflects the removal of obstacles more than a change of conviction: deep in defence and technology, shallow in commerce.