May nonfiction: Six newly published books that present the many ways of seeing India

All information sourced from publishers.

Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, Azad Essa

In the past decade, under the Narendra Modi-led government, India has changed dramatically. As the world attempts to grapple with the country’s sharp turn towards authoritarianism and Hindutva, little attention has been paid to the way India has leaned on Israeli weapons, military tactics and technical support to build its own ethnonationalist state.

As a leader of the much-lauded Non-Aligned Movement, India was once perceived as a pillar of pro-Palestine solidarity. New Delhi had equated Zionism with racism, after all. It was the first non-Arab state to recognise the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. How, then, did Israel become a cornerstone of India’s foreign policy? If India was an opponent of colonialism and apartheid, why does its agenda in Kashmir look so similar to Israel’s settler-colonial project in Palestine? And how did a traditional supporter of the Palestinian cause become such a willing partner to Israel’s genocide in Gaza?

Hostile Homelands puts India’s relationship with Israel in its historical context, looking at the origins of, and connections between, Zionism and Hindutva. It examines the nature of India’s changing position on Palestine and its growing military-industrial relationship with Israel from the 1990s onwards.

The Last Bench, Adhir Biswas,...

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