My TakeToday’s India and Israel are like two peas in a pod

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

God, it turns out, is not dead. Outside of western Europe, it (gender-neutral here) is quite alive, actually in rude health. In fact, it has been so radicalised in different religious guises that its followers, regardless of the colour of their skin or what name or names they call their god(s), would likely be extreme religious nationalists nowadays.

While the world was mesmerised by 9/11, the “war on terror” and radical Islam, we have missed or wilfully turned a blind eye to the rise of what can only be described as radical Hinduism, or Hindutva; and radical Judaism, or religious Zionism. Today, the leading political parties, and their leaders, in India and Israel respectively, derive much of their legitimacy and appeal to voters from their religious-nationalist ideologies.

In a new book, author and journalist Azad Essa offers a timely account of these two religious-political movements, and how they have drawn the two countries ever closer together. This evolving relationship, on Essa’s telling, is not only because of mutual national interests, but also based on their religious or ideological affinities.

The latter, in fact, is the main thesis of the book, one that I actually have some difficulty accepting. But aside from that, I find it a nifty short work that sheds light on contemporary Indian and Israeli politics, and their historical backgrounds. With 173 pages of the main text, it can be read over a long weekend.