“Sometimes it seems that the louder someone claims sainthood, the bigger the horns they are hiding.”
No other country truly finds itself in such a state of ambivalent existence but the self-proclaimed “largest democracy” of the world. Today when the global conscience has awakened to the genocidal fanaticism of the Zionist state of Israel, perhaps, conscience is too esoteric a thing for the Indian state to comprehend. Just days before Israel carried out its ignominious attacks against the people of Iran in February 2026, Narendra Modi was busy declaring Israel as the “Fatherland” of Indians. So much bonhomie with a state that stands guilty of the ethnic cleansing of the helpless people of Gaza has cost India every shred of little credibility that it ever possessed as a non-aligned nation.
A major reason for the degradation of trust is the Indian posturing over Palestine. India has chosen to be on the wrong side of history. Instead of sympathising with the aggrieved palestinian people, Indian foreign policy has shunned its neutral posture under the Modi regime. Modi wears the relationship with Israel on his sleeve as something to be proud of. That is exactly why Middle Eastern states have lost trust in India as a diplomatic and strategic partner. Wooing a state that has destabilised the entire Middle East since its inception has made India irrelevant in West Asia.
Perhaps the most far-reaching implication of India’s love story with Israel is its estrangement with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran found itself fighting for its very existence in 2025 and 2026. Not a single word of condemnation or consolation originated from the “largest democracy of the world” against the targeted assassinations of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and the top brass of the Iranian state. Legitimizing the assassination of the immensely revered head of a state is the new low India foreign policy finds itself in. The people of Iran will never forget the faces who tacitly stood by the thuggery of their blood-thirsty arch-enemies. Owing to that, the dream of acting as a “counterweight” to China has lost any probability of fruition. China has filled the investment gap that India created in Iran. That is not all; India has created grave concerns for its energy supply chain in future. Iran has demonstrated the ability to choke the Strait of Hormuz with immense efficacy, and it is a no-brainer that, in a seemingly precarious future, only friendly states will have the luxury to maintain unobstructed supply of oil and gas through the crucial strait, and friendly is not how Iran perceives India in the current phase of its trial by fire. The deafening Indian silence on the targeting of the Iranian sailors by the US on March 4, 2026 , when they were returning from the naval exercises on the Indian coast of Visakhapatnam, speaks volumes for the assertion that Indian foreign policy has long left the ship of principles, and has taken its place in the transactional boat.
In South Asia itself, irony manifested itself when Modi’s India tried all possible efforts to discredit and subjugate Pakistan into submission, but it only gave way to the geopolitical rise of the only nuclear power of the Islamic world. Israeli Harop drones and loitering munitions, operated by Israeli defense personnel, tried to bolster India in its bid to intimidate Pakistan during Operation Sindoor, but destiny had other plans for the region. Operation Sindoor was swept away by the tide of Operation Bunyan al Marsoos. Nothing helped establish the credibility of Chinese defense systems and Pakistan’s meteoric rise as a force to be reckoned with in South Asia more than the failed bullying tactics of India employed from the Israeli handbook. Pakistan showed to the world that it is not Gaza. The events that followed the May 2025 clash between the two South Asian states laid bare the new reality: The “new normal” of India was trampled over by geopolitical, geostrategic, and economic dividends paved by Pakistan’s response to the Indian aggression. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia signed the momentous Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (SMDA) on September 17, 2025 with Pakistan. PAF got orders for S400 killer, JF17 Thunder, worth billions of dollars from around the world. Pakistan emerged as the most credible mediator for the US-Iran peace process to save the world from the global economic recession. And now Pakistan is playing a key role in bringing peace to the African nation of Libya that has been reeling from the civil strife since 2011. Indian efforts to dig a grave of diplomatic isolation for Pakistan in West Asia have generated the opposite results. The world is not ready to listen to the hypocritically edifying Indian tirade against Pakistan. Cosying up with a genocidal state has tattered the moral ascendancy cloak. Accusing Pakistan of terrorism on one hand and being in cahoots with the Zionist state has unearthed the sinister face of the Indian state. Truly, birds of a feather flock together. Expediency coupled with anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan sentiments have dictated the Indian tilt toward Israel, but has it been a bright chapter of the Indian foreign policy? Too far from it. As the old adage goes, “a man is known by the company he keeps”, India has chosen to be a global embarrassment by romancing Israel on one side, and claiming to be a Vishwa Guru on the other.
Ammarah Farhat
The writer is a gender studies mentor (CSS) anchor, and a student of International Relations.
