India presents a curious case study where Jews have been able to maintain a peaceful existence without the need to withdraw into a self-centered ghetto, unlike in the other parts of the world. Nathan Katz has attributed this to the caste system in India (a hierarchical social stratification system) that accommodated the Jews like a caste-like group within its hierarchy. Documentary traces of Jewish life in India emerge roughly a millennium ago, yet the oral traditions of the Cochini and Bene Israel communities insist on a far deeper continuity—stretching back nearly two thousand years.
In India, violent (both overt and covert) manifestations of antisemitism have been rare and seldom directed at local Jews. Hence, most of the local Jews and scholars deny its existence in India, which is mainly political and non-violent in nature. Information about Jews, Israel, and the Holocaust in general in primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of education. Only in a few schools following the central education boards (CBSE and ICSE) have chapters dedicated to the Holocaust in secondary books. While in the schools under the various state boards, the Holocaust is mostly mentioned in a single sentence in the chapter on World Wars and, surprisingly, Nazism and Fascism. Even at the tertiary level, only a few institutions have such courses—Jawaharlal Nehru University, O.P. Jindal Global University, and Presidency University. This educational vacuum fosters a pervasive “antisemitic illiteracy,” leaving even high-level leaders unable to recognize the very tropes they encounter on the global stage. This is a profound cognitive dissonance where an individual or entity maintains a pro-Israel political stance while remaining fundamentally unable to recognize, or willfully indifferent to, the recycling of historical antisemitic tropes and the reality of Holocaust denial.
Three major strands of antisemitism can be observed. The dominant ones are the Islamic (both religious and political) and the leftist (primarily political) ones. In the aftermath of October 7, most of the incidents of anti-Israel sentiment, some to the extent of engaging in open antisemitism, originated from these two groups. They have carefully overlooked the plight of the Israelis who were killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack. Indian academia, still dominated by left-wing ideology, have come out in their support, barring a few. The third one, Hindu (mainly right-wing political), has remained mostly dormant in the postcolonial era, although it was equally visible in colonial times.
Most of the people engaging in antisemitic acts have never ever met a Jew in real life, given their minuscule numbers (5000 out of 1.4 billion). In such a lopsided demographic, the Jew is not a neighbor but an abstraction—a character in a political play they did not write. In most cases the terms “Jew” and “Israeli” are used interchangeably, with Judaism being mistaken as a branch of its Abrahamic cousins Christianity or Islam. The lack of information, coupled with small numbers of the local Jews, enables politicians and religious leaders across the spectrum to engage in various rhetorical antisemitic tropes without the fear of any reprisal. These range from the betrayer Jew and the foreign Jew, and in the recent post-October 7 scenario, some have called for the destruction of the State of Israel. Apologies surface only when such rhetoric reaches the Embassy of Israel in New Delhi, and even then, they are perfunctory.
This is a way to embolden the people, for whom most information about Jews and Israel is from secondary sources, to form an opinion based on the reports by Indian media and academia. In the bulk of the Indian academic discourse on the Arab-Israeli conflicts, the emphasis remains on the displacement and suffering of Palestinians, which largely ignores the fate of some 800,000 Jews who were also expelled from the Arab countries since the late 1940s.
The leftist-dominated Indian intellectual space is primarily pro-Palestinian to the extent of trying to whitewash Hamas’s atrocities. Such bias often erases the line between legitimate critique of Israeli policy and the recycling of centuries-old antisemitic tropes. By framing the conflict through a strictly post-colonial lens that ignores Jewish indigeneity and the trauma of the Farhud (1941 pogrom in Iraq) or the 1948 expulsions, these academic spaces inadvertently foster an environment where “Zionist” becomes a sanitized placeholder for “Jew” in derogatory contexts. In the post-October 7 scenario, protests have been organized by various groups across India. Most of these have been pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel, sometimes venturing into the territory of antisemitism by calling for Israel’s destruction and the Jews as “devoid of human feelings.” Most of these have ignored the fate of Israeli victims and the hostages. In many of these the slogan, “From the River to the Sea…” is freely raised. Fearing some untoward incident, the Jewish community of Kolkata restricted the access of the three synagogues to non-Jews (permission from one of the community members is required to visit them). Even when people from all faiths descended upon the Magen David synagogue (one of the largest in Asia) to attend Flower Silliman’s memorial service in November 2024, it was under strict police protection.
The newest addition to this antisemitic rhetoric in India has been the meeting of the center-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members with the Confederation (Konfederacja) Party of Poland members at the European Parliament in Brussels on February 12 this year. Both were present at the meeting as representatives of their respective parliaments. The meeting attracted significant controversy as the BJP’s general secretary Dushyant Kumar Gautam shared the stage with Grzegorz Braun of Konfederacja, a Holocaust denier. Besides denying the Holocaust, Braun has publicly engaged in many antisemitic incidents across Poland, the most infamous being him extinguishing a menorah in Polish Parliament and disrupting Prof. Jan Grabowski’s lecture on the Holocaust by seizing his mic. Besides, Braun has also engaged in publicly denying the use of gas chambers at Auschwitz and spread conspiracy theories about a “Jewish-Ukrainian” plot to take over Poland. The gravity of this association cannot be overstated; by early 2026, Braun’s status in the European Parliament has been defined as much by his legal battles over Holocaust denial as by his policy positions. For a representative of the world’s largest democracy to share a stage with a figure who famously used a fire extinguisher to desecrate a Menorah in 2023 suggests either a profound failure of diplomatic vetting or a worrying indifference to the global fight against antisemitism.
This meeting wasn’t given much attention by the Indian media. The few articles focused on the finalized deal, calling for closer European and Indian collaboration via a 4-point program and cultural engagements. Ironically, one report in The Tribune mentioned the role played by Indian princes such as the rulers of Kolhapur and Nawanagar to save Polish children (both Jews and Christians) during the Second World War, while the British rulers of India refused them entry. While these historical accounts of princely compassion are factually accurate, their sudden resurgence in the wake of the Brussels controversy serves as a form of “historical deflection.” By recalling princely compassion in the 1940s, the press sidestepped the uncomfortable fact that in 2026 Indian leaders were sharing a stage with a Holocaust denier. The memory of rescue became a convenient shield against present embarrassment. The fact that this meeting was largely ignored by the Indian media points to the dominant ignorance of Jews and antisemitism in India, primarily due to lack of education and knowledge. Only an NGO, ‘Diaspora for Action in Human Rights and Democracy,’ covered it in detail in its social media posts. In Poland, the event was better covered by the local media. Unlike the Indian reports, which steer clear of the controversial issues, the report by Polish daily Fakt mentions the controversy regarding the association of Braun with BJP politicians, with conservatism, and xenophobic nationalism uniting the two parties separated by borders. It further highlights how far-right figures seek “global-South” alliances to counter their domestic isolation by opponents. This is not merely a failure of diplomatic vetting but a calculated ideological alignment. Both the BJP and Konfederacja operate on a shared “nativist blueprint”: a rejection of globalist liberal pluralism in favor of civilizational purity. For the Hindu Right, the antisemitism of a European partner like Braun is a secondary concern compared to the strategic value of a European ally who validates their ‘majority-first’ domestic agenda and shares a common civilizational adversary.
This meeting could be interpreted as an expression of “Hindu-right” antisemitism, which has been rare since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The founders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) (ideological parent of the BJP), M.S. Golwalkar, K.B. Hedgewar, and V.D. Savarkar, used Nazi antisemitic rhetoric to further their Islamophobic agenda in India to the extent of justifying Nazi treatment towards Jews and wishing for similar treatment against Indian Muslims. However, after the horrors of the Holocaust came out, Savarkar altered his position to the extent of becoming philo-Semitic, critiquing the Indian government for opposing Israel’s statehood (the partition plan of British mandate Palestine) in the UN General Assembly. Thus, what began as admiration for Nazi discipline later shifted into a pragmatic support for Israel. This was less a moral reconciliation than a tactical stance, which I call “functional philosemitism.” This refers to a strategic, transactional affinity for the State of Israel or the Jewish people that is driven not by a genuine reconciliation with Jewish history or suffering, but by shared political interests or a perceived common civilizational adversary.
Hence, the modern Hindu Right’s affinity for Israel is frequently less about a reconciliation with Jewish history and more about a shared perception of a common civilizational adversary. This is the paradox of India’s “antisemitic illiteracy”: leaders can wave the pro-Israel flag for strategy, yet fail to notice or choose to ignore the antisemitism of figures like Braun. In this framework, the ‘Jew’ is rebranded from a historical victim of European fascism into a modern ‘warrior-ally’ against a shared Islamic threat. In this framing, Jews are stripped of their history and recast only as soldiers in a shared fight. The Holocaust, with all its weight, disappears from view. This explains why they can comfortably share a stage with a Holocaust denier: in their worldview, they aren’t meeting a hater of Jews but a fellow nationalist defending a European civilization. On the other hand, Braun tries to mask his antisemitism under the rubric of Polish nationalism; many of his tactics and tropes date back to the Nazi era. Braun seeks to gain the much-needed legitimacy from this association with Indian leaders at a time when he is under fire both in Poland and in Europe for his extremist views
In present times, Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu and India under Narendra Modi have become strategic partners. Both have witnessed the gradual removal of their socialist (a little bit of the secular) nature envisaged by their first prime ministers, David Ben-Gurion and Jawaharlal Nehru, respectively. This strategic alignment, while bolstered by defense and technology cooperation, often operates on a purely transactional level that overlooks the ideological baggage of secondary partners. It creates a vacuum where the “philosemitism” of the state is purely “functional”—focused on the Israeli state’s hardware while ignoring the Jewish people’s history. Such indifference opens the door for Braun—under fire in Europe—to claim legitimacy by appearing alongside representatives of India, the world’s largest democracy.
Despite being one of the smallest religious communities in India, the Jews still don’t enjoy “minority status” at the federal level, thus preventing them from special benefits and schemes of the Indian government aimed at minorities. Only recently, they were granted this status in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat. Moreover, the local municipal authorities are also apathetic to the concerns of tiny minorities. During my past research on the Baghdadi Jews in Kolkata, I’ve observed the entrances of the synagogues being blocked by vendors storing their wares to the extent of making the main gate of the Neveh Shalom Synagogue inaccessible. It isn’t an attack, just the quiet indifference of daily life pushing Jewish space aside. In the rush toward strategic global alignments, the specific, fragile history of the Indian Jew is being obscured by the shadows of more convenient political partners. While the latent antisemitism in India is not directly aimed at the Jews, it can be weaponized against other communities by dishonest elements to fulfill their aims. As Elie Wiesel noted, “Antisemitism begins with the Jews, but it never ends with them.”
Sayan Lodh is a doctoral candidate in history at Presidency University, Kolkata, India. His current doctoral work is focused on the Judaizing movements in India. Previously, he has worked on the Baghdadi Jewish community of Kolkata. His areas of research include the history of Jews, antisemitism, and mass violence from an Indian perspective. He is a recipient of several fellowships. He has written for both academic and popular media.