India’s growing relationship with Israel during the last one decade of the Bharatiya Janata Party rule at the Centre seems to have prioritised economic and strategic interests over justice and solidarity. India’s capital is flowing into industries that profit from oppression of Palestinians and the Indian investments in Israel are supporting their genocide.
Despite having once been the victim of colonial oppression and champion of anti-colonial struggles, India is increasingly aligning with a state involved in genocide, illegal occupation and apartheid. India is today one of Israel’s biggest defence clients, as several top Indian companies have defence ties with their Israeli counterparts.
A report titled “Profit and Genocide: Indian Investments in Israel”, prepared by the advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA) and authored by Hajira Puthige, has revealed the disturbing realities of Indian support to Israeli defence infrastructure, which effectively translates into the corporate complicity in human rights violations by the rogue Zionist state.
The report was released here recently following the Indian Government’s signing of a Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) with Israel. The report focuses on top Indian business giants as well as public sector undertakings and their defence ties with Israeli defence firms, while stating that India accounts for nearly 45% of Israel’s total arms exports.
After a decade of the BJP rule in which the ties between India and Israel have gone from strength to strength, the top Indian companies which have defence ties with their Israeli counterparts include Adani Defence Systems and Technologies Ltd., which has acquired stakes in two major Israeli weapon manufacturing companies, Elbit Systems Ltd. and Israel Weapon Industries (IWI), through its joint venture PLR Systems.
Pointing out that Elbit Systems provides 80% of the weapons and equipment for Israel’s land forces and 85% of the combat drones used by the air force, the CFA report notes that the company played a major role in remodeling Caterpillar’s D9 bulldozer into an automated, remotely operated weapon system, deployed in almost every military activity since 2000, clearing incursion lines and causing destruction to life and property.
Further, the report says that in 2025, Adani Defence Systems and Technologies Ltd. partnered with Sparton, a U.S.-based subsidiary of Elbit Systems Ltd., to produce and develop anti-submarine warfare (ASW) systems. In 2022, almost a year before the October 7 attacks, Adani Ports and SEZ Ltd (APSEZ) acquired stakes in Israel’s Haifa Port under the Gadot group for 1.18 billion U.S. dollars.
Further, in 2016, Reliance Defence and Engineering Ltd. partnered with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defence Systems to manufacture air-to-air missiles, air defence systems, and large aerostats. “The Israeli military has used the same company’s Spike Guided Missiles extensively to target, from the air and ground, people inside buildings in the Gaza Strip,” the report claims.
“Later in 2018,” the report adds, “Reliance Defence and Engineering Ltd. also partnered with Kalashnikov Israel Company for the manufacturing of Kalashnikov-class weapons for the Indian Army. An Indian tech company, Tonbo, is reportedly providing precision-guided missiles and lightweight thermal weapons to Israel.”
Apart from defence, ties between the two countries extend to energy, pharmaceuticals, water, healthcare, education, finance, and technology sectors. Through such economic entanglements, the report comments, the effort is to portray an image of business as usual, unmindful of the fact that they indirectly legitimise violence against civilians, while reflecting a troubling complicity that undermines global calls for accountability and peace.
Among the firms identified as having ties with Israel are Indian Oil Corporation (energy), Dr. Reddy’s (pharmaceuticals), Samvardhana Motherson (automotive), and Reliance Industries (technology). State-owned enterprises Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) have also invested heavily in Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).
In 2017, to develop the Medium-Range Surface-to-Air Missile (MRSAM) system for the Indian Army, BEL signed a 2 billion U.S. dollars contract with IAI. “The two entities later partnered on a 630 million U.S. dollars deal for the supply of Barak-8 missile systems, designed to defend against airborne threats, to the Indian Navy. This missile system was used by Israel to intercept Iranian drones during the recent conflict,” says the report.
Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with HAL to convert the Multi Mission Tanker Transport (MMTT), an aerial refuelling tanker, in India. Heron drones manufactured by IAI have played a pivotal role in Israel’s attacks on Gaza, including in strike operations.
Further, Tata Motors has supplied Land Rover Defender vehicles to the Israeli military. Israeli company MDT Armor then converts the Land Rover frame into the MDT David, an armoured vehicle that has become a standard patrol and intelligence-gathering vehicle for Israeli military operations in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
How India obliged Israel became clear in May 2023, when both countries signed an agreement to send 42,000 Indian construction and nursing workers to Israel. “By the end of that year, as Israel’s military campaigns in Palestine intensified and Israel revoked permits for tens of thousands of Palestinian labourers, Israel turned to India to fill this gap, replacing a workforce long central to the Palestinian economy and further entrenching the dynamics of displacement,” says the report.
Other Indian firms which have developed ties with their Israeli counterparts include Larsen & Toubro (L&T) for producing a combat-proven technology designed to protect military vehicles from incoming missiles and rockets; Wipro, to provide cyber threat intelligence services; and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), in key digital transformation initiatives in Israel, including Project Nimbus, which has faced significant criticism for its potential implications on human rights and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict by using the technology for surveillance and targeting of Palestinians.
India’s growing presence in Israel is viewed by Israel as an endorsement of its economy and international legitimacy. However, human rights activists and organisations in India find it a betrayal of anti-colonial and anti-apartheid solidarity with Palestine. The public response in India has been mixed, ranging from silence and visible support for Israel to outright dissent, highlighting the dilemmatic nature of India’s increasing relations with Israel amidst the ongoing genocide.
While various pro-Palestinian movements are being campaigned online, a large source of social media support for Israel has emerged from India, with Hindu nationalists shaping narratives often amplifying pro-Israel positions. Palestinians view these developments as means of their dispossession, indicating an indirect but clear complicity in their oppression.
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, a Palestinian-led civil society organisation, has repeatedly urged India to reconsider its huge investments in Israel, calling them out for being contradictory to its own history of anti-colonial struggle.
Australian communities have started movements such as #StopAdani and Adani Watch, vocally protesting mainly against the Adani Group’s coal mine project in Australia. These movements have also reported on the Adani Group’s investment in Israel’s defence sector and its role as a perpetrator in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. They have highlighted the role of financial institutions such as the State Bank of India as enablers who facilitate these investments by providing loans and writing off risks.
The report points out in its conclusion that International NGOs, human rights activists and solidarity networks have criticised foreign corporations that indirectly sustain Israel’s policies of occupation, with campaigns historically targeting companies like Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Amazon. In this transnational activist landscape, India’s growing entanglement with Israel has not gone unnoticed.
Solidarity groups in Europe and North America have drawn parallels between the colonial subjugations in South Asia and Palestine. Civil society protests around the world expose the disconnect between administrative policy and public conscience, signalling that such engagements are not inevitable but deliberate choices, enabling Israel’s war economy.
The argument that investments are neutral or purely commercial no longer holds in a global context where corporate complicity in human rights violations is under intense international scrutiny. For India, the costs of these investments go beyond reputational damage, undermining the very constitutional principles of justice, equality, fraternity and peace, upon which it was built. It is about time Indian corporates adopt due diligence of human rights in line with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Meanwhile, government policies must establish enforceable regulatory frameworks ensuring ethical investments, not complicit in the economy of genocide.
If India is to retain its credibility in the Global South, historically rooted in solidarity with the oppressed class, including the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, it needs to reconsider its strategic interests over complicity in Israel’s settler-colonial regime. Anything less would confirm that profit and power have taken precedence over justice and humanity.
Inculcating ethics and constitutional principles into its economic diplomacy, India can reaffirm its identity as a nation that once stood at the forefront of anticolonial struggle and continues to uphold justice in international relations, the report points out.
The CFA engages and supports efforts to advance transparency and accountability in financial institutions. The institution uses research, campaigns and trainings to help movements, organisations, activists, students and youth to engage in this fight, and it partakes in campaigns that can shift policies and change public discourse on banking and economy.
The CFA monitors the investments of national and international financial institutions, engages on policies which impact the banking sector and economy of the country, demystifies the world of finance through workshops and short-term courses and helps citizens make banks and government more transparent and accountable, for they use public money.
This article was originally published in India Tomorrow, and you can read here.
