61Similar arguments regarding Indian Muslims have remained an
anathema for the scholars and elites alike. Any suggestion of a religious
influence upon India’s approach towards the Middle East has been derided
as ‘right-wing argument’ or an agenda-driven exercise. This is more clearly
manifested in the arguments surrounding Israel and the prolonged absence
of Indo-Israeli relations. The support and sympathy of the Hindu right for
Israel and Zionism are easily attributed to their ‘shared’ anti-Muslim prej-
udices. Similar arguments of Congress-Arab linkage due to the pro-Muslim
position of the former are dismissed as mischievous and conspiracy. The
suggestions that democratic India will have to listen and accommodate the
views of its Muslim population on issues pertaining to the Middle East
have been loathsome and politically incorrect for the Indian elite (Prashad
2015 ). The eagerness to fight right-wing arguments has resulted in them
belittling the obvious: as a democratic country, India will not be able to
ignore the voice of a sizeable section of its population.
The normalization of Indo-Israeli relations has forced some to refer
to the domestic dimension elliptically. During his visit to Israel in July
2000 External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh publicly referred to
“domestic politics” as the factor for prolonged non-relations (Varadarajan
2005 ) and reflecting on Prime Minister skipping Ramallah during his
Israel visit in July 2017, a former diplomat noted that Modi “is not wor-
ried about vote-bank politics” (Sood 2017 ). However, such sentiments
are an exceptions and even those who attribute the pro-Israeli policies of
the US to its Jewish population do not like a similar comparison between
the Muslim population and India’s Middle East policy (Sarkar 2017 ;
Kattan 2017 ).
At the same time, it is essential to recognize that there are no systemic
scientific studies examining the link between the domestic Muslim com-
munity and India’s foreign policy. When the idea was still unpopular
among the Indian academia, Appadorai observed that the “impact of the
presence of a large Muslim minority in India on India’s foreign relations is
perhaps best seen in India’s relations” with the Middle East (Appadorai
1981 , 148). Citing some of the prominent examples, Appadorai observes,
the Indian Muslims were with the Government of India in its pro-Arab
policy is evident; they were against the creation of the State of Israel; they
were against establishing diplomatic relations with it, they supported the
Government of India’s policy in regard to the Suez crisis and they supported
the Government of India’s policy in regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict of- (Appadorai 1981 , 159)
ISLAMIC DIMENSION