Does antisemitism grow in India? Are protests against genocide in Gaza actually an imported conspiracy of Muslims and the Left? And is the Hindu nationalist, supremacist government now positioning itself as fighting “antisemitism” after discovering Israel as a supposed “civilisational ally”?

These are the charges and claims made in a recently published article in The Times of Israel, “Antisemitism in India: An Unwelcome Import“, which presents itself as an analysis of India’s response to Jews, Zionism, and Israel, and portrays a section of Indians as becoming hostile to Jews. To support the claim, the article argues that social media in India has fertile ground for imported conspiracy and that the infiltration of anti-Jewish rhetoric from abroad is fuelling antisemitism. The piece places the blame for the alleged “antisemitism” in India on Muslims and the Left.

While such a flattened or manufactured narrative appearing in The Times of Israel may not come as a shock, what is far more disturbing is the byline. The article is not written by an Israeli academic or commentator but by Khinvraj Jangid, an Indian scholar who currently serves as Professor and Director of the Centre for Israel Studies at O.P. Jindal Global University, a prominent liberal arts institution in India’s National Capital Region.

Jangid’s piece lacks any empirical basis. His argument exemplifies a dangerous conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism and serves a narrative that is politically convenient for both the Israeli state and India’s Hindu nationalist government. This provenance reveals the article not as analysis, but as advocacy for a deliberate political project: to criminalise solidarity with Palestine and sanctify the Indian government’s deepening alliance with the Israeli state.

Jangid asks if India is “beginning to absorb forms of antisemitism”, yet he cannot cite a single incident of anti-Jewish violence or harassment in India related to the Gaza protests. In a country where hate crimes are documented, this absence is deafening. His evidence rests instead on a conflation: that criticism of Israel’s state ideology and military conduct is inherently anti-Jewish. This false equivalence is the article’s foundational flaw.

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To manufacture a historical basis, he draws a laughable connection between India’s traditional Jewish communities and the modern political project of Zionism. He argues that because Jewish communities have lived in India for centuries, across multiple cities, this establishes a historical relationship between India and the Israeli state. This framing deliberately ignores historical facts and rests on fundamental falsehoods.

In reality, India’s diplomatic history reflects a principled, anti-colonial stance distinguishing between Judaism and political Zionism. The country even in the British colonial period did not endorse Zionism, despite the British mandate for the........

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