On Sunday Indian right-wing commentator Anand Ranganathan called for an Israel-like solution in Kashmir during The Samosa Caucus Podcast hosted by Smita Prakash. Other co-panelists included Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, Sushant, and Tahseen.
“You need an Israel-like solution to Kashmir. The fact that Israel has not been able to ‘solve it’ is not because Israel is not acting to solve it, or Israel is not doing things that should be done. If, for example, seven lakh (700,000) Israelis were driven out of their homes, and Israel had not acted, you would have said ‘Yes, they didn’t solve it,’” Ranganathan stated.
He continued, “Israel has catered for its people who were hard done by, we haven’t! It’s as simple as that. Despite that, yes, there may never be a solution because of the ideology of the people who hate Israelis, and the ideology of the people who hate Hindus. That’s irrespective. What I’m saying is, have we taken the right decisions; we haven’t.”
This is not the first time right-wing Hindu nationalists have invoked the “Israeli-model” as the go-to solution for Indian-occupied Kashmir. In 2019, a former Indian envoy to New York City suggested at a private gathering that India should follow the Israeli settler model in Kashmir.
Anand Ranganathan, an Indian scientist and political commentator known for his crass Islamophobic remarks, is the Consulting Editor of the Hindu nationalist publication Swarajya. He has more than a million followers on X and is known for his vehemently anti-Muslim rhetoric. His remarks on the podcast followed dehumanizing commentary about Kashmir’s “fertility rates” by Abhijit Iyer-Mitra.
“The fertility rates [in Kashmir] cannot support an insurgency,” Iyer-Mitra said casually. The concern over “Muslim fertility” is a deeply ingrained Zionist and Hindu nationalist talking point. In their view, Muslims are not seen as human beings but as “terrorists” or “demographic threats.”
The discussion’s shift from “fertility” to the adoption of Israeli genocidal tactics in Kashmir highlights the troubling nature of such rhetoric. The invocation of Israel’s tactics, which have been widely criticized for their human rights violations, as a model for Kashmir underscores the dangerous and dehumanizing ideologies driving these conversations.
You can watch the entire discussion in full here:
He is a Hindu terrorist
Already Muslims are being isolated and targeted in India