By: Sarah Moore, SFU Student
In an address at the Annual Dr. Hari Sharma Memorial lecture on May 17, journalist and author Azad Essa critiqued the deepening alliance between India and Israel. Framing his lecture within the legacy of Hari Sharma, a fierce critic of US imperialism and Hindu nationalism, Essa painted a grim picture of a world increasingly shaped by authoritarianism, neocolonialism, and corporate greed. Sharma was also a professor emeritus of sociology and anthropology at SFU.
Opening with a sweeping overview of global conflicts, from Sudan and Yemen to Congo and Chhattisgarh, Essa argued these crises are connected by a common thread of imperialism, environmental destruction, and the unchecked expansion of capital. In Congo, for instance, imperialism takes the form of multinational mining companies extracting cobalt and copper with little regard for local communities or ecosystems. Linking these to the global rise of the far-right over the last two decades, he warned how Israel’s occupation of Palestine serves as a model for repression everywhere.
The Palestinian genocide “lies at the intersection of the building of a new world order in which the powerful are able to pursue expansion, domination, and the exertion of hard power over peoples, domestic or otherwise — with impunity,” Essa declared. “And the beating heart of this new pursuit is burgeoning India and Israel ties.”
Essa traced this alliance back to as early as the 1960s, when India first bought weapons from Israel during the Sino-Indian War. Since then, this relationship has deepened not just through continuing arms deals and surveillance tech, but also through a shared playbook of ethnonationalism. Drawing parallels between Zionism (Jewish nationalism) and Hindutva (Hindu nationalism), Essa emphasized their dependence on myths of civilizational superiority and existential threat. This also has severe domestic consequences for India, Essa noted, such as the normalization of Islamophobia and increased state violence against minorities in the country.
The Palestinian genocide “lies at the intersection of the building of a new world order in which the powerful are able to pursue expansion, domination, and the exertion of hard power over peoples, domestic, or otherwise — with impunity. And the beating heart of this new pursuit is burgeoning India and Israel ties.” — Azad Essa, journalist, author
Essa also critiqued India using the Pahalgam attack as justification for deploying Israeli drones in Pakistan while adopting Israeli-style settlements in Indian occupied Kashmir. The Pahalgam attack occurred on April 22, with armed terrorists killing 26 tourists as they vacationed in Kashmir, the world’s most militarised zone. Building on a rich historical and geopolitical analysis from his book Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, Essa outlined how India (long portraying itself as pro-Palestinian and anti-colonial) has pivoted to embracing Israel not just in arms deals and military trainings but also in policy and tactics of surveillance, demographic reengineering, and suppression of dissent.
As Essa explained, the India-Israel alliance is emblematic of a broader shift in global politics where authoritarian regimes shield one another from accountability. Despite these “incredibly distressing and heartbreaking” times, Essa emphasized the need to imagine different futures. Reflecting on Sharma’s legacy that framed the lecture, he concluded that the unequivocal present reality is stripping away global illusions: “Whereas it would have been very tough for South Asian scholars, activists, like professor Sharma, to speak about India in an academy that has largely valorised India, the road has been cleared now to speak and examine the Indian state,” he said. “The lack of ambiguity saves a lot of explanation.” Sharma’s political work extends more than 50 years, with his work related to India beginning in the ‘70s.
He also paid tribute to Malcolm X on the 100th anniversary of his birth: “As Michael E. Sawyer said last month, South Africa’s effort to take Israel to the International Court of Justice is Malcolm’s dream of a colonial entity being dragged to an international institution manifest.”
Following the lecture, he was joined by Sid Shnaid of Independent Jewish Voices in a dialogue focusing on solidarity, resistance, and the role of diaspora communities in challenging oppression. The conversation touched on the complicity of Western institutions in legitimizing Benjamin Netanyahu’s and Narendra Modi’s regimes while calling for a unified global response.
