AMNESTY International has just published an investigative report titled “Made in India: the Supply of Weapons and Ammunition to Israel” in which it details India’s arms supplies to Israel at a time when that country was perpetrating  genocide in Gaza. Amnesty International carefully excluded from its purview all shipments carrying items for civilian use; likewise it even excluded weapons and ammunition that are likely to be used as part of anti-missile defence technology that defends civilians from indiscriminate attacks. In other words it was careful to focus exclusively on arms shipments from India that would be used for aggressive ends by Israel.

According to this report, between October 7, 2023 and November 30, 2025, India made at least 2596 shipments of small arms, ammunition and military vehicle components to Israel for such aggressive purposes. Among the articles supplied were 564, 970 parts of explosive ordnance (such as 155 mm high explosive artillery shells and drone warheads), 390, 516 military grade small arms parts, and 298 military vehicle components.

There can be no doubt whatsoever that these weapons and ammunition were actually used by Israel in Gaza; in fact missile fragments labelled “Made in India” were found in a UN-run school in Nuseirat in Gaza sheltering displaced Palestinians, after an Israeli raid on it that killed 33 persons. By supplying arms to Israel which many advanced countries like Spain and Canada have refused to supply, when it is engaged in carrying out genocide, India is becoming complicit in genocide. Spain in fact had even denied entry in May 2024 into the Spanish port of Cartagena, to a vessel named Marianne Danica that was carrying 27 tonnes of explosives from Chennai to Israel. Among the arms suppliers from India are not just private sector firms, including above all Adani Defence and Aerospace that has joint ventures with Israeli arms manufacturers like Elbit Systems and Israel Weapon Industries, but also several government-owned firms.

It is significant that the government of India has not responded to the report by Amnesty International. A Ministry of External affairs spokesman was quizzed about it while he was briefing presspersons about something else, and he just breezily asserted without going into any details that India’s trade relations with Israel were in total conformity with international law. Now, this is an absurd assertion for two obvious reasons. First, even if this was correct, it does not absolve India from the moral responsibility of being complicit in the mass slaughter of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza strip. After all countries like Spain or Canada have not ceased supplying arms to Israel only because they fear that doing so would be an illegal act; so legality cannot be, and has never been, the sole determining factor in a country’s decision-making when the matter concerns the lives of thousands of innocent civilians. This point is specifically pertinent in the case of India which has been always until recent years, a beacon against inhuman acts of oppression against the people of the third world, and which has always been in the forefront of opposition to such acts.

Secondly, India is also culpable even in legal terms, for the mass slaughter of Palestinians that Israel has carried out and is still in the process of carrying out, can be legally called  genocide; and under the Genocide Convention, complicity with genocide by any state that is a signatory to it is a punishable act. The Genocide Convention came into being on December 9, 1948, through a decision of the UN General Assembly; India signed the Genocide Convention on November 29, 1949, and formally ratified it on August 27, 1959. Not only is complicity in genocide punishable under it, but signatory countries are enjoined that they “must prevent and punish acts of genocide in both peace and war time”.

Of course, the government of India would hide behind the fig-leaf that Israeli actions in Gaza have not yet been legally declared as genocide; but this excuse simply would not do. South Africa had approached the International Court of Justice in December 29, 2023, with the plea that Israel’s actions in Gaza be declared as a genocide, for which the South African foreign minister and her family had received threats and online intimidation at the time. Subsequently, nearly twenty other countries including Brazil, Spain and Mexico, intervened in support of South Africa, while only three countries, the United States, Hungary (under the neo-fascist Orban who has since been defeated in elections) and Fiji have publicly opposed South Africa. The ICJ has not given its final ruling (which in any case takes years) but has ordered legally-binding provisional measures to prevent genocidal acts and to allow humanitarian aid. The fact that Indian arms were used by Israel in the massacre of 33 Palestinians taking refuge in a school at Nuseirat, which constitutes a genocidal act in violation of the ICJ’s provisional directive, would make India legally culpable for complicity in genocide. The Indian government’s stand therefore is not just morally reprehensible; it cannot even stand legal scrutiny.

But that is not all. Two UN bodies, the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices which submitted its report in November 2024, and the International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories set up by the UN which submitted its report on September 16, 2025, have come to the conclusion that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. The Special Committee accused Israel of using deliberate starvation as a weapon of war against the Palestinian population of Gaza, which, incidentally would violate the ICJ’s provisional directive on allowing humanitarian aid to the besieged population. The International Commission not only listed mass killings which amounted to genocidal acts, but concluded that the top Israeli leadership had been engaged in incitement to commit genocide. Since these UN bodies had eminent jurists among their members, their verdicts have a juridical status that is of great significance and cannot be brushed aside.

Exactly the same can be said of the resolution of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, which consists of 500 of the world’s top experts specializing in the study of genocide. This Association whose membership includes lawyers, historians, political scientists and human rights activists, passed a resolution which stated that the government of Israel had committed systematic and widespread acts constituting crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

In view of this overwhelming evidence, including weighty legal opinion, supporting the conclusion that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza, signatory countries to the Genocide Convention like India should be acting to “prevent and punish” Israel; to supply arms to it instead so that it can continue with its genocidal acts against the Palestinians, constitutes a moral and legal affront to humanity. By acting thus in a manner that constitutes an affront to humanity, the Modi government has brought shame to the country. Not only is there a moral hollowness at the heart of this government’s domestic policies, there is also a moral hollowness at the heart of its foreign policy.

What is more, supplying arms to Israel when it is engaged in a genocidal offensive against the Palestinian people, is not even logically consistent with this government’s own stand on the Palestinian issue. Narendra Modi has time and again reiterated his government’s support for a “two-state” solution to resolve this issue. Israel today rejects this “two-state solution”. In this respect it has gone back on its own position at the time of the Oslo Accords, which had recognized a Palestinian Authority with limited powers; today it wants the whole of Gaza under its own control, and the purpose of its aggression is to achieve that end. To aid and abet that aggression therefore directly contradicts India’s own vision of what should be happening in Gaza.

Supplying arms to the Israeli genocidal regime, it follows, quite apart from being morally reprehensible and legally culpable, goes against the Modi government’s own explicitly articulated stand on the Palestinian issue; but that is of little concern to this government. As far as it is concerned,  cosying up to Trump, and promoting the interests of cronies like the Adanis who profit hugely from arms sales to Israel, takes precedence over the country’s legal obligations, its moral responsibility, and even its credibility among nations.