Why selective praise of ‘Indian’ soldiers by Netanyahu distorts history
British soldiers of Indian descent who fought against the Ottoman Empire lacked agency as colonial conscripts, mobilised through recruitment drives that promised pay and land.
During Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's two-day visit to Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the century-old Battle of Haifa to flatter his guest and hype up the narrative of a historical India-Israel bond.
Netanyahu portrayed the 1918 battle as a heroic “liberation” from “Ottoman occupation”, while praising the “brave Indian soldiers and commanders who fought like lions”.
“Our forces were pushed back; but who stepped forward and gave their lives for this cause? Indian commanders... We will never forget this. They sacrificed their lives,” Netanyahu said, framing the participation by British soldiers of Indian origin as a selfless act that led to Israel’s eventual creation decades later.
In his address to the Israeli Knesset, Modi responded with equally flattering but false historical flourish, saying that “India's connection to (Israel) is also written in blood and sacrifice”.
The rhetoric by Netanyahu and Modi presents the participation of British soldiers of Indian descent in the war against the Ottoman Empire as evidence of India-Israel kinship, a narrative that conveniently serves the current geopolitical manoeuvres of the two leaders.
But a closer look at historical facts debunks the idea of these troops as “India's soldiers” acting in national solidarity.
Big statements like these cast the two leaders as stewards of a noble historical alliance.
Yet the diplomatic grandstanding ignores how the so-called “sacrifice” was extracted under British imperial rule in undivided India, which fought for and won freedom as two independent countries in 1947.
Colonial conscripts, not Indian soldiers
The rhetoric of the two leaders misses the point that these soldiers were not India's independent warriors. They were colonial conscripts in the British Indian Army, mobilised through recruitment drives that promised pay and land.
Historical accounts show that Indian Muslims were deeply reluctant to fight fellow Muslims in the Ottoman forces. Muslims were uneasy about clashing with the Ottoman Caliph, who was seen as the spiritual leader of Islam.
That was why a number of British Army soldiers from India either mutinied against or deserted the British military during World War I.
Many South Asian Muslims thought that going to war against the Ottoman Caliph was repulsive and led some to defect to the Ottomans.
The unease among Muslim conscripts is reflected in incidents like the 1915 Singapore Mutiny, where up to half of the 5th Light Infantry, which consisted mainly of Muslim Rajputs, rebelled on February 15, 1915.
The cause of the rebellion was the suspicion that they would be sent to fight the Muslim Ottomans.
Influenced by a fatwa from the Ottoman Sultan, the mutineers killed British officers, seizing ammunition in a week-long uprising that claimed dozens of lives before being crushed.
Many mutineers were executed or imprisoned afterwards, which shows the profound opposition of Indian Muslims to fighting other Muslims on behalf of imperial masters.
Their reluctance to fight the Ottomans was a testament to the fact that many Muslim soldiers in the British military were far from eager participants.
The same sentiment later fueled the Khilafat Movement (1919-1924), a campaign by South Asian Muslims that opposed British policy seeking the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire following World War I.
It emerged as a major popular movement in India, with “massive demonstrations” held throughout South Asia.
Indian Muslim women also played a pivotal role, selling their jewellery to fund the cause, symbolising deep devotion to the Caliphate and opposition to British policies that dismantled it.
Not just Muslims
The support for the Ottomans in South Asia was not limited to the Muslim community.
Central to the opposition to British policy over the Ottoman Empire was Mahatma Gandhi, India's supreme statesman and architect of non-violent resistance, whose moral authority unified Hindus and Muslims against colonial rule.
While Gandhi initially encouraged Indian enlistment in World War I, he fiercely opposed the British effort to dismantle the Ottoman Empire, viewing it as a betrayal of Muslim sentiments.
In a letter to Viceroy Lord Chelmsford, Gandhi warned of intensified non-cooperation if the Allies of World War I gave away parts of Ottoman territory to European powers.
Gandhi told the British viceroy that he, as a Hindu, could not remain indifferent to the cause of Muslims, who were extremely hurt due to British policy against the Ottoman Empire.
Gandhi’s opposition to fighting the Ottomans stemmed from a principled stand against imperial hypocrisy.
Modi's evasion of Muslim reluctance to fight against Muslim Ottomans serves a cynical agenda: it bolsters his image in Israel while reinforcing Muslim alienation at home.
For Netanyahu, it recasts Israel as a grateful beneficiary of global camaraderie rather than an occupying force sitting on stolen land.