They Questioned India–Israel Ties. Now the Hindu Right Wants to Destroy Their Lives

The perils of speaking up on Palestine in India.

In early December, two activists in India released three videos detailing the rise of India–Israel ties and the dangers they pose to ordinary Indians. The videos quickly went viral, amassing around 2.6 million views. They struck a nerve. The Hindu right responded with fury. This is the story of how the Hindu right attacked these two activists and tried to destroy their lives simply for raising questions about India–Israel ties and the warm embrace of Israeli soldiers in India.

First, let’s talk about the videos. In video number one, Shristi Khanna explains the difficulties of speaking about Palestine and the genocide in Gaza as an Indian and a Hindu. She says that when she does so, she is invariably labeled anti-national and a traitor.

“It’s almost unsafe to be vocal about Palestine in India, but we cannot stay silent or complicit,” she says.

“There is a perception that the genocide in Gaza is only a Muslim concern, but it isn’t. It is all our concern.”

In video number two, Khanna and her friend and fellow activist, Prashant Pundir, discuss how India projected itself as pro-Palestine over the years while simultaneously enjoying clandestine ties with Israel, and how understanding India–Israel relations today requires reckoning with that past. (Full disclosure: they cite Hostile Homelands in the video.)

Explaining why they made the videos, Khanna told me that they “wanted to talk about Palestine in relation to India, not in isolation.”

“There are long-standing political and material connections between the two that shape both regions, but these are rarely discussed openly,” Khanna added.

“Our aim was to share documented information and encourage a more contextual, informed conversation about those intersections,” she said.

Then came the third video—the one that went viral. In it, Pundir begins with a question: “Where do Israeli soldiers go after killing babies in Gaza?”

“They come here, to India,” Pundir says after a short pause.

Then Shristi joins in: “To Goa, Himachal, Dharamkot, Pushkar, and Kasol—also known as the ‘Hummus Trail,’ built around Israeli backpacker culture.”

The duo go on to explain how tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers come on “detox trips” to India following their deployments—in this case, to Gaza.

“Basically, India has become a rehab center for IDF soldiers committing genocide in Gaza,” Prashant adds.

The videos offered nothing more than sober analysis of Indian complicity in the genocide in Gaza.

They were neither salacious nor provocative, but grounded in evidence and in humanity.

The “success” of the video and the simple questions it posed, however, prompted a coordinated witch-hunt by the Hindu right aimed at destroying their lives.

“After our Instagram reel went viral (approximately 2.6 million views), it began circulating on X (Twitter), where it was picked up by large right-wing Hindu nationalist accounts,” the duo told me.

“At this stage, the response escalated from online trolling to coordinated harassment, defamation, and doxing. Once these accounts began posting the reel on X, followers were actively redirected to our Instagram profiles to continue the harassment there. Our Instagram accounts were screenshotted, monitored, and circulated across platforms.”

They were called “anti-national,” “terrorists,” and “urban Naxals” by not just one account, but by an entire ecosystem of Hindu nationalist trolls.

The trolls went after their jobs, reputations, and privacy.

“Our LinkedIn profiles were publicly shared, exposing full professional histories, educational backgrounds, workplaces, and employers.”

Posts were then put up encouraging followers to harass their employers and get them fired.

Within days, they were forced to delete their LinkedIn profiles. The trolls went on to email their workplaces, and employers were continuously tagged on X with demands that they be fired.

Pundir’s work email was leaked publicly, and he began receiving repeated calls and threats.

Then their home locations were found and leaked.

“Threats were made to find us and physically harm us. Due to fear, we did not step out of our homes for two days,” Khanna said.

“The volume, coordination, and escalation of threats created constant fear and psychological distress,” she added.

The attack on Khanna and Pundir reveals how tightly India’s domestic politics are now entwined with its alliance with Israel.

As India and Israel grow closer economically, militarily, ideologically, and even culturally, the space to openly discuss India–Israel ties will shrink even further. As evidenced by the attacks on the duo, there has been very little effort to debate their points of view. Instead, they were immediately vilified, harassed, and intimidated.

Criticizing Israel is already been treated as an attack on the Indian nation itself.

We have all seen this story before.

“People who are part of struggles understand that systems of power often respond to dissent by trying to silence or erase voices. Experiencing that directly made this reality very real for us, as it has for many others.” the duo said.