When governments know that weapons and military components may contribute to grave violations of international law, the question is no longer simply what they are exporting. It is what they are prepared to ignore in order to keep exporting them.
India’s growing role in supplying weapons, ammunition and military components to the Israeli defence industry raises precisely that question.
A new investigation by Amnesty International has put numbers to what had previously been a matter of scattered evidence and allegations. Its July 2026 report identified at least 2,596 shipments of weapons, ammunition, parts and military components exported from India to Israel between 7 October 2023 and 30 November 2025. The investigation identified, among other things, small-arms components, explosive-ordnance components, artillery-shell casings, explosive warheads and armoured-vehicle components.
Amnesty argues that India continued these transfers despite extensive public warnings about possible war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Gaza. It says India may therefore face the risk of complicity in violations of international law.
The world was not unaware of what was happening in Gaza
By the time many of these shipments were being made, the allegations surrounding the conduct of the war in Gaza were no longer obscure or confined to activist organisations.
The International Court of Justice had already issued provisional measures in the genocide case brought by South Africa. Amnesty International subsequently concluded that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.
Then, in September 2025, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israeli authorities and security forces had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Against that background, the question confronting New Delhi is uncomfortable but unavoidable:
What did the Indian government know, and when did it know it?
And once the risks became clear, why did the transfers continue?
Other governments at least confronted the legal question
India is not the only country whose relationship with the Israeli defence industry has come under scrutiny. But several Western governments have publicly confronted the question of whether continuing military exports could expose them to responsibility for violations of international humanitarian law.
Britain, for example, suspended around 30 arms-export licences in September 2024 after concluding there was a clear risk that certain British military exports could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law.
Germany also halted approval of new war-weapons exports amid legal challenges concerning its humanitarian-law obligations.
The European picture has never been uniform, and these countries did not necessarily impose a complete end to every form of military-related trade.
But that makes India’s case more difficult to explain away.
According to Amnesty’s investigation, Indian-origin military components have reached major companies supplying the Israeli military.
So why did India continue?
Is the answer economics?
One possible explanation is economic rather than ideological.
India has made the expansion of its defence-manufacturing industry a major national priority. The Modi government has aggressively promoted “Make in India,” domestic defence production and arms exports.
India is simultaneously one of the world’s largest arms importers and has sought to become an arms exporter. Its relationship with the Israeli military-industrial sector is therefore not simply diplomatic. It is industrial, technological and commercial.
That creates obvious economic incentives: contracts, manufacturing, technology transfer, investment and the development of India’s domestic defence industry.
But there is an important distinction between identifying an economic incentive and proving that it was the government’s motive.
There is currently no reliable evidence establishing that the Modi government exported military material specifically to improve India’s foreign-exchange position, reduce its fiscal deficit or compensate for declining employment or investment.
Those claims should therefore remain questions, not conclusions.
The stronger question is:
Did the pursuit of defence-industry growth become more important to the government than the foreseeable human-rights and legal consequences of continuing those transfers?
That is a question the government should answer publicly.
The domestic record makes the question even more uncomfortable
India’s foreign policy cannot be completely separated from the political character of the government conducting it.
Since Narendra Modi’s rise to national power, human-rights organisations have repeatedly documented a worsening environment for religious minorities, particularly Muslims.
Human Rights Watch has documented anti-Muslim rhetoric by political leaders, attacks by Hindu vigilantes, discriminatory policies, arbitrary arrests and punitive demolitions affecting Muslim communities.
Amnesty International has similarly reported increasing persecution of minorities and the use of laws and state power against dissenters. It has also raised concerns about the continued imprisonment of activists including Umar Khalid.
Human Rights Watch has documented attacks by cow-vigilante groups and reported that Muslims were disproportionately represented among victims of such violence.
This does not prove that India’s policy toward Gaza is motivated by hatred of Muslims.
But it makes the question of political values impossible to avoid.
What does the Modi government’s ideology mean for India’s foreign policy?
The BJP emerged from the broader Hindu nationalist movement, while Modi’s political career has been closely associated with that ideological tradition.
Critics therefore ask whether a government whose domestic politics have increasingly been associated with Hindu majoritarianism is less sensitive to the suffering of Muslim populations outside India’s borders.
That is a political argument, not a proven explanation for India’s arms exports.
And it is important not to confuse the two.
To say that anti-Muslim discrimination exists in India is one claim.
To say that Modi personally ordered arms exports because he hates Muslims is an entirely different claim—and the available evidence does not establish it.
The responsible question is therefore not simply:
“Does Modi hate Muslims?”
The more serious question is:
Has the political environment created by Hindu majoritarianism made the suffering of Palestinians easier for India’s leadership to politically discount?
That question deserves investigation rather than a predetermined answer.
The paradox of India’s global image
For decades, India has presented itself as a voice of the Global South, a country shaped by anti-colonialism, non-alignment and a historical commitment to the Palestinian cause.
India has also traditionally cultivated an image of itself as a democracy whose foreign policy is guided by strategic autonomy.
Yet strategic autonomy cannot mean moral autonomy from international law.
A government cannot claim that its foreign policy is independent and principled while refusing to explain why it continues military transfers when credible international bodies are warning of genocide and possible complicity.
Amnesty’s investigation is particularly significant because it identifies a substantial network of shipments and companies and says that state-owned Indian entities are involved. It also argues that India’s export-control system lacks adequate human-rights due diligence and transparency.
That raises fundamental questions about accountability.
If Indian officials were aware of the allegations surrounding the conduct of the war—and if the government knew that Indian military components were entering supply chains serving the Israeli military—what safeguards were put in place?
Where are the end-use investigations?
Where are the parliamentary disclosures?
Where is the government’s legal assessment?
And if the government believes that these exports are lawful, why not publish the reasoning?
India needs answers, not silence
The most serious accusation is not that India has a relationship with a particular foreign state.
States conduct business with governments whose policies they strongly disagree with all the time.
The serious issue is whether India continued supplying military material after the risk of its use in grave international crimes had become foreseeable and widely documented.
That is precisely why Amnesty’s findings matter.
Its investigation does not establish that every Indian shipment was used to kill civilians. Nor does it establish that Narendra Modi personally directed every export.
What it does is identify a significant number of military-related shipments leaving India for companies embedded in the defence supply chain while the risk of serious international crimes was already extensively documented.
That is enough to demand scrutiny.
It is also enough to ask whether India’s pursuit of defence exports, strategic ties and geopolitical influence has come at the expense of the moral authority it once claimed.
India should not have to choose between economic growth and human rights.
It should not have to choose between defence-industry development and international law.
And it certainly should not have to choose between friendship with a foreign government and solidarity with civilians facing mass death and destruction.
The question facing the Modi government is therefore not merely why India exported military material.
It is whether the government considered the consequences—and decided that the strategic, economic or ideological benefits were worth the moral and legal risk.
If that decision was made, Indians deserve to know who made it, on what evidence, under what legal authority, and with what safeguards.
Because when a government is warned that its actions could contribute to grave crimes, silence is no longer an adequate foreign policy.
India deserves an answer. And the victims of this war deserve one too.
Barrister M A Siddiqui