India’s Supreme Court rejects the call to halt arms exports to Israel.
India’s top court has rejected a petition that called for the suspension of military exports from India following a plea by human rights activists and scholars to minimize India’s complicity in the potential Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
In its judgment on Monday, the Supreme Court of India said that it was beyond its jurisdiction to direct the government of India to stop exporting materials to any country. The court said jurisdiction lay with the Union Government under Article 162 of the Indian constitution.
The top court also said that intervening would translate to a judicial injunction in case of breach of contracts that the Indian companies may have entered into with international entities.
“The fall-out of such breaches cannot be appropriately assessed by this court and would lay open Indian companies which have firm commitments into proceedings which may affect their financial viability,” the court said.
The ruling comes after former bureaucrats, activists, and senior academics pleaded to the court, arguing that sales violated India’s obligations under international law, its constitutional provisions for the right to life and equality, and the state’s duty to uphold international treaties.
This 417-page petition to India’s top court mentioned that “public and private sector companies in India dealing with manufacture and export of arms and munitions have been granted licenses for the export of arms and munitions to Israel even during this period of the ongoing war in Gaza.”
The petitioners thus wanted the Supreme Court to order the government of India to rescind these licences and not grant any such licences in the future. The petition pointed out that three Indian companies dealing with the manufacture and export of arms and munitions have been granted licences for the export of arms and munitions to Israel as its war on Gaza is continuing.
It has been a growing partnership since Modi became Prime Minister in 2014. India is today the world’s largest customer of Israeli arms, but it is also on course to emerge as a significant co-producer. Indian and Israeli universities are similarly close in technology, agriculture, and robotics.
Several universities are directly involved with Israeli weapons companies and with Indian companies reported to have sent arms to Israel. India was among the first countries to condemn the Hamas-led attacks on Israel last October.
Since then, more than 40,000 people, children and women have been killed and close to 100,000 injured in Israel’s bombardment of the besieged enclave. Despite this pressure on Delhi, the Indian government has not supported global calls for an arms embargo on Israel.
Countries like Spain and Belgium have imposed arms embargoes on Israel. Last week, the British government in London suspended 30 arms export licenses to the Israeli regime. Though the move has been welcomed, observers described London’s move as a “drop in the ocean.”
“If, as this government acknowledges, there is a “clear risk” that certain military exports to Israel could be used to violate international humanitarian law, then it must apply its obligations fully and ban all arms sales,” Othman Moqbel wrote in Middle East Eye earlier this month.
In June, Daniel Carmon, the former Israeli ambassador to India, said that India might be supplying weapons to Israel as a “sign of gratitude for Israeli assistance during India’s limited war with Pakistan in 1999.”.
