While India is the world's most populous democracy, Israel is the Middle East's most notable. Relations between democratic countries can be strained on particular issues, but the underlying strength remains resilient. Judaism and Hinduism are among the world's ancient civilizations and "root faiths" that have given birth to other major religions. They are similar in their emphasis on the practice of rituals as an integral element of their respective faiths, and the distinctive Jewish humor also resonates well in India. India's tradition of hospitality toward the Jewish people is centuries old. Even in the Hindu-Muslim butchery at the birth of independent India, Jews were not harmed.

India's relationship with Israel, which gained independence within a year of India's in a similarly traumatic partition, was a major anomaly. One of the earliest to recognize Israel, India was one of the last to establish full ambassadorial relations with it in 1992. Full relations were maintained with China and Pakistan, countries with which India has major territorial conflicts and has fought wars -- but not with Israel, with whom India had no direct quarrel.

The policy of distance provoked Israeli resentment and U.S. cynicism about India's moral authority, but without materially assisting the Palestinian cause or buying Arab goodwill when it mattered. India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, conceded in 1958 that his Israel policy was not "a matter of high principle." It was based on preindependence sympathy by the Congress Party for the Arabs, a perception of Israel as a settlement imposed on the Arabs by outgoing colonial powers, the higher number of Arab votes at the United Nations instead of the solitary Israeli vote, an attempt to avoid the full weight of Arab support going to Pakistan, and sensitivity to Indian Muslims, who make up 12 per cent of the country's own population.