by Dr. Piyush Mathur

Even as the high-profile India-Israel Business Summit 2024 is being held today on the campus of the prestigious Indian Institute of Science (IISC), a copy of a protest letter addressed to the institutional director, Professor Govindan Rangrajan, has been circulating in the social media.

Suvrat Raju, Professor of Physics at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences of the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), shared the letter’s copy on his Facebook profile yesterday. Although this copy does not include any list of signatories, Raju indicated in his post that the letter had received the support of over ‘1500 students and faculty members from across the country, and other members of civil society’ within the course of ‘a little more than 36 hours.’ He suggested that the sheer speed at which the letter had received such a magnitude of support constitutes ‘one measure of the depth of the outrage’ against the IISC’s decision to organize this summit (and Israel’s actions, by extension).

The letter notes that the IISC is both ‘sponsoring and hosting’ this summit at a time when Israel is ‘engaged in a brutal war’ that has cost the lives ‘more than 41, 000 Palestinians’, mostly ‘women and children’. Highlighting the well-known claims regarding the rising death toll, starvation, and destruction in Gaza—including of its universities and medical facilities—the letter also refers to Israel’s recent remote detonations of electronic devices in Lebanon as an instance in which it ‘engaged in terrorist attacks…in civilian areas.’

Further noting that the summit seeks to explore possibilities of cooperation between India and Israel in ‘defence and cybersecurity’ (among other arenas), the letter avers that the cooperation being eyed here ‘would amount to direct support for Israel’s genocide in Palestine and its aggressive actions against its neighbours.’

The letters ends with the ‘request’ to cancel the event—and thus prevent the institutional campus from being used ‘as a platform to legitimise genocide and colonialism.’

Raju’s post containing the letter’s copy quickly received more than a hundred upvotes and hearts; however, it also received some critical feedback.

One person, Brajesh Choudhary, questioned a Lancet paper’s statistical claim regarding the projected numbers of actual deaths in Gaza owed to the war that the letter has cited in support of its protest.

‘The Lancet calculation that real death [sic] may be 4 times higher has no basis,’ Choudhary claimed, adding, ‘It is just an opinion.’ Stressing that the cooperation between the two countries ‘is for mutual benefit’, he concluded that ‘It has nothing to do with Israel’s war in Gaza.’

Yet another commentator, Sidharth Dash, argued that ‘Indian science community should focus to [sic] strengthen India's scientific interests and collaborations rather than indulging in discussions on a war and choosing sides.’

Popular on Facebook and elsewhere for his lucid explanations of abstruse concepts in physics, Raju is a well-regarded expert on String Theory and Quantum Gravity.

Thoughtfox has reached out to the IISC for any comments on this protest letter; if we receive any response, we would update this report with it.

Check out these other, related entries by Dr. Piyush Mathur by clicking here, here, and here.