Opinion Best of Both Sides | Four reasons India should say no to Trump’s Board of Peace
India can offer humanitarian assistance without political strings. It can support reconstruction through UN agencies, advocate for international law consistently, and use its diplomatic channels. But it must not lend its name, history, or constitutional ethos to a process that confuses management with justice
Should PM Narendra Modi accept President Donald Trump’s invitation to join the Board of Peace? (Illustration: C R Sasikumar) There are moments in a nation’s life when the question is not what we gain, but who we become. The reported invitation for India to join a US-backed “Gaza Board of Peace”, accompanied by a promised $1 billion in assistance, is one such moment. India, out of deep respect and solidarity with the Palestinian people and its own history, moral standing, and Global South leadership, should decline — clearly, publicly, and without equivocation.
This is not a question of money for Gaza, nor even of geopolitics in the narrow sense. It is a question of India’s constitutional morality, our Independence struggle’s memory, strategic autonomy, and moral credibility. India’s refusal must be rooted not in anti-Americanism as we are not anti-American per se, nor in reflexive ideology, but in four hard, defensible reasons that go to the core of what India claims to stand for in the world.
First, any governance or “peace” mechanism for Gaza that is designed without the explicit, sovereign consent of the Palestinian people is not a mechanism for peace. It is an externally imposed trusteeship. History has a name for such arrangements: Colonial administration in humanitarian clothing. India knows this story intimately. The colonial state always justified itself as a stabiliser, a civiliser, a guarantor of order. It spoke of roads, schools, development funds, and security. It never spoke of consent. To join a Gaza board structured primarily by external powers, especially in the immediate aftermath of mass civilian destruction, would place India on the wrong side of its own anti-colonial inheritance. India cannot be a signatory to a process that treats Palestinians as subjects to be managed rather than a people entitled to self-determination.
Secondly, India’s strategic autonomy allows India to engage with all major powers without becoming an instrument of any. Accepting a $1 billion inducement tied to participation in a geopolitically loaded governance mechanism would erode that autonomy in practice, even if it remains intact in rhetoric. Let us be clear: $1 billion is hardly a problem for India to invest but this is not a Marshall Plan for Gaza. It is not even decisive development finance. What it buys is not economic leverage but political positioning on a colonial board. Once India sits on such a board, it inherits the consequences of decisions it does not control. It becomes associated with outcomes it cannot shape. It risks being blamed by one side for occupation by proxy, and by the other for insufficient obedience. Strategic autonomy means knowing when not to sit at the table.
Third, India has spent decades cultivating trust across the Global South, as a country that understands occupation, displacement, and the long shadow of imperial arrangements. That credibility is not theoretical. It translates into diplomatic capital, coalition leadership, and moral authority in multilateral forums. Joining a Gaza peace board perceived — rightly or wrongly — as legitimising a post-conflict order without justice would fracture that trust. From Africa to Southeast Asia, from Latin America to West Asia, many countries are watching not what India says but what it does. India cannot afford to be seen as a stabiliser of injustice.
Fourth, there is a deeper, more uncomfortable truth: Peace imposed immediately after devastation, without accountability, is rarely peace. It is pacification. And papering over of injustice. Gaza today is not merely a post-conflict zone. It is a traumatised society, with shattered infrastructure, displaced families, and unresolved political futures. Any attempt to fast-track governance mechanisms risks freezing injustice into administrative normalcy. India’s own freedom struggle teaches us that order imposed without justice is unsustainable. Stability without dignity breeds resistance. If India truly wishes to contribute to peace, it should do so by insisting on humanitarian ceasefires, international accountability mechanisms, reconstruction led by Palestinians, and political processes rooted in consent, especially of the Gazans and all Palestinians, not by sitting on a board designed to manage the aftermath without taking the victims’ agency on board.
India can offer humanitarian assistance without political strings. It can support reconstruction through UN agencies, advocate for international law consistently, and use its diplomatic channels to press for restraint, accountability, and dialogue. But it must not lend its name, history, or constitutional ethos to a process that confuses management with justice. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians will benefit from this imposed colonial trusteeship. India should say no — firmly, calmly, and without apology.
The writer is the humanitarian food security and diplomacy ambassador, India, for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office
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