Above photo: Activists protest Tata Consultancy Services during the New York City Marathon on November 2, 2025. SALAM.
And a leading supporter of the Gaza genocide.
By sportswashing its reputation through events like the New York City Marathon, the Indian conglomerate Tata Group has built a multi-billion-dollar brand name as it directly profits from Israel’s occupation and genocide.
On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of runners and spectators from around the world gathered in New York City to celebrate endurance, achievement, and community. Yet, this bright imagery masks the grim reality of the marathon’s title sponsor, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a company complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people.
In the weeks leading up to the largest marathon in the world, the “TCS” logo has become ubiquitous across the five boroughs. From special-edition New Balance “TCS Marathon” shoes that light up Times Square, to TCS-branded half-zips donned by every other runner in Prospect Park, reminders of the upcoming race are everywhere.
TCS is a subsidiary of the formidable Indian conglomerate Tata Group, hailed as the gold standard of Indian capitalism. Beyond its all-pervasive name, the corporation is intimately tied to militarism and imperial violence, and is an active partner in Israel’s ongoing genocide and occupation of the Palestinian people.
Through a careful agenda of sportswashing (a process through which corporations and states build names around community health and well being to erase their underlying violent realities) Tata has established a multi-billion dollar brand name that overshadows its role in providing weapons, vehicles, and digital infrastructure to Israel’s occupation and slaughter. This stark contradiction transforms a beloved NYC tradition into an unwitting platform for a corporation embedded in the architecture of violence.
This isn’t hyperbole. Since September 2024, we as members of SALAM – a South Asian political organization based out of NYC – have sought to illuminate the reality behind Tata and its central role in enabling genocide. Our recent report, “Architects of Occupation,” exposes Tata as a key corporate player fueling Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Tata’s complicity spans weapons manufacturing, digital infrastructure, and finance, emblematic of Indian capital’s deep entanglement in the Israeli settler-colonial project.
The India-Israel alliance is not new; the strategic partnership between these nations has been cultivated over decades. Our research reveals the longstanding relationship between the Indian state and the Zionist project, driven by shared ethnonationalist ideologies (Hindutva and Zionism) and the ruthless pursuit of profit extracted from occupation. Though the Indian state once outwardly championed the Palestinian cause during its early days, it has long sought affinity with Israel, conducting covert arms deals with Israel throughout the late 20th century. Since 2014, under the right-wing government of Narendra Modi, the India-Israel relationship has been cemented by high-level visits and trade deals, spyware and weapons purchases, overt diplomatic cover for Israel during the ongoing Gaza genocide, and the direct use of Israeli surveillance technology and drones in India’s colonial occupation of Kashmir.
The Tata Group stands at the heart of this nexus. As the new report details, Tata is not merely complicit; it is foundational.
- Arming the War Machine: Through its subsidiary, Tata Advanced Systems Ltd (TASL), Tata manufactures critical components for the weapons devastating Gaza. Its joint ventures are key global producers of wings for Lockheed Martin’s F-16 jets and fuselages for Boeing’s AH-64 Apache helicopters – the primary aircraft used by the Israeli Air Force. TASL also co-produces the Barak-8 missile system with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), manufacturing its crucial command system, while simultaneously earning its place as a trusted partner of the Indian Ministry of Defense.
- Vehicles of Occupation: Through Tata Motors’ recently acquired subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover, the company supplies the chassis for the Israeli military’s ubiquitous MDT “David” armored vehicles, used to patrol stolen land, suppress protests in villages like Nabi Saleh, and enforce the daily violence of occupation in the West Bank. Tata’s armored vehicles are also instrumental in the Indian military’s illegal presence in Kashmir.
- Digital Apartheid: TCS provides the core digital infrastructure for Israeli state functions. It built and operates Israel’s national Banking Services Bureau, serving institutions like Israeli Bank Hapoalim, which finances illegal settlements. TCS is also a key partner in Project Nimbus, the notorious $1.2 billion military cloud project providing surveillance tools to the Israeli government and army.
To deflect from its role in the “economy of occupation,” Tata engages in reputation laundering through high-profile partnerships. Moreover, the conglomerate donates to prestigious academic institutions ($50 million to Harvard Business School, $35 million to Carnegie Mellon, and $50 million to Cornell Tech) and works to build strategic partnerships with popular consumer brands.
The NYC Marathon is just another example of Tata’s nefarious attempts to salvage its reputation. By partnering with and investing in 14 prestigious marathons and racing events, including the NYC Marathon, London Marathon, and Sydney Marathon, TCS ensures its brand is associated with health and well-being rather than weapons and genocide. The marathon also serves as a testing ground for TCS’s technology suite, showcasing its capabilities in mass data collection and real-time tracking, while masking the sinister role of TCS’s technology in enabling Israeli state surveillance of Palestinians through projects like Project Nimbus.
New York Road Runners (NYRR), the group that organizes the NYC Marathon, is an active partner in this deception. Financially dependent on TCS since the sponsorship began in 2014 (NYRR revenue has since nearly doubled to $116 million), the non-profit has fostered an institutional culture of Zionism, evidenced by its CEO posing with Zionist groups and Israeli flags at NYRR events during the genocide. The investment has been lucrative for TCS as well. According to a recently released TCS report, the company’s brand value has grown from $2.1 billion in 2010 to $21.3 billion in 2025, with growing brand consideration among runners in particular.
But New York City residents and runners have refused to remain silent. Since the launch of SALAM’s #DropTCS campaign, we have sought to reclaim the marathon from its violent sponsor.
On Sunday, over 700 marathon runners took the streets with #DropTCS bibs, while community members and spectators unfurled banners and established solidarity sites across all five boroughs, calling for the marathon to cut ties with its complicit sponsor.
While this year’s marathon has come to an end, the call is only growing louder: NYRR has a responsibility to marathon runners and the NYC community to disclose the details of its contract with TCS. This sponsorship is antithetical to the race and the sport as a whole. NYRR must drop TCS, now.
As Israel once again continues its relentless bombing in Gaza City – breaking the latest ceasefire agreement – and advances its ethnic cleansing project in the West Bank, we must make it politically and socially untenable for corporations like Tata to profit from genocide. As runners, NYC residents, and people of conscience at large, it is incumbent upon our communities to unequivocally stand against the normalization of militarism and colonialism, from the sportswashing happening in the belly of the beast to the brutalization in the occupied lands of Palestine and Kashmir.
