The feeling of Muslim solidarity is greater in India than perhaps anywhere else in the Islamic world, owing primarily to the fact that Islam is a minority in India. In all matters on which Islam feels strongly, Hindu opinion will unconditionally back it in the present political circumstances.
—Historian and diplomat K. M. Panikkar
The INC Versus the Muslim League
To understand India’s Israel policy, one has to recognize the centrality of Islam and its influences. Overshadowed by generalities, euphemisms, political correctness, and secular rhetoric, this facet has rarely received an informed treatment. Any discussion on the Islamic inputs into India’s policy toward the Middle East has become anathema and is often dismissed as an anti-Muslim conspiracy of the Hindu right wing. Numerous writings on the subject have marginalized or ignored the Islamic dimension. Be that as it may, India has always perceived, understood, and articulated its position toward Israel through an Islamic prism. In a sense, this is not different from the U.S. policies regarding the region. As with the United States, for India, Israel is primarily an item on the domestic and not foreign-policy agenda. This was true both before and after India’s independence.
To appreciate the Islamic influence during the nationalist phase, we must ask a number of questions. What drew the Congress Party toward the Middle East? How were its interests in the region sustained? How did Islam influence its understanding of the Zionist demand for a Jewish national home? Was there a Hindu view regarding Palestinian developments? As the following narrative indicates, India’s interest and involvement in the Middle East, and more particularly Jewish nationalist aspirations, were influenced and at times dominated by the Islamic factor. While its cultural interactions and trade links with the region were centuries old, modern political involvement with the region began when the Muslim world over rallied around the caliph, the title then held by the Ottoman sultan.
The Khilafat Struggle
The Congress Party first became involved in a Middle Eastern issue with the Khilafat question, an issue that dominated India until the mid-1920s.1 This was the first major occasion when the Indian nationalists showed a direct interest in foreign events.2 Up until then, their interests were confined to the welfare and conditions of Indians overseas. The treatment of the Ottoman Empire by the Allies during World War I was strongly resented by Indian Muslims. The European campaign was seen not merely as an aggression against the Ottoman Empire but as an attack against Islam, because the sultan of Turkey was also the caliph, the titular head of the Sunni Islamic community.3 The most vociferous demonstrations in support of the caliph and Islamic solidarity with the Ottoman rulers were to be found among the Indian Muslims.4 From 1919 to 1924, the Khilafat struggle dominated the Indian political scene, and the Muslim elite discovered in it an issue that could unite the masses against the British. Rallies and other forms of political protests were held throughout the country.
The Indian National Congress and its leaders saw this pan-Islamic solidarity as an opportunity to solidify nationalist feelings among the Muslim masses. For different reasons, both the Hindus and the Muslims resented the British. While nationalist sentiments were slowly growing, the Muslims had an additional grievance: the British had ended Islamic rule in India and deposed the last Mughal ruler. This mutual hatred toward the foreigner, however, was insufficient to overcome their mutual suspicions and fears of one another. Even though Hinduism is not a monolithic religion, for the Muslims it represented a single large homogeneous group of nonbelievers.5 Many Muslims had misgivings over the motives of the Hindu-dominated Congress Party. Participation in the INC-led struggle, they feared, would undermine and even diminish their distinct Islamic identity. Though latent, these fears were real, as the subsequent partition of the subcontinent demonstrated. In some ways, the fears of Indian Muslims toward the Hindus were not dissimilar to that of the Jews and their struggle in Palestine. Democracy seemed a euphemism for legitimizing majority domination and the resultant loss of their particular identity. Driven by this fear of the other, both the yishuv and the Muslim League, which represented this segment of thought in India, found in the British a close and trusted ally. The Congress Party was certainly aware of the misgivings that powerful segments of the Muslim population had regarding the majority Hindus.
It was under these circumstances that the Muslim world witnessed the disintegration and demise of the Ottoman Empire. This radically altered the attitude of the Indian Muslims toward the Raj and brought them into conflict with the British rulers. Their sovereign and temporal loyalties clashed, and they sided with the latter. The Indian Muslims, who had previously been praying for the welfare of their London-based “sovereign ruler,” King George V, now offered prayers for their Istanbul-based “temporal ruler,” Mehmed VI. This gave birth to a popular struggle among the Indian Muslims known as the Khilafat movement.
The Congress Party viewed Muslim fears over the caliph as a means to forge closer political ties with the community. The participation of Muslims was a precondition for its nationalist credentials, and the Congress Party was aware of the general Muslim mistrust of its legitimacy and objectives. While it had some Muslim leaders among its ranks, its Muslim mass base was small. In December 1923, INC President Mohammed Ali aptly summed up the dilemma facing the nationalists: “the Congress which called itself ‘Indian’ and ‘National’ felt the need for Muslim participation, for it could not justify its title without it.”6 Thus its leaders, especially Mahatma Gandhi, saw the Khilafat movement as an opportunity to strengthen Hindu-Muslim unity against the British. Despite obvious religious dogma, the nationalist leaders presented the struggle around the caliph as an integral part of their wider national agenda.
As a result, the INC called for a settlement of the Turkish question “in accordance with the just and legitimate sentiments of Indian Mussalmans and the solemn pledges of the Prime Minister” of Great Britain, failing which, it warned, “there will be no real contentment among the people of India.”7 At a special session in Calcutta in September 1920, the INC went a step further and proclaimed: “it is the duty of every non-Muslim in every legitimate manner to assist his Mussalman brother in his attempt to assist the religious calamity that has overtaken him.”8 The following year, the CWC urged the Indian soldiers who fought in World War I to not cooperate with the British efforts against Turkey, because such actions were “in direct defiance of Mussalman opinion.”9
Mahatma Gandhi added the Palestine question to the mix. Writing in Young India in April 1921, he elaborated on his earlier position that Palestine could not be given to the Jews as a result of World War I.
The Muslims claim Palestine as an integral part of Jazirat al-Arab. They are bound to retain its custody, as an injunction of the Prophet…. The Jews cannot receive sovereign rights in a place which has been held for centuries by Muslim powers by right of religious conquest. The Muslim soldiers did not shed their blood in the late war for the purpose of surrendering Palestine out of Muslim control.10
Elsewhere, he observed:
Whilst every good Muslim must strive to retain the temporal power of Turkey, it is obligatory on him to see that unequivocal Muslim control is retained over Jazirat al-Arab which includes Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine as well and the spiritual sovereignty over them of the Caliph, whoever he may be for the time being. No other term can satisfy Muslim opinion. They will not tolerate any non-Muslim influence, direct or indirect, over the holy places of Islam.11
Long before the question attracted international attention, Mahatma Gandhi recognized and adopted Islamic sanctions against non-Muslim sovereignty in Palestine. For a brief period, even the Congress Party embraced the Islamic arguments. In June 1922, the Lucknow session of the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) called for the liberation of Jazirat al-Arab from all non-Muslim control as a prerequisite for peace and contentment in India.12 Reflecting similar sentiments later that year, it demanded the “effective guardianship of Islam and the Jazirat al-Arab free from all non-Muslim control.”13 In the wake of the abolition of the office of the caliph in 1924, the Khilafat question lost its importance and the Congress Party modified its stance, by demanding “the removal of alien control from the Jazirat al-Arab.”14
By using Islamic claims to justify their support for the Arabs, the Indian nationalists captured the essence of the problem in Palestine. Muslims could not be expected to hand Jerusalem over to non-Muslim control. This reflected the fundamental dilemma facing Muslims regarding the demand for a Jewish national home. More than a dispute over national rights, it was primarily a religious challenge: a former Dhimmi group was aspiring to be the owner and master of a land that had continuously remained under Islamic rule since 638, when Caliph Umar captured Jerusalem. If one excludes the period of the Crusades (1095–1291), Jerusalem and its environs had remained under Arab and Ottoman rule for over a millennium. So long as the Jews were prepared to accept Islamic rule and the conditions imposed by the Dhimmi arrangement, their lives and properties were protected. The kind of anti-Semitic death and destruction perpetrated by European Christendom never plagued the Jews of Islam.15 The demand for a Jewish homeland radically challenged this arrangement. The Zionists or “new Jews” now demanded sovereignty, not protection; equality, not toleration; and political rights, not religious privileges.
Even if he did not appreciate the nuanced differences between the old and new Jew, the Mahatma’s views on the Palestinian question captured the central arguments of Islam. Unlike other Indian leaders, he had a better grasp of the religious aspects of the issue and was prepared to explain his support for the Arabs using explicit and easily identifiable Islamic motifs. More so than Nehru, he was prepared to see the problem in its true sense: as an Islamic question. Regarding Islamic claims, the Mahatma was less diplomatic and more blunt. As a wafq property, he argued, Palestine could not be handed over to non-Muslim sovereignty. In his assessment, the prophet Mohammed had given the holy land to the believers and thus non-Muslims could not aspire for any national home there, as the Balfour Declaration visualized. As discussed earlier, these positions were controversial and not without their share of problems. At the same time, they clearly made Islam a factor in India’s understanding of the problem in Palestine.
The intertwining of the protection of the Ottoman Empire and the caliph with the events in Palestine had an overwhelmingly religious flavor. Initially, the Congress Party shared Muslim concerns over Allied war objectives vis-à-vis the Ottoman Empire. It viewed the Allied campaign as a war against an Islamic power whose ruler also functioned as the temporal head of the ummah (literally, the community of believers). Once the office of the caliph was abolished by the modern Turkish state, INC leaders shifted their concern to the issue of Islamic holy places not being under Islamic control. Even though nationalism subsequently became the focal point of Indian discourses on Palestine, in the initial years its support for Arabs was wrapped in explicit Islamic claims and rationales.
The long-term consequences of the INC’s involvement in the Khilafat struggle were not very favorable. The Hindu-Muslim alliance proved to be as elusive as ever. In the words of the historian B. R. Nanda, the support for the Khilafat issue “really stemmed from the Congress leaders’ eagerness to appease Muslim opinion, and somehow to wean the Muslim from unquestioning loyalty to the Raj.”16 Nirad C. Chaudhuri offered a much stronger indictment: “By allying itself with the Khilafat movement the Congress had encouraged the most retrograde form of Islamic group-consciousness.”17 Instead of forging an anti-British nationalist alliance with the Muslims, the Congress Party ended up borrowing Islamic terminology, goals, and demands. As we shall see, even though it could not be outright communal, as was the Muslim League, it could not divorce itself from Islamic influence. Gradually, it began to perceive and present events in the Middle East through an Islamic prism—but it couched its views in secular and nationalistic terms.
The Khilafat episode had some negative repercussions for the Mahatma on a personal level, as well. For a person who later on demanded active Jewish nonviolence even against Hitler, the Khilafat phase was a major aberration. His nonviolent model of defending Khilafat was not shared by many Muslims. Some were uncomfortable with a non-Muslim directing and dictating their religious duty. Even leaders such as Mohammed Ali had reservations over the Mahatma’s ethical stand on nonviolence. A tactical and symbolic commitment to Gandhi’s nonviolent demands was all that the Khilafat leaders were prepared to give in return for the support of the Congress Party and Hindu masses. Those who viewed the Khilafat struggle as the moment of Hindu-Muslim unity won the day. However, the rapid turn of events in republican Turkey removed the rationale for the Khilafat struggle, and the Hindu-Muslim unity disappeared along with it. Before long, the leaders of the Khilafat struggle parted ways and spearheaded a Muslim nationalist movement based on separatism. This eventually culminated in the partition of the Indian subcontinent and the formation of Pakistan in August 1947.
Before long, the Palestine question became an Islamic agenda item in subcontinental politics and a bone of contention between the Congress Party and the Muslim League. This confirmed the worst fears of the Zionists.
The Congress Party Versus the Muslim League
The Muslim League, formed in 1906, initially had no major antagonisms with the INC. Mahatma Gandhi and other Congress Party leaders took part in the deliberations of the Muslim League, and vice versa. At times, INC and Muslim League sessions were held at the same venue, often one following the other. Gradually, however, relations between the two deteriorated and became tense, especially following the outbreak of World War I and in response to European threats against the Ottoman Empire. As the Muslim League spearheaded the Khilafat struggle, the Congress Party joined the movement with the aim of strengthening and consolidating its support among the Muslims. This ended in a political struggle between the two for the support and loyalty of Indian Muslims. The Muslim League’s aspiration to be the exclusive representative of the Indian Muslims conflicted with the INC’s desire to represent the entire people of India, without any religious or other social barriers. Such tensions were more palpable vis-à-vis the Palestine question.
While the Congress Party remained unsympathetic toward Jewish nationalism, the Muslim League went a step further and took a hostile position against Zionism. Weeks after Arthur James Balfour promised British support for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine, the Muslim League expressed its concern over the “safety and sanctity of Holy Places.”18 Muslim League members talked of the prophet Mohammed’s injunction about the need to remove “the Christians, the Jews, and the idolaters from the Jazirat al-Arab at all costs.” Welcoming the delegates of the eleventh Muslim League session in Delhi in December 1918, Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari (who in 1927 became president of the Congress Party) remarked, “Palestine cannot be handed over to the Zionists, whose sole claim to that land is that centuries before the birth of Christ, the ancestors of the wandering sons of Israel had once lived in it. The achievements of Salahuddin Ayyubi and the blood of mujahideen did not flow, in the days of the Crusades, to lose it to a people who cannot put forward any recognizable claim to it.”19 Others argued that if a Muslim country was occupied by non-Muslims, efforts should be made “to get it cleared of them.”20
Delivering the presidential address in December 1918, A. K. Fazlul Haque underscored the determined support of the Indian Muslims to the preservation and continuation of the caliph. In his view, the Arab Revolt by Sharif Hussein of Mecca against the Ottoman Empire had “endangered the future of our holy places.” In underscoring loyalty to the crown, the Muslim League had its priorities straight:
We are loyal subjects of the rulers, and are prepared to prove our loyalty in actual practice by making sacrifices. But this temporal loyalty is subject to the limitation imposed by our undoubted loyalty to our faith… we need hardly emphasize that in case there is a conflict between Divine Laws and the mandates of our rulers, every true Mussalman will allow the Divine Commandments to prevail over human laws, even at the risk of laying down his life.21
Disappointed by the British failure to honor its commitments over Khilafat and Jazirat al-Arab, the following December the League hardened its position. It warned that “no settlement contemplating the dismemberment of Turkey would ever satisfy the Indian Mussalmans, but keep them in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction and discontent.”22 It declared that the Muslims of India would pursue all “constitutional agitation open to them, including a boycott of the British army, if it is likely to be used outside India for Imperial and anti-Islamic purpose.”
Articulating the basic demands of the Muslims in December 1921, Maulana Hasrat Mohani appealed that as per an injunction of the Prophet on his deathbed, Jazirat al-Arab, including Palestine, “should be free from all non-Muslim influence and not be under British mandate.”23 Mohani also indirectly rebuked the Ali brothers for cooperating with Mahatma Gandhi over the Khilafat issue and declared that the Muslim community did not need non-Muslim advice or assistance. However, the office of the caliph, which for centuries preoccupied Sunni Muslims, could not keep pace with changing times. The title of “caliph” was insufficient to provide the Ottoman emperor with a human face or guarantee his acceptance by his Arab subjects. Its abolition by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a Muslim, made the Khilafat struggle irrelevant.
In subsequent years, domestic concerns temporarily kept the Muslim League from pursuing an external Islamic agenda. It was left to a breakaway faction led by Hafiz Hidayat Husain to return to the Palestine question and make the first formal demand for the withdrawal of the Balfour Declaration. In November 1933, he warned that no Arab would tolerate the “creation of a Jewish National State at his expense, come what may.” Demanding an end to Jewish immigration, he felt that imperial interests “require that the Balfour Declaration shall be immediately scrapped.”24 Following the adoption of a resolution to this effect, the Muslim League continuously demanded the abolition of the Balfour Declaration.
By the time the Muslim League held its twenty-fifth session, in Lucknow in October 1937, Mohammed Ali Jinnah had firmly established himself as its undisputed leader. In a passionate speech, he castigated the British for their dishonesty, deception, and betrayal of the Arabs. Speaking in the name of “not only the Mussalmans of India but of the world,”25 he accused the Mandate authorities of having exploited the Arabs through false and irreconcilable promises. Responding to the Royal Palestine Commission, which had suggested partition as a solution to the Arab-Jewish conflict, Jinnah charged that Britain was hoping to complete the tragedy initiated by the “infamous Balfour Declaration.”26 Following his speech, the League adopted a strongly worded statement stating, inter alia: (1) that British policy on Palestine was in conflict with the religious sentiments of Indian Muslims and thus world peace was not possible without “rescission” of that policy; (2) that the Mandate of Palestine was never accepted by the Arabs and must be annulled; (3) that Muslim countries should endeavor to save the holy places “from the sacrilege of non-Muslim domination and… from the enslavement of British imperialism backed by Jewish finance”; (4) that the Muslim League endorsed the leadership of the Supreme Muslim Council and the Arab Higher Committee, both headed by the grand mufti of Jerusalem; (5) and that Indian Muslims, in “consonance with the rest of the Islamic world,” would treat and respond to the British as an enemy of Islam if it “fails to alter its present pro-Jewish policy in Palestine.”27
Not surprisingly, expressions such as “Jewish high finance” and other overtly racist or anti-Semitic terms were common in Muslim League deliberations. The twenty-sixth session of the Muslim League, which met at Patna in December 1938, witnessed some unprecedented emotional outbursts. Some members took their cue from Jinnah’s warning that the British were stirring up troubles in Palestine “with the ulterior motive of placating the international Jewry which commands the money-bags.”28 In a unanimous resolution, the Muslim League castigated the British for the “unjust” Balfour Declaration and its subsequent policy of repression toward the Arabs. The Muslim League saw it as the problem of the entire Muslim community and that the British failure to modify its support for “Jewish usurpation” would lead to “a state of perpetual unrest and conflict” and provoke an international Islamic coalition against the British.29
Prior to the adoption of this resolution, a number of delegates resorted to mouthing familiar anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews.30 Coming weeks after Kristallnacht, the “night of the broken glass,” one Muslim League delegate claimed that “Britain’s atrocities against the Arabs were greater than those of Germany against the Jews.” Another delegate, who had earlier been knighted by the Crown, claimed that religious scriptures had ruled out any home for the Jews and that “Britain would overrule the will of God in providing a home for the Jews.” For another: “both the British and the Hindus were Jews to Muslims, that is, their enemies. In India, Mr. Gandhi was the leader of the Hindu Jews.” Calls were made for a jihad in defense of Muslims in Palestine, and a delegate named Abdul Khaliq remarked: “The real Jews of the West were the British, and those of the East were the Hindus and both were the sons of Shylock.”31 However, this exceeded even the lenient limits of the Muslim League, and, after an admonition from Jinnah, Khaliq withdrew his remark.
The outbreak of World War II significantly altered the political climate in India. Torn between their commitment to fight Nazism and fascism in Europe, the Congress Party leaders were unwilling to support allied war efforts until the fight for freedom included India’s independence. Unilaterally committing India to the war, the colonial administration incarcerated the entire INC leadership and throttled its normal functions. The Muslim League, by contrast, was able to conduct its political activities and held five annual sessions during the war. These sessions enabled the Muslim League to articulate the Muslim position on Palestine and to remind the British of its earlier promise to the Indian Muslims over the spoils of the Ottoman Empire in return for Muslim support and assistance during the war.32
At its Delhi session in April 1943, the Muslim League expressed its concern and alarm at “Zionist propaganda” and the resultant American pressure on the British to convert Palestine into a Jewish state. Warning the British to desist from harming Arab interests, it expressed sympathy for the Arabs “at a time when the Arab National Higher Committee of Palestine stands disbanded and the Arab nationalists are… almost defenseless against organized Jewry and High Finance in the world.”33 In December 1943, the Muslim League demanded an end to all British and French mandates in the Middle East, including Palestine, and called for the establishment of sovereign governments.34 This was the last annual session of the Muslim League before the subcontinent’s partition.
After 1943, the Muslim League’s proceedings were confined to council meetings, chaired by Jinnah, that met five times from 1944 to 1947. Its preoccupation with the partition of the Indian subcontinent and creation of Pakistan did not dilute the Muslim League’s interest and commitments to the Palestinian cause, however. In April 1946, it demanded that Britain reject the recommendation of the Anglo-American commission, which sought an immediate admission of one hundred thousand Jewish refugees from Europe into Palestine. The Muslim League reminded the British of the commitment it made in the White Paper of 1939, wherein the Mandate power agreed to restrict Jewish immigration into Palestine.35
In December 1947, the All-India Muslim League met for the last time in Karachi before transforming into the Muslim League of Pakistan. Meeting about three weeks after the United Nations adopted the partition plan, it expressed its indignation at the manner in which the United Nations had decided the future of Palestine. Claiming to speak also on behalf of Indian Muslims, the Muslim League committed itself to “render every possible help for the achievement of the aspirations of the Arabs in Palestine, and the preservation of its freedom and integrity, which is a matter of concern not only to the Arabs but to the Muslim world as such.”36 In short, since the days of the Balfour Declaration, the Muslim League maintained a consistently hostile and unfriendly stance regarding Jewish nationalism. It often projected itself as a spokesperson for the entire Islamic community, and even following partition it sought to speak on behalf of the Muslims of India.
Such a hard-line position naturally influenced and compelled the Congress Party to accommodate the Muslim sentiments on Palestine. During the Khilafat period, it demanded that Jazirat al-Arab remain under exclusive Muslim control. In subsequent years, anticolonialism became its formal platform. At the same time, the not-so-subtle competition with the Muslim League for Muslim support was palpable in its calculation. While not prepared to go as far as did the Muslim League, it was not sympathetic to Jewish nationalism. A pro-Zionist stand would have played into the hands of the Muslim League and alienated a vast majority of the Muslims from the Congress Party. Thus the INC also began organizing Palestine Day celebrations in different parts of the country.
The opposition of the INC to Jewish nationalism in Palestine had another domestic consideration. The Muslim League was presenting Muslims in British India not as a different religious community but as a distinct nation, different from the majority Hindus. This in turn led to the Muslim League projecting itself as the sole representative of the Indian Muslims, and it challenged the right of the other parties, especially the INC, to speak for, let alone represent, Indian Muslims. As Farzana Shaikh aptly summed up, Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s “claim for parity developed steadily from simple political parity between League and Congress to communal parity between Muslims and Hindus and culminated finally in the demand for ideological parity between Muslims and non-Muslims.”37
Endorsing the Muslim League’s right to speak exclusively on behalf of Indian Muslims would have harmed the INC and transformed it into a Hindu and not Indian political force. The INC being Hindu-dominated merely reflected the demographic realities of India and was not driven by any religious exclusivist agenda. Accepting the Muslim League’s right to speak on behalf of Indian Muslims would have meant recognizing the right of other religious and ethnic groups having separate political representations. That would have been suicidal both for the Congress Party and for the independent India it was seeking. Therefore, much to the annoyance and anger of Jinnah, the INC continued to give prominent positions to Muslims within the party and even elected Maulana Abul Kalam Azad as its president in 1940, a position that he held until 1945.38
Having rejected the Muslim League’s argument of Muslims being a distinct nation, the INC could not accept similar claims by Jews in Palestine. For “many nationalist Muslims in the… Congress, who subscribed to the idea of a secular and undivided Indian state and to whom the idea of religion being the basis of nationality” was undesirable, the two-nation theory of the Muslim League was unacceptable.39 Any dilution of its opposition to a Jewish national home in Palestine would have exposed the Congress Party and made its stand vis-à-vis the Muslim League vulnerable and untenable. For India and its leaders, especially the Muslim leaders within the INC (such as Azad), Jewish nationalism in Palestine reflected their own trauma over the exclusivist notion represented by the Muslim League. Reflecting this domestic Indian situation, the INC opposed religion-based partition both in India and in Palestine.40
Unfortunately, however, the Congress Party advocated two different solutions for the challenges posed by religion-based nationalism. In the Indian context, it was prepared to accept a communal-based partition as the price for freedom from the British. Though not subscribing to the two-nation theory of the Muslim League, the INC leaders, especially Nehru, accepted partition along religious lines, with Muslim-majority areas forming Pakistan.41 For Palestine, however, Nehru advocated a federal arrangement, something he was not prepared to accept in the Indian subcontinent. Despite past opposition, India eventually accepted Pakistan as an independent state, and for similar reasons it recognized the state of Israel. Continued opposition to the partition of Palestine after a similar religious division of British India would have raised doubts over New Delhi’s acceptance of the sovereignty of Pakistan. For the Congress Party, opposition to partition both in India and Palestine was a principled moral stand, and its subsequent recognition of both Pakistan and Israel were signs of political pragmatism.
For its part, the Muslim League faced a different kind of dilemma vis-à-vis Palestine. Its arguments that the Muslims were a separate nation on account of their religion could not be extended to Palestine, where Muslims were in the majority. That would have compelled the Muslim League to recognize the claims of the Jews being a distinct nation on account of their non-Muslim religious affiliation. The arguments of the Muslim League—and later on Pakistan—however, were much narrower, as both adopted a converse position vis-à-vis the Jews of Palestine. Partition was essential for the welfare of the Muslims of India but was an unacceptable proposition in Palestine because it was anti-Muslim. As S. M. Burke aptly put it: “While the device of dividing the country provided the only means of real freedom to the Indian Muslims, the very word partition was anathema to Muslims elsewhere.”42
This tussle between the INC and the Muslim League for Muslim support partly contributed to the yishuv’s interest in India. If the Islamic factor influenced the thinking of Indian nationalists toward the problem in Palestine, the yishuv leadership was equally worried about the attitude of Indian Muslims in the unfolding problem. On at least four occasions, the Zionist leadership showed concerns about Indian Muslims and their impact upon the Jewish homeland project in Palestine. The first occasion was during the run up to the Balfour Declaration. Due to concerns over Muslim opinion, senior officials in the India Office warned their government against endorsing Zionist aspirations in Palestine.43 The second occasion arose in January 1931, when the mufti of Jerusalem offered to bury the body of Mohammad Ali in the Harem al-Sharif. Alarmed by its political ramifications, Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, met Mohammad Ali’s elder brother, Shaukat Ali, in London. This was the first known contact between the Zionist leadership and an Indian leader. Weizmann hoped to persuade Shaukat, who would be accompanying the body to Jerusalem, to quarantine the Palestine problem from domestic Indian politics.44 Subsequent developments in India belied Weizmann’s expectations. Won over by the mufti’s hospitality and warm treatment, the Indian leader became his staunch supporter and played an active role at the General Muslim Congress organized by the mufti later that year.45
The third Zionist contact, in October 1931, took place against the background of greater concerns over the attitude of Indian Muslims. This was the first time that the Zionist leadership established formal contacts with Mahatma Gandhi, who was in London to attend the Round Table Conference. Two Zionist emissaries, Seliq Brodetsky and Nahum Sokolov, met the Mahatma, seeking to keep India away from the Palestinian issue.46 A fourth and somewhat longer campaign aimed at India had to wait until mid-1936, when Immanuel Olsvanger was sent to India as the emissary of the Jewish Agency. During his long stay, he reached out to a large number of Indian nationalists and representatives of other groups. Again his mission was directly linked to events in Palestine and its reverberations in the Islamic world. Olsvanger was sent to India shortly after the outbreak of the Arab general strikes that precipitated the Arab Revolt of 1936–1939. In short, during the prestate years, even the limited Zionist interest in India was primarily motivated by the Muslim factor.
Was there a Hindu perception on Jewish history that could have altered this partisan viewpoint?
Panikkar’s Prognosis
The historian and later diplomat K. M. Panikkar recognized and articulated the influence of the domestic Muslim population upon India’s Middle East policy. He was one of the few Indians who had long associations with some of the leading personalities of the Zionist movement, including Weizmann, whom he had met in 1926.47 On the eve of India’s independence, he visualized a “Hindu perception” toward a Jewish national home in Palestine. In his assessment, this would be articulated with clarity after the partition of the Indian subcontinent. The Asian Relations Conference, held in New Delhi in March–April 1947, rekindled Panikkar’s meetings with the yishuv. Hugo Bergmann, a professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, led a ten-member delegation that represented the Jews of Palestine. Panikkar, the prime minister of the princely state of Bikaner, was a member of the Indian delegation to the conference. After the conference, when Bergmann visited Bikaner, Panikkar “revealed himself… as an ardent friend of our cause and gave important advice as to our future work in India. This advice he wrote down in a memorandum sent by him to Palestine.”48 Panikkar offered meaningful suggestions to the Zionists in a two-page memorandum curiously titled A Memorandum on Hindu-Zionist Relations.49 Written on April 8, 1947, this document throws an interesting light on his overall understanding of the Palestine problem, his evaluation of the Indian political climate on the eve of partition, and its relevance for the post-1947 Indian policy toward the political aspirations of the Jews.
Panikkar began his note with an emphasis on Islam and its role in Indian policy. Because “Islam is a minority in India,” he argued, “the feeling of Muslim solidarity is greater in India than perhaps anywhere else in the Islamic world.” Due to the prevailing political climate on the eve of partition, the Hindus would unconditionally support “all matters on which Islam feels strongly.” Therefore, as far as Palestine was concerned, “official Indian opinion will not be different from that of Islamic countries, though it is unlikely that India will do more than follow the lead of the Arab countries in this matter.”50
Even though this was the prevailing position, Panikkar argued that “it will be wrong to think that Hindu opinion is solidly in favor of Islamic claims in Palestine.” Sympathy for the Jewish cause was inevitable, due to the “stiffening of Hindu opinion generally towards Muslims in the internal politics and… because of a genuine and natural sympathy towards the sufferings of the Jews.” Once the Muslim League succeeded in creating a separate Islamic state in the subcontinent, “Hindu opinion on the question of Palestine will find its natural and untrammeled expression.” He went on to predict that once Pakistan was established, “Hindu leaders and politicians may well take a pro-Zionist line.” He blamed the Zionists for their prolonged neglect and indifference toward India, which he felt was responsible for the absence of sympathy “even in orthodox Hindu quarters towards Zionist claims.” He was optimistic and visualized “increasing realization on the side of the Zionists that Asia will count a great deal more in world politics, and that Asia is not predominantly Islamic, but Hindu and Chinese.” He predicted that Hindus would appreciate that “a Zionist Palestine may be an important link in the defense policy of India, that it may, with the support of European nations, be an effective counter-weight to an alliance of Islamic countries in the Middle East… between Hinduism and Judaism there is a great deal in common.” Thus the creation of Hindu-Zionist friendship “clearly indicated… the interests of both parties.”
When the General Assembly deliberated the future of Palestine in 1947, Panikkar became a member of the Indian delegation to the United Nations. Reflecting on that period in his 1955 autobiography, he settled for a sanitized and politically correct version:
On the question of a Jewish State in Palestine, however, my sympathies were not all with the Zionists. The Indian attitude has always been friendly to the Arabs. While sympathizing with the claims of the Jews for a national home in Palestine, I thought that this demand for a State based on religious exclusivism was in the first instance likely to revive Islamic fanaticism and secondly was unjust to the Palestine Arabs.51
His appointment to the diplomatic corps and Nehru’s cool attitude toward various Israeli overtures partly explain this diluted position. Like others, he was conscious of political correctness.52
The real importance of Panikkar’s memorandum lay in his willingness to underline the difference between Hindu and Muslim perceptions of the Arab-Israeli problem. He perceived “Hindu” support to the Arabs as a tactical move aimed at forging a Hindu-Muslim unity against foreign rule. Following the formation of a Muslim state in the subcontinent, he was confident that this rationale would disappear and thus visualized a “Hindu” opinion that would be more independent and sympathetic toward Zionism and Israel. Postpartition events, however, took a different course. A large portion of Muslims made a deliberate decision to remain in India, emerging as a powerful and influential minority, and their impact was felt on India’s policy toward Israel. Thus, instead of adopting an overtly Hindu-nationalistic position, as Panikkar had expected, the Congress Party came under greater Islamic influence, which shaped Indian perceptions of the Middle East in general and the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular.
Also, the question of the “Hindu opinion on Palestine” is rather debatable. Because of historical and religious reasons, there is an Islamic opinion about and concern regarding Palestine. Like their coreligionists elsewhere, Indian Muslims have a sentimental attachment toward the issue. This is not true for the Hindus. There is neither a need nor a rationale for the evolution of a “Hindu” opinion. Other than adopting the Machiavellian logic of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend,” there is no compelling reason for a Hindu to be passionate about the holy land or Jazirat al-Arab. As a gentile, kafir, infidel, and pagan, a Hindu has no sentimental attachment toward Palestine, Israel, or the holy land. The Promised Land—the Jewish, Islamic, or Christian version—is as good, as bad, and as consequential as Alaska. The post-1948 events would disprove Panikkar’s optimism.
Thus, during the nationalist phase, the Congress Party and its leaders came under two kinds of pressures. At one level, they had to compete with the Muslim League for the support of the Indian Muslims. A pro-Arab position helped consolidate INC influence among the Indian Muslims. While this alone would have been insufficient, a contrary position would have alienated the party from the Muslims. At another level, INC opposition to religious separatism meant it was unable to endorse Jewish nationalist aspirations in Palestine. It could not support the idea of Jews being a separate nation in Palestine while rejecting similar demands by the Muslim League in India. Thus the Congress Party became pro-Muslim vis-à-vis its domestic constituency and pro-Arab vis-à-vis its external audience. Both positions worked in tandem. At the same time, INC opposition to partitions proved futile. Both India and Palestine were partitioned along religious lines, and India was forced to come to terms with both new realities. This recognition was relatively easier with respect to Pakistan, given the two countries’ geographic proximity and shared history. Recognizing the partition of Palestine, however, took longer, as the domestic opinion on Israel still remained contentious. Additionally, there was also the Arab factor to contend with.