Israel through Gandhi’s eyes

For over 70 years, political leaders in India have been consistently quoting Mahatma Gandhi’s November 26, 1938, statement to show their commitment to the cause of a separate Palestinian state and also as a measure of diplomatic outreach to Arab nations. As late as 2015, former President Pranab Mukherjee, while inaugurating Mahatma Gandhi Street at Amman in Jordan, quoted part of this statement of the Father of the Nation, saying “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs... Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.”

This advice from the nation’s conscience-keeper had kept successive government’s away from establishing full-fledged relations with the Jewish nation. Even though Israel had opened its consulate in Mumbai in 1953 and then its embassy in New Delhi in 1993 leading to a flurry of activity in the military and economic sectors, but the political content in the relations was missing. 

The governments preferred to keep “need-based-relations” with Tel Aviv, fearing annoying Gandhians and a reprisal from Arab nations — who were key to India’s energy security. But research by Prof PR Kumaraswamy in his recently released book Squaring the Circle: Mahatma Gandhi and the Jewish National Home has revealed that Gandhi had changed his views after World War II. Even before World War II, while expressing sympathy to the Jewish cause in private conversations, he desisted from publicising it due to domestic political compulsions.

It also appears that by design, several pronouncements, meetings, exchanges, views and notes don’t figure in the 100-volume Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi published by Ministry of Culture of the Government of India.

The author claims that Gandhi’s secretary Pyarelal had suppressed some of Gandhi’s writings and minutes of meetings. In 1936, the Jewish Agency for Palestine sent Immanuel Olsvanger, a Sanskrit scholar to India as a Zionist emissary to shore up support. He engaged with a host of Indian leaders including Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore and met Gandhi in the Wardha Ashram on September 19, 1936. There is no mention of this meeting in the Collected Works. 

Also, a year later, Gandhi handed over an unsigned and undated statement on Zionism to his old friend from the South African days Hermann Kallenbach. This statement is not included in the Gandhi-Kallenbach correspondence in the National Archives in New Delhi. 

The author dug out the copy, which was in Gandhi’s handwriting, in the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem. Sharing this statement with Chaim Weizmann, the former president of the World Zionist Organisation and the first President of Israel, Kallenbach observed: “..this is not for publication. MG (Mahatma Gandhi) considers its publication at this time harmful to our cause. The Islamic World will make full use of this statement to foster their pro-Arab agitation.” It was not Gandhi alone who kept his sympathies under wraps.

In October 1936, Tagore informed Olsvanger that his sympathies for Jewish nationalist aspirations expressed in the October 1, 1936 meeting were private and should not be publicised. The same was true for KM Panikkar, who later became India’s envoy to China and Egypt. He wrote a confidential ‘Memorandum on Hindu-Zionist Relations’ and gave it to the Jewish delegation that attended the Asian Relations Conference. But the greatest exposé is missing details of Gandhi’s meeting with Honick of the World Jewish Congress and Sydney Silverman, Labor Member of the British Parliament. Gandhi’s secretary Pyarelal was present at the meeting, taking notes. His report began and ended with a clear statement of Gandhi pronouncing limitations to support their cause. Gandhi told his visitors: “You have come to the wrong person. I work within my own limitations. What I would say to you, therefore, is that unless you can gain the ear of Indian Mussalmans and their active support, I am afraid that there is nothing that can be done in India.” Gandhi then advises the delegation to meet Congress president Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Jinnah and try to gain their sympathies. “Unless you can get the active support of Muslims, nothing is possible in a substantial way in India,” remarked Gandhi. 

Then there is record of a conversation where the delegation is saying, “It was well nigh impossible. Would Mr Jinnah listen? He wouldn’t.” Gandhi replied, “He may. Perhaps he may by the same token with which he demands a Pakistan.” Then they asked him, as recorded by Pyarelal: “May we take it that you sympathise with our aspiration to establish a national home for the Jews?” 

Curiously, Gandhi’s answer to this question is not recorded in Pyarelal’s collections. But the author has drawn Gandhi’s reply to an American journalist and well-known biographer Lois Fischer, who had got it from Gandhi himself. The unrecorded answer was: “The Jews have a good case. I told Sidney Silverman that the Jews have a good case in Palestine. If the Arabs have a claim in Palestine, the Jews have a prior claim — almost a reversal of what he had stated in 1938 and often quoted by Indian leaders at Arab gatherings.

While there is no hesitation to accept Judaism as an ancient faith, but its political arm Zionism, a product of late 19th century used religion and interpreted texts to validate violence on somewhat similar lines as many groups around the world do these days justifying their activities by misinterpreting religion. In his book Anonymous soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947, Bruce Hoffman documents how Zionism gave birth to modern-day terrorism and used it as a successful tool of strategy and tactics. There is an ample need today to combine Gandhi’s love for Palestinians and sympathy for a Jewish home to bring reconciliation in the Middle East and let the two communities live in peace and prosper together. 

The author is Editor, strategic affairs, DNA