Though India had formally recognized Israel in 1950, it took
decades before it established full diplomatic ties with the country in early
1990s. The foundation of India’s policy towards Israel and Palestine was laid
by Mahatma Gandhi who, though sympathised with the Jews for their persecution,
was never in favour of a forced state of Israel in Palestine against the wishes
of Palestinians and Arabs. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister
religiously followed this line and India voted against the resolution passed by
the United Nations General Assembly for partition of Palestine between the
Arabs and the Jews that led to formation of Israel as an independent state on May
14, 1948.
Before the scheduled day of UN vote on November 29, 1947,
the Jewish leaders were holding hectic parleys and were lobbying with the UN
member countries to vote in favour of the partition. To gain India’s support,
the Jewish leadership convinced the best known Jewish face of the time, Albert
Einstein, to bring India on board. Nehru respected Einstein as a scientist and
humanist.
According to an analysis of communication between Nehru and
Einstein on the issue, analysed by Israeli professor and historian Benny
Morris, published in The Guardian, the Jewish leaders urged Einstein to write
to Nehru hoping it could do the “miracle of persuading India to vote in favour
of a Jewish state.”
Einstein wrote to Nehru on June 13, 1947. His four page
letter touched themes like persecution of the Jews since the ancient times and
recent massacre by Adolf Hitler and compared the Jews with the untouchables of
India, something that Mahatma Gandhi had written about in past. Praising India
for abolishing Untouchability, he called India to stand for the rights “an
ancient people with roots are in the East who have been victims of persecution
and discrimination for centuries”, invoking “justice and inequality”.
Though Einstein was not in favour of a nation state and had
long advocated for an Arab-Jewish state than a Jewish state where the Arabs and
the Jews would live together in peace, the communication says he was forced to
change his opinion, "The Jewish people alone has for centuries been in the
anomalous position of being victimised and hounded as a people, though bereft
of all the rights and protections which even the smallest people normally has. Zionism
(the movement to establish Israel) offered the means of ending this
discrimination. Through the return to the land to which they were bound by
close historic ties, Jews sought to abolish their pariah status among
peoples."
Making the case of Jewish settlement in Palestine, Einstein
wrote that “one of the most extraordinary features of the Jewish rebuilding of
Palestine was that the influx of Jewish pioneers resulted not in the
displacement and impoverishment of the local Arab population but in its
phenomenal increase and greater prosperity."
But Einstein’s appeal failed to convince Nehru to leave
India’s principled stand for the Palestinian cause and vote in favour of
Palestine’s partition for the proposed Jewish state.
In reply to Einstein’s letter, he wrote back on July 11,
1947, “I confess that while I have a very great deal of sympathy for the Jews I
feel sympathy for the Arabs also. I know that the Jews have done a wonderful
piece of work in Palestine and have raised the standards of the people there,
but one question troubles me. After all these remarkable achievements, why have
they failed to gain the goodwill of the Arabs? Why do they want to compel the
Arabs to submit against their will to certain demands [i.e., partition and
Jewish statehood]?”
Nehru also made it clear to Einstein that apart from India’s
principled stand, it was also because of India’s policy concerns on domestic
and international developments which could not allow India to vote in favour of
Israel, “National leaders, unfortunately, had to pursue essentially selfish
policies. Each country thinks of its own interest first. If it so happens that
some international policy fits in with the national policy of the country, then
that nation uses brave language about international betterment. But as soon as
that international policy seems to run counter to national interests or
selfishness, then a host of reasons are found not to follow that international
policy.”
India, which was going to celebrate its first Independence
Day a month later, on August 15, 1947, had a sizeable Muslim population which
was opposed to the Jewish occupation of Palestine. Besides, the wounds of
India’s partition along the religion lines were still fresh. Also, a war with
Pakistan was looming large and India needed international support including
from the Arab nations.
The UNGA resolution on division of Palestine was passed with
a mandate of 33 votes while 13 member countries, including India, voted against
it. All six Arab member countries of the UN staged walk-out highlighting the
fact that the partition was not acceptable to the Arab nations.
10 countries along with Britain abstained from voting. The
British stand was bizarre because it was an ill-conceived and half-baked
British document only, known as 1917 Balfour Declaration that gave rise to the
whole Palestine-Israel issue as we see it today. The British stand was that
anything inimical to the interests of the existing non-Jewish communities would
not be acceptable while advocating for Jewish homeland in the British Mandate
of Palestine, something that made it to abstain from voting 30 years later. Nehru’s
was also against the Balfour Declaration because it sought to create a Jewish
nation in Palestine which was not “empty and uninhabited and was already a home
to Arabs.”
©SantoshChaubey
