Evolutions of India-Israel Relations
By Achin Vanaik
This lecture is an edited excerpt of a talk delivered by Achin Vanaik in Bangalore.
All of you would have heard that Mahatma Gandhi in 1938 said that Palestine belongs to the Arabs, just as France belongs to the French and England to the English. However, Gandhi also had very close friends among Zionists. He did believe that Palestine belonged to the Arabs, but he also believed there should be complete freedom and migration of Jews to what he considered to be, or accepted, was their original home. He argued they were its inhabitants and that hence the cultural and religious rights of Israel, and of Jews there should be respected. In fact, Gandhi actually wrote that the Jews have a prior claim to Palestine. As for Nehru, he was sympathetic to the Jewish cause because he knew about the Jewish holocaust, and he was sympathetic to that history. I would also like to point out that, although there is a profound difference between Gandhi and Nehru, since they were leaders of the national movement and were very different from later leaders of Indian government, political pragmatism came to play an important role in India’s early policy-making.
Thus, both in Gandhi as well as Nehru, and elsewhere in official circles, there are certain ambivalences which are unlike the current perception:
a.) that the Indian government always supported the Palestinians, and,
b) that it was only much later, especially in recent years, that a fundamental kind of shift takes place because of the rise of the Sangh Parivar and BJP.
Before Independence, as you know, India was part of the UN Special Committee on Palestine, which was set up in February 1947, to discuss the question of what to do about Palestine since Britain had handed this mandate to Israel in the Balfour Declaration. What happened then is that a minority of three countries, Iran, Yugoslavia and India, insisted that there should not be a partition, whereas the others, the majority in the 11- member committee, especially two countries, the Soviet Union and the United States, supported the idea of partition (which was only a recommendation) and mobilised the support of the majority members of the Special Committee. Israel agreed to this recommendation, but it was playing a dirty game because 10 days before the UN decision to partition, (which in itself was completely unjustified, for, Palestine should have got independence, like all the other countries under the UN mandate, such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan). Israel arrived at a secret agreement between King Abdullah of Jordan and Zionist leadership that Jordan will keep the East Jerusalem, West Bank, in the war that is coming, and Israel would keep the rest. This development was the eventual outcome of the Cold War. What resulted was an expulsion of Palestine in two phases, between 1946 November and May 1948, and then from May 1948 to March 1949, followed by a deliberate ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Israel.
Interestingly, the first country to recognise Israel was in fact the Soviet Union, 3 days after May 14th 1948. In later years, though, Soviet Union changed its political standpoint, but this is important. The Soviet Union was impressed by the struggles by the Israeli militia against Britain, and it was also impressed by the fact that there was a labour zionist current dominating in Israel that received labour support and upheld the idea of a Socialist state.
Anyway, India opposed Israel getting UN membership in 1949, and after the country got membership in 1949, India accepted the UN Resolution 194, which supported the return of Palestinians but of course, India violated that Resolution, and has never accepted it ever since.
In 1950, India officially recognised Israel, but didn’t set up a full membership for Israel in India. It first allowed an immigration office, and granted a consul status in Bombay, and only much later, full recognition.
Why did India recognise Israel in 1950? First, India took cognizance of the fact that two Muslim majority countries, Turkey and Iran, had both recognised Israel. Second, after partition, even though it was opposed to the partition of Palestine, it recognised a partitioned Pakistan. Third, there was not much reporting at that time about the kind of ethnic cleansing that was taking place, and fourth, there was no independent representative body of the Palestinians.
The all Palestine government quickly, came under the control of the Arab League and Egypt. And, since the Soviet Union had accepted recognition of Israel, the Indian communist party, the most important opposition to the Congress party in 1950, fell in line with the Soviet Union’s stand, and that was why it had no problems with the recognition either.
Then there was the financial aspect to actually set up in diplomatic nations all over after independence but there was also a recognition that Israel at that moment was very weak, it had just emerged and it was important for India to keep economic and political considerations in mind. We also had to face the whole question of the Suez and the need for access to the Suez for our economy.
In 1954 there was a meeting of prime ministers of Pakistan, Ceylon, Burma, India and Indonesia in Bohor. Ceylon had recognised Israel before India, broke relations and then later towards the end of the assembly, started relations with Israel again. What is significant is that political considerations became more important, especially when Palestinians did not have an independent representation in the group.
After 1950, recognition of Israel, diplomatic exchange didn’t move ahead for a number of reasons. What really prevented India from moving ahead to establishing closer and fuller relations with Israel was that this was a period of the emergence of Nasser and Arab Nationalism who came to power in the military coup in 1952 which overthrew the monarchy in Egypt which and moved towards a Arab Nationalism, and resulted in much closer relations between Egypt and India.
Later on, even in the 1960s and 1967, India publicly expressed opposition to what Israel had done, but behind this public stand, negotiations were taking place under the Congress government with Israel, especially during the 1962 India- China war, for the reason that Israel was very keen to get India to purchase arms and ammunitions in the 1962 war. Israeli also supported India in the 1965 war with Pakistan. In 1968 RAW, India’s secret service, was set up,. Then in 1968 the Indian government undertook secret relations with Mossad. So all of these other factors become significant in terms of the attitude towards Israel and Palestinein 1971. But this kind of relationship continues even later throughout the 70s.
So, on the one hand, the concerns of the Palestinians had to be taken into account. For example, India was the first non- Arab country to recognise the PLO in 1970. In 1975, India cosponsored a UN Resolution saying that Zionism is a racist doctrine. But then, India in 1991 voted to anull that resolution. Secret meetings took place between Israel and the Janta Party government. Mossad made a visit to India in 1977 and again in 1978 in order to meet Morarji Desai and others. In 1979, there was a much less known meeting between RAW and Mossad and Moshe Dayan. My point is that there were these behind-thescenes relations which were also indicative of this kind of change of India’s policy towards Israel and Palestine.