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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: Jawaharlal Nehru

The Mysterious Case of India’s Jews

14 Tue May 2019

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on The Mysterious Case of India’s Jews

Tags

aliyah, anti-Semitism, Baghdadi Jews, Bene Israel, Bene Israel Zionist Organisation, Calcutta Zionist Organisation, Chola, David Erulkar, Dua Aftekar, Eliyahu Moses, Ezekiel Talkar, halakha, Hebrew, Immanuel Olsvanger, India, Israel, Israel Cohen, Jawaharlal Nehru, Judaism, Mohandas Gandhi, Rabbi Samuel Abe, Rabbi Yaakov Sapir, Rachel’s Tomb, racism, Samuel Ezekiel Dibker, Zionism

Why did India’s Jews leave? Since 1881, Jews began to arrive in what was then called Palestine mainly from Europe but also parts of the Middle East. Most of them were escaping persecution in their homelands, from a deeply unequal status such as in Yemen to outright violence such as in Eastern Europe. Yet a study of their migration patterns and the conditions reveal that many were still reluctant to make that journey to Zion and clung to a sense of belonging to their countries of domicile. In contrast, the Jews of India have never faced persecution of any kind and were in a relatively good position economically and socially in their country. However, most of them left the subcontinent soon after the creation of the State of Israel. What explains this unusual phenomenon?

It is beyond the scope of this essay to answer this question. However, I wish to highlight the incompatibility of the general Jewish experience or even the Israeli nationalist narrative when we discuss Indian Jews. Four primary motives are ascribed to migrations: 1.) persecution, be it on the basis of religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or something else; 2.) economics, in search of greater opportunities to create wealth, better governance, and an overall higher quality of life; 3.) nationalism, for a feeling of belonging to a community, especially if one is alienated in the culture of one’s residence; and 4.) religion, as a belief in transcendental promises, obligations, and belonging to a particular geography or community. It is also understood that there are factors that push for migration from the resident country and there are corresponding pull factors in the migratory destination. Although each of these four reasons are problematic in describing the considerations of Indian Jews for leaving India, the scant evidence suggests that a mix of nationalism and religion explains their actions the best. I shall consider each of these briefly to capture a sense of the Jewish experience in India and bring out the unsatisfactory answers they provide.

My focus on the Bene Israel rather than on, say, the Baghdadi Jews, is for one simple reason – the Bene Israel had been in India so long and were disconnected from the Jewish world for most of that time. Many of the Cochin Jews, though not all, came fleeing Iberia after the Alhambra Decree of Queen Isabella of and King Ferdinand II in 1492 and the Baghdadi Jews came to India in the early eighteenth century escaping the pogroms of Dawud Pasha. Their far more recent connection to the world Jewish community makes their exodus from India far more understandable than that of the Bene Israel or the kala (Black) Cochin Jews.

Persecution:

In his 2003 visit to India, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon commented that India was the only country in the world that had not known anti-Semitism. While Sharon was no scholar of history, his words can easily be fact-checked: although it is not certain when the first Jews arrived in India, the myths of the Bene Israel, the largest Jewish community in India, claim that they arrived in India around approximately 200 BCE, shipwrecked off the coast of Goa and given shelter and refuge by local villagers in the region. This is supported by the similarity of some Bene Israel rituals – malida, for example, to those practiced in the Northern Kingdom’s Asher and Zebulon tribes after the separation from the Kingdom of Judah. Some stories about the origins of the Cochin Jews push that date further back to the eighth century BCE, using the presence of South Indian loan words in the Bible as evidence.

Documentary evidence is scarce from this period but the earliest definitive proof of harmonious Jewish existence in India comes from a copper plate from around 1000 CE issued by the Chola emperor, of what is now the modern Indian province of Tamil Nadu, that listed the rights granted to the Jewish community of Cranganore, including the right to adjudicate all disputes in their town. Several other stories abound about how the Jewish community was always protected by the Hindu rulers of India. For example, when the Portuguese conquered Goa in 1510, neighbouring Hindu kings gave refuge to Jews fleeing from the Goan Inquisition.

Similar behaviour was witnessed when Jews were persecuted, to a much lesser extent, by the Dutch in Cochin or occasionally by India’s Muslim rulers from time to time. In general, Jews were treated on par with any of India’s myriad communities, and the Indian polity was used to dealing with hundreds of different customs, rituals, and languages between them. Nathan Katz writes of the kingdom of Cochin even as late as 1550, “Probably India is the only country on earth so civilized that in war, out of deference to its esteemed Jewish soldiers, no battles were fought on the Sabbath.” As one Cochin Jew expressed the place of Jews in India, the Jewish and Hindu communities lived “side-by-side but not submerged, acculturated but not assimilated.”

This fraternity between Hindus and Jews did not change under British rule. For example, a Bene Israel professor, Ezekiel Talkar, was able to persuade the Bombay municipality in 1870 to allow Hebrew as a second official language for the civil service exams – this was almost 80 years before the State of Israel would be formed and before the efforts of Eliezer Ben Yehuda to revive Hebrew as the unifying Jewish language. India was thus the only place in the world where Hebrew was an official language for national examinations. Interestingly, the only problems the Bene Israel faced over their Jewish identity from Indians was from another Jewish community, the Baghdadi Jews!

An interesting counterpoint is raised by some scholars that the readiness of the Bene Israel to emigrate to Israel began after the partition of India and the departure of the British from the subcontinent because of their concern that the Indian population would not forgive the collaborative role of the Jewish community with the British imperial masters. However, none seem clear on what these fears are based – after all, millions of Indians – Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, as well as others – also collaborated with the British as civil servants, soldiers, and servants. Even in that part of the Indian subcontinent that became Pakistan, animosity against the Jewish community was based on their religion rather than any grudge for siding with the British Raj.

Furthermore, although Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru did not support the Zionist aspiration of creating a national homeland in Palestine, this was more out of ignorance of Jewish history and circumstances rather than any animosity. At most, one might argue that Indian reluctance to support the Jewish cause was based on the pragmatic evaluation, with which even the British agreed, that it might cause unrest among India’s vast population of Muslims.

In fact, it was the British who tried to stop Jews fleeing fascist Europe from entering India – Hindu Indian leaders welcomed them and allowed philanthropic organisations to be established by the Jewish community to help the refugees (Hodes, 69). Many of these European Jews even made long-lasting connections with the Indian people despite their brief stay in the country and contributed much to the cultural milieu of the subcontinent.

Thus, persecution does not seem a probably cause for the departure of the Bene Israel from India. There is simply not an iota of evidence that they had ever been the target of discrimination nor was there any realistic fear that they might become targets in the near future.

Economics:

Most migration theories today focus on economic factors that pull migrants to their destinations. Although there was, as with any community, a wide variance in personal wealth among the Bene Israel, their economic conditions nor those of the newly established State of Israel warrant any migration from India to Israel during at least the first two waves of Jewish emigration from India between 1948 and 1951 and 1953 and 1954 when the overwhelming number of Indian Jews – some 80 percent – left the country.

The Bene Israel may not have been as affluent as their Baghdadi cousins, but there is ample evidence that they were a generally prosperous community. After their initial arrival in India, they took up the profession of oil merchants and were called shaniwar taelis for the refused to work on Shabbat. However, they were restricted to that profession and the Bene Israel were also found in carpentry, masonry, trade, money lending, and several other professions. With the advent of the European modernity in the seventeenth century, the Bene Israel also became journalists, architects, writers, physicians, lawyers, engineers, teachers, professors, civil servants, social workers, and even politicians. Among the financially lower classes who could not afford much education, they became millworkers, tailors, soldiers, and hospital assistants in addition to their traditional trades.

In 1796, Samuel Ezekiel Dibker opened in Bombay the first Bene Israel synagogue (the first synagogue in India was built in the fourth century in Kodungallur). Until then, they had congregated in the homes of leading Jewish families of the neighbourhood or village for prayer for they were kept out of Baghdadi Jewish synagogues as they were not seen as pure Jews by the newer entrants to India and although the Cochin Jews allowed them to pray together, they were made to sit on the floor or outside the synagogue. In 1841, another synagogue was built and a third in 1886. Away from home, the Bene Israel contributed funds through Rabbi Yaakov Sapir in 1864 for the renovation of Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. This indicates the relative prosperity of the Bene Israel community.

The advent of the British in India increased the fortunes on the Bene Israel. With access to modern education, they were able to create contacts with the international Jewish community and move into international trade as well like their Baghdadi brethren. Furthermore, the British policy of favouring minorities in staffing their local administrations helped the Bene Israel tremendously. Several Bene Israel such as David Erulkar were even able to go to England to receive advanced degrees and others such as Dua Aftekar and Eliyahu Moses were elected mayors of Bombay. Jacob Israel, another prominent Bene Israel member, became the ruler of Janjira.

The Bene Israel benefited from the Christian Missions that followed European imperialism not just in terms of education that made them professionals and an introduction to the international Jewish trading community but also in terms access to services such as sanitation, hospitals, child day-care, orphanages, and other such amenities that truly modernised them in outlook. It was a case of colonised people demanding – and receiving – what they wanted from their imperial masters; what they did not want – Christianity – the Bene Israel did not hesitate to reject.

However, with the departure of the British the new Indian government implemented socialistic economic policies and Jewish trading, particularly Baghdadi, was hurt. This policy was not directed at the Jews specifically but nonetheless it created an impetus for many among the Jewish community to leave the country in search of greener pastures. It is noteworthy that the preferred destinations of these Jews were the United States and Canada where they had cultivated networks over the past century rather than the newly formed Jewish state. Another change the new Indian administration brought in was the end to a preference for minorities in the civil services and other posts. Although Jews were not specifically discriminated against, the new policy meant that they had no special privilege and would have to compete for jobs as ordinary Indians. This reduced any additional benefit the Bene Israel might have felt that their country of domicile offered them and increased the attractiveness of Israel and the wider world.

Still, given the economic uncertainties and difficulties in Israel, it is difficult to understand how economics might have played a role in making the Bene Israel emigrate from India. Jean Roland notes that this can be partially explained by the international political climate and the public perception it created of the Jews. Being a minuscule community, the Bene Israel lacked networks in the Indian economy and administration. When applying for corporate jobs, they were sometimes told, “We’re reluctant to hire you because we’ll invest in your training and then you’ll leave for Israel.” Without significant ties to India, such as land holdings or domestic trade networks, the more mobile urban professionals found it easier to migrate to Israel and the West.

If this is indeed a motivation, it seems trivial in comparison to the travails of European and Middle Eastern Jewry, who withstood the greatest of pressures for centuries before they were finally forced to leave their homes for Israel. Nonetheless, it is still surprising that such a sentiment was felt across the community rather than among a few educated, cosmopolitan, and mobile professionals.

Judaism:

The Bene Israel, having arrived in India before the destruction of the Second Temple and having been disconnected from the world Jewish community for so long, was not even aware of rabbinic Judaism until the eighteenth century. It was the Cochin Jews at first and later the Baghdadi Jews who introduced them to Judaism and the Hebrew script again. Although Shirley Isenberg argues that the first sign of contact between the Bene Israel and the Cochin Jews is recorded a chronicle called the Maggid Hadshoth circa 340 CE, it is believed that the Bene Israel, in their travels for trade, came across Jewish merchants in Surat in the mid-1700s. Regardless, clear evidence exists that David Ezekiel Rahaby was instrumental in sending the Bene Israel books from Cochin to reintroduce the community to Judaism and the Cochin community henceforth was influential in bringing the Bene Israel back into the Jewish world after having been isolated for centuries. This meant that the Judaism of the Bene Israel came to resemble that of Sephardic Jewry.

Even before their rediscovery of Judaism, the Bene Israel maintained Jewish customs and rituals to the best of their ability. They observed the Shabbat, maintained kosher, and commemorated Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Simchat Torah, Pesach, and other important Jewish events. However, due to the understandable development of certain customs peculiar to them – pronunciations or rituals – the Bene Israel were castigated by the Baghdadi and Cochin Jewish communities for not being “proper” Jews and did not allow intermarriage as the resulting offspring would be mamzerim. This was despite proclamations of Jewish authorities in Safed and Tiberias, such as Rabbi Samuel Abe, claiming that it was a great mitzvah to be close to the Bene Israel, who were good Jews in every sense. The Bene Israel were thus accepted into the Jewish community but not fully; this problem would continue to plague them even after their arrival in Israel well into the 1960s.

For their part, the Bene Israel followed halacha to the best of their ability. Marriage with non-Jews was rare and when it did occur, the children were not allowed to marry other Bene Israel. Circumcision was practiced, and ritual slaughter, marriage, funerals, and adjudication of disputes was done by the Jewish code as much as they were aware. Yet with modernity, and unaware that their religious identity needed to be protected since they had never been persecuted on its account, the Bene Israel secularised like most other communities around the world. By the twentieth century, the Bene Israel ceased to ascribe the same prestige to religious positions within their community as they previously had soon after the encounter with the Cochin Jews. Secular success marked importance now, and combined with their relative inexperience with halacha and religious regulations, the Bene Israel remained dependent on the Cochin Jews for religious leadership.

Despite this lukewarm attitude towards Judaism, it is interesting to note that many of the Bene Israel who came to Israel stated that it was their faith that brought them to the Holy Land. Immigrants interviewed held that the creation of the State of Israel excited them and suddenly, there arose thoughts of Zion and the Holy City in their minds which would not let them rest. Of course, to interview subjects so long after the event and acculturation into their new home might taint their recollection of the past but it is surprising to see that a community not known for its religiosity either in India or in Israel insist that Judaism was one of the key motivators for them to leave India. More importantly, this goes against the narrative of the overwhelming number of Jews from Europe and the Middle East – who were fully immersed in Judaism and the Jewish world – who came to Israel fleeing persecution, often as a last resort; it goes against the grain also of the experience of the many Jews who came to Palestine and then left for ideological reasons – communism – or economic and environmental hardship. While the Baghdadi and Cochin communities might have found it appealing to return to their networks, the Bene Israel had no such excuse and stand out as an interesting case of migration.

Zionism:

Zionism was always a lukewarm enterprise in the subcontinent. Paradoxically, it was Christian attempts at proselytism that strengthened the Jewish identity of the Bene Israel. In 1815, the American Mission opened schools 35 schools in Bombay that taught in Marathi, the language of the Bene Israel; in 1826, the Bible was translated into Marathi and in 1832, a Hebrew grammar was published in Marathi. Although the Bene Israel learned had conventional Jewish liturgy and forms of worship from the Cochin Jews, their knowledge of Hebrew and Biblical knowledge came from American, Anglican, and Scottish missionaries. This interaction did not convert the Bene Israel to Christianity but the community later used the tools and knowledge gained to criticise Christianity and embrace rabbinic Judaism.

Pace these stronger ties to Judaism and international Jewry, the Bene Israel remained disconnected from the political developments in Europe and the Middle East and did not understand the significance of some of the events news of which trickled through to India. When invited to attend the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, they hesitated to send an envoy. Nonetheless, as the Yishuv sent emissaries to India – the first in 1917 – to try and win the support of Gandhi, Nehru, and other Indian leaders, the Bene Israel learned more about the plight of their brothers in Europe. Consequently, the All India Israelite League was created the same year with a publication called Friend of Israel. Although this group supported Zionism, they did not see it as necessary for themselves.

In 1920, the Bene Israel Zionist Organisation was created and after the visit of Israel Cohen from the World Zionist Organisation in 1921, the Calcutta Zionist Organisation was also established. Cohen remarked in his report a strong Jewish consciousness among the Bene Israel, a love of Jewish learning, and a willingness to do their share in restoring the land of Israel. All this paved the way for the visit of Immanuel Olsvanger in 1936, who, according to one Bene Israel member, first awoke in them the idea of emigrating to Israel. An Indian Zionist journal, The Jewish Advocate, wrote at the time of Olsvanger’s visit, “[he] had forged a link between Indian Jewry and Palestine as no other delegate before him had done.”

Even if this claim is a bit of an exaggeration, there is no doubt that the Polish Zionist activist made a tremendous impact among Indian Jews. By the time of his visit, the Jewish community had begun to become worried about Muslim political mobilisation in favour of their religious brethren in Palestine and fervour for Zionism has dissipated somewhat since Cohen’s visit twelve years earlier. During Olsvanger’s visit to Bombay in 1941, he proclaimed to the Bene Israel emotionally, “Your ancestors came here at the time of the destruction of Second Temple; we want you in Palestine to assist us in building the Third Temple.” He went back with the largest collection of funds for the Zionist cause until then from the city.

However, the Bene Israel were not completely convinced by the Zionist public relations efforts. Some members recounted their own experience and were not sure that the Bene Israel community would be treated as equals in Israel by the same European Jews who were racist towards the Bene Israel when they visited Europe for further studies. Furthermore, the Baghdadi Jews, with whom the Bene Israel had much friction despite welcoming them when they first arrived, saw themselves as European and superior to the native Jews of India. These experiences gave pause to some of the Bene Israel who cautioned against the possibility of racial discrimination in Palestine and warned that this heedless mixing of Jews of such diverse cultures from all around the world might end up hurting world Jewry more than was anticipated.

To this end, the Bene Israel questioned visiting Zionist emissaries about potential racial tensions in the Yishuv. Cohen responded that the Bene Israel would be “just as welcome as the Yemenite Jews or any other Easterners who had recently arrived.” Their poor knowledge of the world and Zionism meant that the Bene Israel interpreted this positively but at the time of Cohen’s answer, division of labour based on race and ethnicity existed in Palestine. In 1943, “The Uniform Pioneer of Eastern Lands,” a plan drawn up by the Yishuv for integrating olim, demarcated a zone from Haifa to Gaza for internment camps for European Jews who would have to stay there for three months for acculturation while Eastern immigrants would be hosted in the Negev for a year. Though never implemented, this shows that the Bene Israel fears were not entirely unfounded.

The arrival of Jews fleeing Europe in the 1930s stirred up support for Zionism among Indian Jews. The communities set up the Jewish Relief Agency (JRA) in 1934 to assist the refugees and promised to compensate the British for every Jew they allowed into the country; much as in Mandatory Palestine, the British were reluctant to allow Jews to come to India for fear of upsetting the local Muslim population. In fact, Jews coming from countries friendly to the Axis Powers were held in internment camps by the British to ensure that they were not spies. However, the JRA was supported fully by the Indians and was able to rapidly expand with relief services in Madras and Calcutta.

None of this is to suggest that the feeling of belonging to India in the Bene Israel was weak. As elsewhere, the question of dual loyalty arose among the Jews of India (but not among the Indians themselves). The conclusion of their discussions was that they felt both, strongly Indian and fiercely Jewish. As Solomon Moses argued forcefully, “If any of you is asked whom you love more, your father or your mother, what would you say? Rightly, India has become our mother. It is our motherland and Israel is our fatherland.”

Although Jews worked in the British colonial administration – as did other Indians – they were also supportive of Indian nationalism. Gandhi had couched it in terms of a moral struggle against cruelty and they saw Zionism in the same light as they saw the Indian independence struggle. Many Jews were also involved in social work in India and helped rid society of discriminations of various kinds. They were also philanthropic beyond their own communities and also contributed greatly to Indian cultural production.

Thus, it might be accurate to think of Indian Jews as Zionists not necessarily for themselves but for those who had faced unremitting persecution for centuries. Naturally, they felt for their religious family; however, those ties were not, on their own, strong enough to loosen the bonds they felt to India.

Conclusion:

I have outlined the four primary motivations the Indian Jewish community might have wanted to emigrate to Israel after the independence of India and the creation of the Jewish state. No reason appears convincing by itself to initiate the uprooting of one’s entire family to go into the unknown. However, a combination of factors might have played a role and swung the balance sufficiently to make the Bene Israel want to leave. Still, in comparison to the situation of the Jews from other parts of the world that were flooding into Israel, these reasons still seem wanting.

The most common reason the immigrants themselves have given in later interviews is Judaism with a twist of Zionism. Since it is methodologically problematic to base our conclusions on interviews alone, that too done so many decades after the events, we are left with no choice but to accept the immigrants’ answer with caution.  The answer is unconvincing also because a large number of Indian Jews who left India went to the United States, Canada, and other destinations rather than Israel. This points to a multicausal phenomenon but we return to the same question of if any one reason was sufficient to trigger a mass exodus.

With scant documentary evidence from local sources, with so few members of that generation left, and those remaining probably fully integrated into the Israeli national narrative, along with their children and grandchildren, it is unlikely we will ever be able to fully understand this small sliver of Jewish migration unless creative scholars invent new methods of mining history.

It is true that the Bene Israel – and perhaps Indian Jewry in general – did not understand Zionism properly because of their distance from Europe and the Yishuv. Might their rosier-than-warranted picture of Israel have played the role of a fifth element in their decision? Plausible, but the best explanation I have come across for the migration of Indian Jews from India comes from an interview with a Bene Israel immigrant: asked why he chose to come to Israel, the respondent said, “I cannot remember exactly why I decided to come to Israel but I can remember the exact moment – I was reading The Jewish Advocate and was overwhelmed with emotion. I made up my mind to move there and then.” Perhaps, as Roger Peterson cautions us, we should not discount emotion, as empirically unsatisfactory as that is, in favour of rational decisions when considering historical events.

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Does India Have An Israel Policy?

10 Wed Jan 2018

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Opinion and Response, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on Does India Have An Israel Policy?

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anti-Semitism, Arab, BDS, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions, China, foreign policy, INC, India, Indian National Congress, Israel, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jerusalem, Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations, Kargil, Mohandas Gandhi, Muslims, Narendra Modi, Palestine, Rafael, Richard Nixon, Spike, Taiwan, Zionism

There will be nothing but bonhomie for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is expected to arrive in India in a couple of days for a three-day state visit. The Israeli delegation will begin their visit from Ahmedabad, visit Sabarmati Ashram and hold a roadshow in Gujarat, and perhaps visit Agra and Bombay. While in India’s financial capital, Netanyahu is scheduled to visit the Chabad House which was targeted by Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists in a horrific attack in November 2008. The diplomatic agenda, predictably, will revolve around agriculture, water management, cyber security, innovation, and defence.

While there is no question about the Indian public’s warmth for Israel, there have been some whispers of doubt recently about its government’s intentions. Indians, by and large, admire much about the Jewish state and even those who do not are indifferent rather than hostile. Israeli diplomats do not have to waste their time countering anti-Semitism or Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions sort of political movements in the South Asian country. That said, India’s recent vote in the United Nations General Assembly essentially condemning the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel followed by its sudden cancellation of a $500 million deal to purchase Spike anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) from the Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defence Systems has raised eyebrows in Jerusalem and among observers. The deal is apparently moving forward, according to latest media reports. Are good relations between India and Israel to be limited to Modi’s occasional charming tweets to his Israeli counterpart?

Such misgivings from Jerusalem are not only perfectly understandable but justified; yet the compulsions of India’s own domestic political chaos are also an important set of inputs to policy and must at least be understood if not tolerated for a fuller picture of the intentions of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party administration.

When Modi swept into office in 2014 in an election that was just short of a landslide, policy wonks warned his euphoric supporters that the nature of government policies is continuity and incremental change rather than the desired abrupt departure from the “idea of India” espoused by the Indian National Congress. This warning has been borne out to some extent – the economy, which Modi has correctly prioritised, has seen several small yet critical positive reforms but many of the more emotive (and less dry) issues that Modi’s core supporters care about such as education and culture have so far received short shrift; other matters such as terrorism and defence have seen some movement but will take a longer time to reveal the lasting impact of the new regime in Delhi.

Foreign policy, in so far as it does not pertain to the economy, appears to have been largely relegated to the boondocks. The immediate reason for this is the global experience of democracies that there are few votes in foreign affairs. India has yet to cultivate a large and vibrant foreign policy circle as might be observed older and more developed democracies and the community as it exists now has several foci and plenty of challenges regarding access to decision makers, policy documentation, a bureaucratic hostility to transparency, career opportunities, and funds. India’s foreign ministry has rarely been blessed with the sort of polymath ideal for the job, either in its politicians or its bureaucrats, even when the portfolio has remained with the prime minister. With insufficient attention from elected officials, governance slips into maintenance mode administered by the civil service and the policies of earlier decades continue unabated.

This is visible from India’s insistence on clinging to expired motifs such as strategic autonomy, a fancy 21st century upgraded phrase for non-alignment. For example, India recently courted Australia, Japan, and the United States in a security quadrilateral (Quad) that observers understand is designed to balance an increasingly aggressive China and in the same week participated in a trilateral forum with Russia and China. Similarly, India’s approach to the Palestinian question is based on Mohandas Gandhi’s fundamental ignorance of Jewish history that was supplemented by Jawaharlal Nehru’s own political inclinations; the policy was maintained as a hagiographic monument to the two men well after it had proven to be detrimental to Indian national interests.

It is no secret that India’s foreign ministry is understaffed, and the same is true of the ruling political party when it comes to policy formulation. Besides the core issues its supporters would like addressed, foreign policy remains a step-child of the BJP’s internal thinkers. The party seems to have forgotten that to replace an ideology, an alternative is needed. In essence, the BJP has tinkered with the edifice of the Nehruvian state and such incomplete measures occasionally fall short of the hopes of not just the citizens but even the party’s own lofty rhetoric.

It is often argued that India’s policy towards Israel must be tempered by the strategic considerations of its relations with other countries that may be hostile to the Jewish state. Domestic calculations regarding India’s large Muslim minority must also influence how close India can drift towards Israel. The problem with this argument is two-fold: first, it implicitly suspects all Indian Muslims of treason in that they would put the well-being of Palestine and Islam above Indian interests. Second, it cannot explain the tacit Arab acceptance of not just Israel in the face of a rising Iranian threat but even Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state: there were few protests in Arab streets after Donald Trump’s recognition of the Holy City as the capital of Israel. This flimsy argument, in addition to the bogey of seven million Indians returning from the Persian Gulf and the loss of $35 billion in remittances as Arab retaliation against India’s warming ties with Israel, are unfortunately treated as gospel by an intellectually anaemic coterie in the BJP and outside. While India may not strive to become Israel’s closest ally, there is plenty of room for it to move closer to the Middle Eastern democracy if it so wishes.

To repeat dozens of articles already, there are plenty of reasons for Delhi to desire closer ties. Beyond transactional considerations of trade and security, it is also important to remember that the tiny country has been among the more reliable suppliers of know-how and equipment. After the nuclear tests at Pokhran II when no one was willing to supply arms to India, Israel remained one of the very few markets still open. Similarly, the important role Israel played during Kargil is also undisputed.

Optimistic assessments of India’s recent uptick in relations with Israel opine that a change in policy cannot be abrupt, especially when drastic. This is simply not true: in one of the greatest about-turns in recent diplomatic history, the United States de-recognised Taiwan and recognised Communist China in its stead in 1979. The entire process took seven years from Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing in February 1972 until the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations in January 1979. Such events are admittedly rare and challenging but pursuing a wrong policy for the sake of continuity is insanity. As mentioned earlier, the lack of political interest or vision within the BJP coupled with an understaffed foreign service does not allow for a nimble policy environment capable of quickly and thoroughly assessing the ramification of ideas on allies, security, economics, and international obligations.

A clear-eyed view of friends, enemies, and interests has the immediate benefit of signalling to partners that you are worth investing in; a bonus is that it gives others confidence in your national purpose and dependability in forging trade and security alliances. India’s waffling – sorry, strategic autonomy – will only ensure that it trails behind its rivals and fights its battles alone. France, despite being a member of NATO, has a far better track record of strategic autonomy than India ever had as a perennial “leading member” of the have-nots.

Nowadays, scholars hesitate to describe foreign systems or people as irrational. This is partly to avoid imposing the observer’s perspective and values on the subject and to allow for a potential alien framework in which things might make perfect sense. However, Indian foreign policy has long veered dangerously towards that word which must not be spoken. American leadership is defined in schools of thought – Jeffersonian, Hamiltonian, Jacksonian, and Wilsonian; in India, there is only the cult of Congress and no opposition party, despite the political cacophony, has come remotely close to offering a complete and alternate weltanshauung comprising economic, security, social, and cultural programmes. Diplomacy suffers the same fate. The real question is not if India has an Israel policy but if the BJP actually has a foreign policy.

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Taming the Dragon

01 Sun Oct 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review

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China, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, CPEC, Dragon on Our Doorstep, George Tanham, Ghazala Wahab, India, Jawaharlal Nehru, Kargil, Line of Actual Control, Line of Control, LoAC, LoC, military, Nathu La, OBOR, One Belt, One Road, Operation Meghdoot, Operation Vijay, Pakistan, People's Liberation Army, PLA, Pravin Sawhney, Russia, Siachen, Sumdorung Chu, United States

Sawhney, Pravin and Ghazala Wahab. Dragon on our Doorstep: Managing China Through Military Power. New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2017. 488 pp.

Let alone China, India cannot even win a war against Pakistan. This is the provocative opening sentence of Dragon on our Doorstep: Managing China Through Military Power by Pravin Sawhney and Ghazala Wahab. While most Indians grudgingly admit to the vast disparity between their country and its giant northeastern neighbour, they are emotionally unprepared to accept that India might struggle to win a war with its Islamic twin to the west. Sawhney, a journalist with 13 years of service in the Indian Army, and Wahab, a career journalist covering security and terrorism, describe in their book the disturbing lack of strategic thought in India’s defence policy. While the material is nothing new for seasoned analysts, it brings to to the general public in a readable manner what the authors see as shortcomings in the country’s security and their proposed solutions.

The crux of the central point of Dragon on our Doorstep is made at the outset – Sawhney and Wahab begin with the argument that bean-counting the number of tanks, artillery pieces, fighter jets, and other hardware may make for colourful charts and captivating news coverage but says little about military strength. The authors differentiate between military power, which Pakistan has developed, and military force, in which India enjoys numerical superiority. The latter is merely the stockpiling of war materiel while the former is concerns the optimal utilisation of that force through well considered defence policy and political directive.

If the famous Prussian military theorist was right that war is the continuation of politics by other means, Sawhney and Wahab have put their finger on the fundamental weakness in Indian security that propagates to all other aspects and levels. The authors’ observation that India’s political will and institutional structure is ambivalent at best reinforces an observation made by an American analyst, George Tanham, in that has been received with some rancour in the Indian establishment. In a now famous 1992 essay for Rand titled, Indian Strategic Thought: An Interpretive Essay, Tanham bemoans that India has always lacked in strategic thinking. This has only been to the advantage of Delhi’s enemies. As Sawhney and Wahab contend, “India’s political and military leaders, in cahoots with its diplomats, have sold falsehoods to their own people” about the country’s security.

Establishment weakness is partly due to incompetence: in its crusade to establish civilian primacy over the military, the government has effectively eliminated the armed forces from decision-making process and replaced them with generalist civil servants who are simply unaware of the implications of policies. Dragon on our Doorstep gives several examples of diplomatic errors that were caused by having little knowledge of precedence, history, and facts on the ground.

The lack of a coordinated security policy sometimes results in different government departments working at cross purposes with each other. The lines of authority are also inordinately ambiguous; for example, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police falls under the Ministry of Home Affairs during peacetime but is seconded to the Ministry of Defence in wartime. Not only do such regulations denude cohesiveness and self-awareness among units at the border but they create multiple chains of command that report to different bureaucracies that do not always have the same goals.

Sawhney and Wahab contrast the Indian condition with a conference they attended in China. From the beginning to the end, all representatives of the Chinese media had only one message to impress upon their guests, from the political leaders and bureaucrats to military officials and the media. Such is Beijing’s coordinated strategy, aligning everything from the battlefield to the airwaves.

Not only are Chinese forces well-coordinated, they have, through arms exports and constant training, achieved a high degree of interoperability with the Pakistani Army. This means that India’s enemies retain the physical option to fight on two fronts against a common enemy, holding only the political decision in abeyance. Delhi, on the other hand, suffers from poor coordination between its units, its services, and with foreign powers. Blurred chains of command and the lack of a joint chief of staff has hurt military planning severely, and Raisina’s reticence to establish regular and comprehensive exercises with foreign militaries has left India completely unprepared even if foreign assistance were immediately forthcoming in the event of war.

Sawhney and Wahab take readers on a tour of India’s security blunders and make a convincing case that someone, somewhere, who should know what is going on in fact does not. As the authors explain, weakness at the top has percolated to all levels – from strategic to operational and tactical. The elimination of military inputs from foreign policy and even, to an extent, defence policy, has created a dangerous blind spot in the manner India views the world.

One of the concerns is that India does not seem to learn from its mistakes; perhaps the structure of the defence establishment is such that it does not retain an institutional history. For example, Operation Vijay (1999) was preceded by an Operation Meghdoot. Just as Indian soldiers returning to the mountain tops of Kargil in the summer of 1999 discovered that Pakistani soldiers had infiltrated into India during the winter and occupied the heights, Indian soldiers at Siachen had already had a similar experience in 1983. Sawhney and Wahab describe how Indian delegations were surprised to bump into their Pakistani counterparts in Europe shopping for the same winter accoutrements. The inability to learn from experience is a death knell for any organisation.

There is nothing particularly new by way of data or analysis in Dragon on our Doorstep for scholars or even seasoned observers of Indian foreign and security policy. However, the solutions offered are bound to raise hackles and ignite spirited debates. Ultimately, however, this is perhaps what Sawhney and Wahab seek – greater discussion of issues of vital importance among citizens and decision-makers alike.

For example, it is suggested that the path to India becoming a leading power is Pakistan because Delhi would not be able to focus on global issues or dedicate resources to them without a stable neighbourhood. This would indeed be ideal but the observation underestimates Pakistan’s hatred of India. The authors remind readers of how close both nations were to peace during the Agra summit in 2001 with Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf but India was wary of trusting any offer from across the border so soon after the Kargil conflict.

On a related issue, Dragon on the Doorstep warns that Kashmir is potentially destabilising for India and goes on to criticise the highly controversial enactment of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in the state. Again, the ideal of diplomacy over bullets is proposed without taking into account relentless cross-border instigation. Sawhney and Wahab also work on the assumption that Kashmir is the root of India’s problems with Pakistan, something that has always been rejected by India and recently been dismissed by even Western scholars such as Christine Fair and Daniel Markey.

Provocatively, the authors write, “India needs to understand that the road to managing an assertive China runs through Pakistan.” This is not the first time this suggestion has been made. Bharat Karnad, a scholar at the Centre for Policy Research, has long advocated some emollience with Pakistan so that India may better focus on the real threat to its security from China. As Sawhney and Wahab see it, India has three options towards China. One, it can form a closer partnership with the United States to contain Chinese ambitions; however, India will always have a deficit of trust with a country that is as supportive of Pakistan as the United States has been.

Two, India can go it alone – build the requisite military and economic strength to become a true rival to the dragon; this is easier said than done and the umpteen structural weaknesses in the Indian state will make this a decades-long process, assuming there is no wavering of political will in the meantime. Three, India can bluff its way along without aggravating China too much; the authors leave the substance of this ambiguous but it possibly means maintaining the status quo and playing the unsatisfying balancing act between Beijing and Washington. The language leaves one suspecting that this would be the authors’ choice.

While the title may imply a hawkish position on China, some of the authors’ suggestions are surprising, some may even say naive. For example, Sawhney and Wahab recommend that India join Chinese infrastructural initiatives like One Belt, One Road (OBOR) and even the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) because it would give Delhi leverage to open negotiations on Tibet and facilitate a stable peace with Pakistan.

The same credulity is witnessed when Dragon on the Doorstep accept every positive claim about the Chinese and Pakistani armies while questioning the Indian army at every turn. The simple fact of the matter is that India managed to “win” its wars with Pakistan and hold its ground with China in later conflagrations such as at Nathu La in 1967, Sumdorung Chu in 1987, and Doka La in 2017. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has no doubt advanced leaps and bounds since the modernisation begun by Deng Xiaoping in the early 1970s – which Dragon on our Doorstep discusses at length – but despite its clear strategic vision, the PLA still suffers from lack of decent hardware, regular political indoctrination, insufficient training, a crisis of loyalty, and corruption much like the Pakistani Army.

It is important to understand the assumptions behind these evaluations, for they are not limited to the authors alone. In this world view, the United States is seen as untrustworthy, and India’s nuclear deal with it a failure. Russia is the model relationship, and China is a regrettable enemy. With these parameters, Dragon on our Doorstep makes a far more compelling argument than without. Sawhney and Wahab do not explore these assumptions beyond a superficial glance, unfortunately.

Otherwise, it might be countered that the United States remains the only country that has the economic and military wherewithal to catalyse India’s hesitant rise to an international power to reckon with. Furthermore, its relations with India and Pakistan over the decades have been coloured by Delhi’s (Jawaharlal Nehru’s) assumptions about the United States. Regarding Russia, there are more thorns in that relationship than are publicly discussed. The ballooning cost of the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier was just one incident among several disagreements on transfers of technology, quality of equipment, and cost. Finally, on China, it is unfathomable that a rising superpower would ever tolerate a powerful country on its border. Regardless of how much both countries can achieve together, Beijing can never countenance Delhi’s power.

Dragon on our Doorstep has a questionable foreign policy analysis but that should not detract readers from its strength – the discussion of the nitty-gritty of military planning and preparation, from foot soldier to president. The expertise of both the authors is on display as they marshal facts and anecdotes to make their argument that security-wise, India is ill-prepared at all levels. Sawhney and Wahab present a comprehensive accounting of India’s weaknesses, from border logistics to Islamist and Maoist insurgencies that draw soldiers away from military operations to counter-terrorism, from an anaemic domestic defence manufacturing industry to over-confidence in India’s armed forces.

A more conscientious editor would have certainly helped Dragon on our Doorstep sharpen the argument and reining in the authors when they got carried away by their narrative. What should be obvious by now is that Sawhney and Wahab are primarily interested in revealing the inefficiencies and incompetence in the Indian security structure despite the ominous, admonitory title implying China. In this, the book certainly succeeds, and is a valuable addition to the security buff’s reading list .

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