Tag Archives: Judaism

Not a Mahatma, Just Mohandas

25 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by in Book Review

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Kumaraswamy, PR. Squaring the Circle: Mahatma Gandhi and the Jewish National Home. New Delhi: K W Publishers Pvt Ltd, 2017. 234 pp.

Mohandas Gandhi was a controversial figure. Admired by hundreds of millions, he is best known for his non-violent resistance to the British rule of India. In the aftermath of the British retreat from the subcontinent in August 1947 and his assassination five months later, Gandhi has become the subject of hagiographies and most of his other political beliefs have been obscured from public memory. One such issue is his position on the question of the creation of an independent Jewish state in the British mandate of Palestine. PR Kumaraswamy’s latest book, Squaring the Circle: Mahatma Gandhi and the Jewish National Home brings this question to the fore at a most opportune time when India is reconsidering its relations with the Jewish state.

Those even vaguely familiar with Indo-Israeli relations are aware that Gandhi opposed the partition of Palestine in 1947. It has been widely assumed that this was because the Indian leader could not support the creation of a state along religious lines in Palestine while condemning the same in northwestern and eastern India. However, Gandhi’s view on the Jewish question was formed much before the demands for Pakistan became loud and later solidified out of ignorance, political expedience, and an ideological obduracy that emolliated only in his final years in the face of the horrors of World War II. Squaring the Circle is a most helpful effort that methodically compiles Gandhi’s exposure to Jews, Judaism, and Zionism from his South Africa days until the end of World War II. Kumaraswamy also makes the important distinction between Jews and Zionists – not all Jews were or are Zionists and the two spring from entirely different, some may say opposing, ideologies.

Zionism was a relatively new movement when Gandhi was in South Africa. Of course, the Jews had been praying ‘L’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim‘ at Passover and Yom Kippur for over a millennium but the first aliyah in 1882 was almost a disaster; Jewish immigration to Israel was a trickle until the Balfour Declaration in November 1917. Gandhi had left South Africa for India in 1915. His Jewish friends – primarily the Lithuanian-born German Hermann Kallenbach and the English Henry Polak – were, unsurprisingly, not Zionists, at least at the time, and the Holy Land rarely cropped up in their conversations.

In fact, Gandhi’s entire understanding of Judaism came from Christianity and after he returned to India, Islam. While the Indian leader would eventually sympathise with the plight of the Jews throughout history, it was not without repeating sectarian calumnies against them. For example, in his infamous article titled The Jews in Harijan in 1938, Gandhi wrote, “Indeed, it is a stigma against them (that is, the Jews) that their ancestors crucified Christ.” In response to sharp criticism over the article, Gandhi asked, “Are they (the Jews) not supposed to believe in eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth?” confusing the Babylonian king Hammurabi who lived some eight centuries before the first kingdom of the Israelites was founded for the Jews.

Similarly, Gandhi was also influenced by Islamic portrayals of history and conceded that Palestine was Jazirat ul-Arab. Though the term technically refers to only the Arabian peninsula, Indians at the turn of the 20th century understood it to encompass Constantinople, Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina – in essence, the complete domains of Islam in the Middle East. Kumaraswamy notes that several Indian leaders frequently used the term as synonymous with Dar ul-Islam. To see Palestine in this manner was to accept the classical Islamic claim that once a land is held by a Muslim force, it must forever be considered Islamic; the ancient Jewish – and pagan – presence in the land seems to hold no value for Gandhi. He had accepted and internalised the radical interpretations of Muslims figures like Maulana Abdul Bari and Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari who quoted hadith demanding that “Christians, Jews, and idolaters be removed from Jazirat ul-Arab at all costs.”

Additionally, Gandhi’s rejection of Jewish claims on the Holy Land came while privileging Islamic claims – in all fairness, all three Abrahamic religions have some sort of claim on the region. This point was lost on the Indian leader altogether.

The Zionists made several overtures to India’s apostle of peace from September 1931 when Gandhi was in London for the Round Table Conference. The Zionists had noticed Gandhi’s stature among several notables in Europe and the United States and his support could prove influential in their own dealings with the Western powers. The results of the overtures are well known but Squaring the Circle contains a shocking revelation: several of the letters that were sent Gandhi by the Zionists were intercepted by his personal secretary, Pyarelal Nayyar, and destroyed. The secretary admitted to as much in an interview in the early 1970s, defending his deeds by arguing that the correspondence would have tarnished his master’s historical memory –  a sad commentary on how Indians approach history to this day.

India’s Hindu-Muslim politics made it difficult for Gandhi to develop a soft spot for Zionism if he did not have one already by the time he left South Africa, argues Kumaraswamy. However, if Venkat Dhulipala’s thesis in Creating a New Medina is to be believed, Gandhi either woefully misread the communal equations or stubbornly persisted with his own ideology. Gandhi’s absolute commitment to the Khilafat Movement, something even Mohammad Ali Jinnah was not keen on, bewildered even Arabs and Ottomans. For an anti-imperialist, Gandhi was remarkably considerate of the Ottoman Empire!

Gandhi’s reckless pursuit of an irrelevant (to India) Khilafat agenda constrained his options as competition between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League for the support of Indian Muslims spilled out into the open. The League was able to dictate the terms of the Palestine question and push Congress into positions it might not have taken otherwise. Squaring the Circle makes the fair observation that Gandhi might not have said more on Palestine had it not been repeatedly brought into Indian political discourse by relation to (British) imperialism, or the Congress’ tussle with the Muslim League. First manipulated by the (Shaukat and Mohammad) Ali brothers and later by Jinnah, it became politically difficult for Gandhi to take a softer stance on Zionism even if he had been so inclined.

Gandhi objected to Zionism for its violence against Arabs as well. Yet his views on ahimsa are not only a radical departure from Hindu scriptures but they have also never been practical. His suggestion to the Jews, for example, that they offer non-violent struggle against Adolf Hitler is not even worth a derisive laugh. Similarly, Gandhi condemned Jewish violence but remained silent on the several Arab riots that marred 1920s and 1930s mandatory Palestine even after the meetings between the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseni, and the Nazi leadership had made Arab intentions ominously clear. While Gandhi stated that he did not support the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine by force, he conveniently ignored the bloody history of Islamic conquests that left them in possession of that land.

Interestingly, Gandhi’s views on Zionism did change. Kumaraswamy draws attention to a nuanced shift in Gandhi’s views in the last few years of his life when Gandhi admitted to American journalist Louis Fischer from jail in 1942 that “the Jews have a good case… If the Arabs have a claim to Palestine, the jews have a prior claim.” This is a profound change from his views barely four years earlier. After World War II, Gandhi stopped objecting to a national Jewish home in Palestine but maintained his criticism of the violence perpetrated by the Irgun and Etzel. Kumaraswamy also brings to the fore Gandhi’s remark in the same infamous 1938 Harijan article that “if there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of, and for, humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a race, would be completely justified.” It is this commitment to the scholarly enterprise that makes Squaring the Circle a truly recommendable book.

Even in his realisation of the Jewish case, Gandhi ultimately falls short though less due to his failures this time. His suggestion of non-violence is obvious but even his comparison of Jewish ghettos in Nazi Europe to Indian ghettos in Transavaal indicates that he did not fully comprehend the atrocities the Jews had just been subjected to; however, it was not until late 1945 that news of the Endlösung would spread outside Europe. Kumaraswamy objects to Gandhi’s equating Nazi Germany with imperial Britain but Mike Davis’ Late Victorian Holocausts makes a compelling case to the contrary, not to mention Madhusree Mukerjee’s Churchill’s Secret War.

It is a pleasure to read how Kumaraswamy has dealt with a complex issue with several variables and shades of meaning with nuance and confidence in Squaring the Circle. The book is especially relevant now when India has moved from a passive recognition of Israel in 1950 to the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1992 and is now considering a firmer embrace under the Narendra Modi government. For too long has Gandhi been the foil of those who wished to see a moral case in India’s support of Palestine; Kumaraswamy’s research makes that position no longer tenable.

The exemplary use of primary and secondary sources has resulted in a rare occurrence in the historical craft where a book might be said to be truly definitive on a subject. Though there are always a few tantalising strands that could be further explored – why the Zionists cared so much about winning Gandhi to their cause, for example – Kumaraswamy has stayed true to his topic of Gandhi’s thoughts on the Palestinian question.

Squaring the Circle forces us to step away from the simplistic binaries of pro- and anti- Zionism/Arabs to consider the historical circumstances that shaped Gandhi’s views. They were largely formed from incomplete or erroneous information and shaped by political exigencies of Indian politics. Yet Gandhi was honest and bold enough to make small yet significant concessions in his position on Zionism and Palestine in the last five years of his life. The real question is if Indians, who are so used to interpreting their historical figures in absolute binaries, can accommodate Gandhi’s complete thoughts on Israel into their historical narrative. Perhaps some might even be bold enough to wonder why Gandhi’s views from 70 years ago must still shape India’s destiny. Regardless, for those interested in India’s relations with Israel and Palestine, Kumaraswamy’s Squaring the Circle is an indispensable read.

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The Myth of India’s Hindu Nazis

18 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by in India, South Asia

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Over the past few years, India has been visited by a slight annual epidemic of a particular kind of imbecility. An article appears in domestic or foreign media with the much trotted-out observation that German dictator Adof Hitler’s Mein Kampf remains one of the best selling books in the country or attention is drawn to a rare cafe or store that bears a name or logo eerily similar to the Nazi regime’s emblems. These unsavoury instances are meant to bind the purveyors and their ilk to the horrors of the Nazi regime through associative guilt.

The motivations behind such drivel, especially in a political environment as toxic as India’s, are not difficult to fathom and do not merit the dignity of even a contemptuous acknowledgement. However, the decontextualised fondness for Nazi imagery and paraphernalia is ripe for misunderstanding among those who know little of India and its Hindus, the innuendos too tempting for the mischievously motivated to ignore.

The earliest accusations of Nazi sympathies in India came during World War II. Subhash Chandra Bose has long been accused of siding with the Axis powers to wage war against Britain. In this, the Bengali leader’s inclinations went against those of Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru who reluctantly leaned in favour of their colonial master. Although this has little bearing on the vile accusations today, it is an interesting historical tidbit illustrating the practice and power of defamatory allusions.

Some of the better known examples of reincarnation of the infamous German dictator are a Bombay café in 2006, a Zee TV show that ran 448 episodes from 2011 to 2013, a clothing store in Amdavad in 2012, and an ice cream cone in Uttar Pradesh in 2015. The owners of both the cafe and clothing store pleaded ignorance of the details of Hitler’s life when they gained media attention and even an unintended worldwide glare. Complaints were made not only to the businessmen but even to the Indian government – from Israel, Germany, Britain, and the United States – that such names were highly inappropriate in an increasingly global community. Eventually, both men promised to change the names of their businesses.

Such instances are not unique to India – a similar case occurred in Bandung in 2010 where the restaurateur was far less apologetic and stuck to his guns. The restaurant closed in 2013 after the owner received death threats but reopened a year later as defiant as ever.

Cleaving to the Indian faux pas for the moment, they are harmless incidents whose only actual damage is the crushing boredom from the self-righteous indignation and virtue signalling the cosmopolitan chic inflict upon the public sphere. It is abundantly clear to anyone who looks at these sagas even perfunctorily that an ignorance of history is the key active ingredient. A personal anecdote: while visiting Oświęcim, I met a retired gentleman from Bombay who had worked for an international airline; he was not sure why his tour guide had brought him to the camp as there was nothing to see. When I explained the Shoah to him in 60 seconds, he could not believe that a civilised nation like Germany could ever be that barbaric and thought I was playing a prank on him!

This is not surprising, given how little emphasis is placed on history in India and how poor the syllabus is even when it is taught. History is rarely taught beyond Std X and even that is mostly a mind-numbing recital of facts that have been ideologically pre-approved. Much of Indian history struggles to be included, let alone international history or any level of detail.

To be fair to Indian history syllabi, World War II is about as relevant to contemporary Indians as the invention of the zero was to the discovery of the New World – it is not unimportant but plays a lesser role given the great span of time and intervening events. Western expectations that Indians should know and care about their history smacks of hubris especially considering how little world history or geography is known in the West. This is not a defence of ignorance but a reminder of the impossibility of teaching children all of world history in just ten or twelve years.

Additionally, Asians have, by and large, developed a reputation in the West for being less sensitive to ethnic and religious epithets. This side of Suez, that is seen as being direct, plain-spoken, and having a low tolerance of “Western” political correctness. For decades, “Hitler” has come to simply mean very strict in expressions in most Indian languages and nothing more. If anything, such quotidian usage has shorn Nazism of the sort of potency it retains to this day in Europe and the United States: Nazi rallies are a perennial concern in the West, never in India. To judge a foreign culture by one’s own standards is nothing but the remnants of an imperial mindset that insists on one’s own values being normative.

The innocence of establishments named after Hitler is also apparent to anyone who notices that the entrepreneurs harbour no hostility towards Israel or Jews. What some see as poor taste is usually an attempt to cash in on a meme that is well known but hazy in details. In fact, there is much admiration for Israel among this same “Nazi-loving Hindu-nationalist” demographic that has cheered on prime minister Narendra Modi’s aim of improving relations with the Jewish state. The only danger to India’s Jews actually came from Christian European imperialists rather than even the most zealous Hindus. Jewish history and Israeli politics may not be of interest to many of these “Nazi-supporting Hindus,” but they are aware of the frequent headlines that announce Israeli assistance to India in defence, counter-terrorism, agriculture, and a plethora of other fields. The dog-whistle of liking Nazis is nothing more than a vulgar political move aimed at tarnishing potential Hindu consolidation and the supporters of Narendra Modi.

What, then, explains the high sales of Mein Kampf? It is nothing more than a deep-seated frustration with the corrupt, incompetent, opaque, and whimsical Indian state. This same, raw emotion is on display when Indians complain that democracy has not served them well. The desire for better services makes many lash out at the present system though these angry words have rarely been followed up by boycotting elections or widespread riots. When expressing their desire for a dictatorship, India’s critics of democracy usually add a term limit to the political experiment – India needs a dictatorship for [x] years.” Again, this is not an entirely new sentiment – it made for many unexpected supporters of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. After 70 years, Indians seem to be getting increasingly impatient for roads, water, electricity, public transport, and hygiene. Another meme for these basic services is German efficiency, which is what readers of an otherwise boring book are reaching out to. In essence, Indians have separated the aggression and hatred of Nazism from the order it was able to impose on the chaos of interwar Germany.

A sleight of hand is sometimes attempted by some who try to insinuate that Muslims are the Indian Hindu’s substitute for Germany’s Jews. This is even more of a preposterous suggestion and reveals the political endgame of this lobby. The differences between the Jews in Germany and Muslims in India are stark – first, Jews never held sway over large parts of Germany as Muslims did in India. Second, the hatred of Jews is largely rooted in religious reasons though it has spread into socioeconomic, cultural, and ethnic circles. Hinduism has no parallel hostility to other faiths because it is not monotheistic and exclusivist, it does not pretend to have a monopoly on the divine. Third, India’s minority protection laws have always bent the other way and oppressed the majority in the name of Nehruvian secularism. And fourth, one does wonder what stops the Hindu majority from simply pushing the Muslims out if not wipe them out given disparity in numbers.

A thick skin is an essential prerequisite in a globalised world. If Western countries are upset by the fascination of a few Indians – among a billion and a half, almost any number is just a few – with Hitler, they might want to start considering if they are willing to purge their history to suit grievances from the Rest. Indians may not be particularly fond of Winston Churchill, for example, and Kenyans, Cypriots, Malays, Indonesians, Arabs, Boers, the Irish and others can surely add to that list. Will the names of these leaders be stricken off buildings and scholarships too? That would be no solution but the question highlights the need for understanding the context of admiration and the unequal impact of certain episodes of history around the world.

The End of Zionism?

12 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by in Israel, Middle East, Opinion and Response

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The Reform Jewish movement’s response to US president Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city may only be the first incontrovertible sign that the ideology of Zionism has come to an end. To be certain, the diaspora has never in concurrence with the policies of the Israeli state but for decades now, the gap between them and the Jews in Israel has been widening. This latest manifestation from J Street, the Union for Reform Judaism, and their fellow travellers is an unpleasant yet not wholly unexpected wake-up call for the community as a whole.

An end to Zionism does not imply the politics of post-Zionism which questions the very foundations of the Jewish state. Rather, it recognises that most of the Diaspora who wish to immigrate to Israel have already done so and the different environments in which sabra and diaspora find themselves has, over decades, altered their perspectives on some of the core issues that concern the Jewish community. An end of Zionism, for our purpose, does not question the existence of Israel or even comment on the ethics of central issues of identity and existence such as the drafting of a constitution, Judea and Samaria, the Orthodox Rabbinate, counter-terrorism, or foreign relations within the region.

There are several indications that Zionism may be on its last legs, if not over. One benchmark is Jewish immigration to the Holy Land. It is no secret that the numbers of Jews making aliyah to Israel have been dwindling over the past several years. The first couple of years of the Jewish state understandably saw a high number of olim arrive from Europe and the Middle East, while another spike in numbers occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The highest immigration has been from the Soviet Union and its successor states, with approximately 1.3 million immigrants over the years. Less than a tenth of that number made aliyah from the United States in the same period. To be fair, American Jews have historically been opposed to Zionism, initially seeing it as a wrinkle in their efforts to assimilate into mainstream American society. The ideology was only made palatable by Louis Brandeis when he refashioned it as a cultural project of rebuilding Palestine as a Jewish home towards which American Jews need only make financial contributions.

Jewish immigration to Israel last year fell to 27,000 new arrivals of which 70 percent were from Russia, Ukraine, and France – whose combined Jewish diaspora population is barely 10 percent of the total. These numbers are even more depressing when considered in context of yerida – Israelis leaving the country to settle abroad. Since 1948, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics estimates that over 720,000 Israelis have emigrated; US Department of Homeland Security figures reveal that some 250,000 of those have settled in America. This means that the net flow of people has been from Israel to the United States rather than the other way around. Of course, emigration does not necessitate a rejection of Zionism and may well be in most cases for the usual reasons of employment and education. Nonetheless, the primary call of Zionism seems to have weakened on not only the diaspora but even a small number of Israelis who left in search of material prosperity. As the Jews of the Anglosphere generally indicate, prosperity cools the fervour of Zionism.

The unspoken truth about aliyah is that American emigration has been viewed as most important. After all, it is not just the most populous Jewish diaspora but also the most prosperous one as well. The American attitude of “buying into” Zionism with their wealth irked several of the early Zionist leaders and many saw the refusal to move to Israel as a deep betrayal. Yet the same attitude was common even among European Jews before World War II and the Shoah – 19th century Zionists found it difficult to convince European Jews to move to Palestine or even to financially aid the few pioneers who made the first aliyah at the end of the century.

The tension between aid and ideology can be seen even today. Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Hotovely’s statement at Princeton deriding American Jewry for not serving in the military was denounced by her own prime minister while everyone else studiously ignored the real meaning of Hotovely’s words – service in the Israeli Defence Forces – and loudly proclaimed that US Jews have proudly served in the US armed forces. Regardless of the differences between American Jews and Israelis, it was poor politics to insult the most useful if irritating of diasporas.

Besides prosperity, another factor that has spelled the demise of Zionism is the relative safety in which Jews around the world live today. Anti-semitism is indeed still present and at times lurking just below the superficial calm, even in the new Zion of the United States, but the dangers are nowhere near as severe or mainstream as a century earlier. The irony of history is that the greatest physical threat to Jews in the world today is exactly where was supposed to be their place of refuge – Israel. The security in the diaspora has led many of them to come to different conclusions about the internal and external challenges that face Israel.

One area of disagreement has been Israel’s Palestine conundrum and the plethora of issues that it contains – the international boundary, civil rights for Palestinians, counter-terrorism. As Israelis – even on the Left – are quick to point out, life is substantially different in Morningside as compared to, say, Pisgat Ze’ev, in terms of rocket attacks, shootings, stabbings, vehicular attacks, and suicide bombings. Yet more and more of the diaspora seem to see Israel as the aggressor whose occupation of Arab lands after the Six-Day War is the immediate cause of violence. The same thinking is evident in how American and Israeli Jews think about the Iranian nuclear threat.

Sabra and diaspora are also at odds over the soul of Judaism, so to speak. A large and vocal minority of the Jewish diaspora in the United States are Reform or Conservative Jews who resent the monopoly the Orthodox have acquired over important rituals of faith such as marriage, divorce, prayer, and the rare conversion. The latest crossing of swords occurred in June 2017 when the Israeli government reneged on an agreement from January 2016 that promised to set up a plaza for egalitarian prayer at the Kotel. However, the sects have long been at war over the refusal of the Rabbinate to recognise non-Orthodox marriages and conversions and in 1997, the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York even called on American Jews to stop sending money to organisations with Orthodox leanings in Israel. He even called for the dismemberment of the Rabbinate and its network of courts. The theological debate has transformed into a political one largely because of the association of the Israeli state with Orthodox Judaism, a great irony given the strong haskalah influence on Zionism and the beliefs of its early activists.

It is also perhaps not a wise idea for Israelis to emphasise Zionism and a strong Jewish identity, especially as Jews remain a minuscule minority in every country they are present. First, it is clear that these bonds are not as strong as depicted from either side, sabra or diaspora. Second, if the majority communities do begin to believe that their Jewish fellow citizens have a second loyalty, it could create unnecessary fault lines where there are none. It is psychologically understandable that constant additional proofs of loyalty are always required of suspect minorities, be they Catholics in Tudor England or Muslims in the 21st century. Professions of Zionism could well hurt assimilation and though that is what Israel wants, immigration has sharply been ruled out by a diaspora that measures almost as much as the population of Israel itself.

What Israel must also understand is that if it keeps claiming a moral authority on the diaspora, it will open itself to diaspora claims on Israeli accountability to them. Jerusalem cannot continue to speak on behalf of all Jews, even implicitly, if it is not willing to listen to half of them and treats them as a lost cause. The attachment of many Israelis to the diaspora is understandable, not only from a sense of religious community but also a cultural perspective – a full quarter of Israelis today are not sabra and these immigrants retain an emotional bonding with their country of origin. Yet even these immigrants cannot deny that the different kind of “nurture” in Israel plays an important role in shaping opinions.

The dissociation with the diaspora is not its rejection; it is a recognition of the limits of the Israeli state. As Diaspora Minister Naftali Bennett admitted after the neo-Nazi rallies in Charlottesville, Israel cannot protect all Jews at all times. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the sovereign state to defend its own citizens; situations like Entebbe are few and far between. This does not mean that Israel cease to be a place of last refuge for the Jewish people – we do not have to go as far as Ze’ev Jabotinsky when he famously warned in his Tisha B’Av column from Warsaw to eliminate the diaspora before it eliminates you. While not actively seeking immigration, Israel can still allow a priority status for those making aliyah and provide resettlement assistance. The reality is that anti-semitism is still very much prevalent in the world and it would be irresponsible for the only Jewish state in the world to become like all other countries that restrict immigration.

To the pernickety reader: categories are not absolute – the entire diaspora is not locked in a Kulturkampf with the Jewish state. Personal politics also plays a role and there are plenty of people in Israel who support some of the diaspora’s positions while there is a sizable portion of the diaspora that does support Israeli policies. Nonetheless, the most common denominator in the divide on security and identity remains domicile.

If this is truly the beginning of the end of Zionism, there is nothing to despair. An ideology that was once useful and has served its purpose has been cast away. In its place, Israelis may feel a better-defined sense of nationalism for their state and its achievements over the past seven decades. In the parlance of contemporary political campaigning, this would be a position of “Israel First.” The diaspora are still family but more like distant cousins…from out of town.