Tag Archives: Mohammad Ali Jinnah

Not a Mahatma, Just Mohandas

25 Mon Dec 2017

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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.

Fulfilling Its Terrible Destiny

11 Sat Feb 2017

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creating-a-new-medinaDhulipala, Venkat. Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India. Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 544 pp.

By most accounts, Pakistan is a failed state: its inability to sustain a democratic process, oppressive treatment of minorities, regressive religious laws, and its developmental shortcomings certainly indicate a state that is not in congruence with modern – Western? – sensibilities. The prevailing consensus is that Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s Pakistan project was hijacked soon after the Islamic state was cut out of British India and marked a sharp turning point in the trajectory and fortunes of the fledgling country. Venkat Dhulipala’s explosive book, Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India throws the proverbial wrench into that hypothesis, arguing instead that much of what has been perceived to be flaws in Pakistan’s national fabric is actually so by design and not accident.

For so complicated and debated an issue as Partition, Dhulipala presents an admirably succinct and comprehensive survey of the literature. One school of thought, led by Ayesha Jalal, argues that Jinnah used the demand for Pakistan as a bargaining chip to secure parity for Muslims in a unified India. According to Jalal, the crotchety leadership of the Indian National Congress bears the brunt of the responsibility – blame? – for the creation of the Islamic state. She reaches this conclusion by surmising from the vagueness of the Idea of Pakistan that it could not have been a serious proposition. The counter to this comes from Anita Inder Singh, who, although agreeing with Jalal that the Pakistani project was ill-defined, insisted that Jinnah did nonetheless want a separate country. In both these tellings, there was room to imagine Pakistan as a secular and modern republic like Turkey in Jinnah’s dreams that were soon hijacked by religious elements.

Even bottom-up histories, despite their foci on peasants, the ulema, Punjabis, Bengalis, or the victims of the Partition violence, rhyme with the Great Man histories of Jalal et al. in that they all cast doubt on existence of any clear idea of Pakistan notwithstanding the mass support for it. Fashionably, they even question the concept of nationalism. Regardless, the inability of academics to reify the sentiment has scarcely reduced its power. It is this confusion, some argue, that has resulted in the turmoil we see in Pakistani national life.

Dhulipala, however, begs to differ. The idea of Pakistan was crystallised in the public debates of Uttar Pradesh as a sovereign Islamic state that could not only provide succour for India’s Muslims but was also a worthy successor to the Caliphate that had just died in the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in Istanbul in 1924. The new state of Pakistan would be an Islamic utopia and the protector of Muslims all over the world. The author has found support for this revolutionary thesis in archives in London, Delhi, Lucknow, even an occasional one in the United States, as well as oral histories, newspaper archives, and published primary sources in Urdu and in English. Dhulipala discovers that the Pakistani project traversed on two parallel tracks: while the Muslim League propounded statehood and all that it entailed – an army, infrastructure, currency, natural resources, human population – the Islamic soul and the spirit of the new country was popularised by the ulema. There was, also, occasional intersection between the two groups. Dhulipala shows that both groups shared a common political vocabulary, and, more importantly, the demand for a separate state based on religion cannot suddenly become a secular quest.

Some scholars have put the divergence between Hindus and Muslims as early as the writings of Syed Ahmad Khan in the late 19th century. Others have delayed this separation until the Nehru Report of 1928, after which Muslim participation in the national struggle for independence was somewhat muted. While tensions certainly simmered even earlier, the Government of India Act of 1935 became the battleground around which separate religious identities would coalesce. The British aim to sow divisions in the Indian nationalist movement and string along its empire with promises of independence was only partially successful – it divided the Indians but Britain still could not hold on to its colonial possessions.

Dhulipala warns his readers that communalisation was not inevitable even after 1935. Parties such as the National Agriculturalist Party wove a coalition of Hindu and Muslim landlords, exhibiting class solidarity, and Muslims in the Indian National Congress such as KM Ashraf argued that there was no Muslim culture in India per se and that the great majority of the community originated from Hindu stock. The ulema had not yet taken a position in support of the Muslim League and this aided the Congress who had some ulema arguing for a unified India. It is undeniable, however, that the fortunes of a moribund League were revived only by the clergy concerned that Muslims interests were been quashed in the conflict between the Congress-leaning Jamiatul Ulama-e-Hind and the Muslim League.

Although traditional historiography plays up the nationalist credentials of the Muslim clerics, there was a small but vocal and influential section of Deobandi ulema who backed the Muslim League and vociferously propagated the idea of Pakistan. Two of the more prominent ulema in this camp were Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, the chief of the Deobandi madrasa, and his mentor, Ashraf Ali Thanawi. In fact, the title of Dhulipala’s book comes from a speech given by Usmani: the alim describes how Mohammad left Mecca due to opposition to his beliefs and went to Medina to create a new Islamic state and compares the event to the creation of Pakistan which would be only the second Islamic state in history. The future state was thus imagined to the masses in powerful Islamic imagery.

Dhulipala does not disagree with his historian colleagues that there was a fair amount of Muslim support for muttahida qaumiyat (united nationalism), particularly from Husain Ahmad Madani, head of the JUH, and Syed Sajjad, chief of the Anjuman-e Ulama-e Bihar. It was felt that the partition of the subcontinent would divide and disadvantage the community and hinder tabligh, the proselytisation of Islam among the kaafir. This argument, however, could not carry the day.

As has come to be expected of any book on nationalism since Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Dhulipala discusses the Urdu press and its influence in spreading the idea of Pakistan. Many of these newspapers, though produced locally, enjoyed a pan-Indian readership. The power of the press, we are reminded, can be only seen from the way Indian Muslims were mobilised during the Khilafat Movement in 1919 to protest the British treatment of the defeated Ottoman Caliph. Creating a New Medina is peppered with tussles between Muslims for and against the creation of Pakistan carried out in the subcontinent’s Urdu newspapers.

One of the other myths Dhulipala punctures is that of a secular Jinnah. Undoubtedly a non-observing Muslim, Jinnah was nonetheless brazen about using Islamic rhetoric. His hesitation to open up the membership of the Muslim League to non-Muslims, his casual suggestion of population transfers between Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan all point to a tactical use of Islam and the ulema for his goals but also to someone who was culturally inclined towards an Islamic identity. Dhulipala quotes a contemporary historian of Islam, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who argues that a man is deemed Buddhist not because he is an exemplar of Buddha’s teachings but by his undertaking to try – Jinnah, and Pakistan, were both Muslim because they had undertaken to be so.

It is not true that Jinnah was unclear about what he wanted in a new state. In fact, in response to allegations that he is using the demand for Muslim statehood as a bargaining chip, Jinnah repeatedly states that he was not for an Indian federation. In fact, he suggests that Congress leaders read BR Ambedkar’s massive tome, Thoughts on Pakistan, that had come out within four months of the Lahore Resolution of March 1940. Interestingly, Mohandas Gandhi also recommended Ambedkar’s book. Jinnah also wrote the foreword for a two-volume compendium of articles by a Punjabi journalist, Mohammad Sharif Toosy, which made a powerful case for Partition.

Dhulipala argues that his work pushes against the countervailing understanding of the creation of Pakistan and he begins his review of the literature rather late in 1985 with Jalal’s The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League, and the Demand for Partition. The question arises, what was the consensus before 1985 that Jalal was arguing against? Is Dhulipala reviving old historiography, perhaps with much better data, or is his work genuinely new?

Second, was the debate between clerics like Madani and Sajjad arguing for unity and Thanawi and Usmani advocating Partition merely a matter of scholarship? What swayed the masses of the United Provinces, who had been so divided until the mid-1930s, to come down in favour of Usmani’s Jamiatul Ulama-e-Islam? Even a cursory glance at modern politics rubbishes any belief that scholarship is what carries the day with the electorate.

Creating a New Medina is not an easy book for the lay reader. Its 500 pages are densely packed with names and relations that only a professional historian of the era can keep apart. In that sense, it closely reflects Dhulipala’s 2008 dissertation – a scholarly work meant more for the well versed. However, even casual readers broadly aware of the history of Partition and the Indian freedom struggle in the North can still gain much from this work which brings to the foreground some undercurrents that went into the creation of Pakistan that better explain today’s events than other theories. For example, former Pakistani ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani reminds us in his book, India vs Pakistan: Why Can’t We Just Be Friends, that it was not Zia ul Haq who infused Islam into Pakistan’s politics but that it has been there from the very beginning. Asghar Sodai’s slogan from 1944, پاکستان کا مطلب کیا لاالہ الا اللہ (Pakistan ka matlab kya, la ilaha illallah), supports this thesis and Creating a New Medina has several other such examples. Seen from this perspective, Pakistan is not a failed state but merely fulfilling its terrible destiny.

Dhulipala’s book also poses a serious challenge to the way history has been taught in India. While a small sectional elite have tried to ramrod a narrative of religious pluralism at the moment of independence, research now suggests that Indians were far more concerned with their religious identity. The official story, which was Congress policy towards the Muslim League since the mid-1930s, has been re-emphasised post independence to cover up for its abject failure in controlling the fissure between Hindus and Muslims in India. The divergence was inevitable – even desirable – according to some, but Dhulipala’s work shows that there was still a chance to save the subcontinent until the early-1940s. To accept this raises questions about the sagacity of the leaders of the Congress party at a critical juncture in Indian history.

Creating a New Medina serves as a useful guide in looking not only at domestic politics and communalisation of the Indian electorate but also for foreign policy analysts who study Pakistan and its relations with India. That this Sick Man of Asia is replete with inconsistencies – as the secession of East Pakistan and the rejection of minority Muslim groups shows – cannot be taken as a sign that the country was, as Philip Oldenburg argued, insufficiently imagined. Even the most cohesive of nations have some ambiguity in their national narratives; that has not yet stopped people in believing in them.

Dhulipala has produced a thought-provoking book that deserves a considered response. As he himself admits, there are still gaps in his narrative that need to be, sources permitting, filled. One obvious tangent is the role and political beliefs of Muslims outside the northern heartland. Another is the socio-economic condition of those who voted to stay in India and those who chose to leave: did all who migrated do it out of a sense of religious necessity or were there, as in the journey to the New World, many who just sought a fresh start? As any good book does, Creating a New Medina shakes us out of our historical complacence and leaves us with further questions to ponder.