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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: racism

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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Never Again (As Long As It Is Convenient)

11 Wed Apr 2018

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Opinion and Response

≈ Comments Off on Never Again (As Long As It Is Convenient)

Tags

anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, discrimination, Israel, Olympic Movement, racism, World Taekwondo

A Tunisian court has just banned Israeli taekwondokas from participating in the World Taekwondo Junior Championships being held presently in Hammamet. The decision came as a local group, The National Commission for Supporting Arab Resistance and Opposing Normalization and Zionism, sued the Tunisian Taekwondo Federation for violating the government’s commitment “to denouncing and refusing Zionist occupation and colonization, as well as boycotting and not dealing with the Zionist entity (…) in any way.” The world governing body of the sport, World Taekwondo has issued a tepid letter of regret and promised to discuss the situation with the Tunisian authorities as well as the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Such behaviour is routine among Muslim countries. The hosts, Tunisia, have a track record of refusing to play Israel – in 2013, the country’s tennis federation forbade their player from going up against an Israeli opponent. In the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, an Egyptian judoka refused to shake hands with his Israeli opponent. In November 2017, an Iranian wrestler threw his match against a Russian opponent so that he would not advance to face an Israeli challenger; in August 2016 at the World Youth Championships in Hungary, another Iranian wrestler was ordered to feign an injury to avoid going up against the Israeli competitor. Although Israeli athletes were allowed to participate in the October 2017 Grand Slam judo tournament in Abu Dhabi, they were not allowed to display any symbol that might identify them as Israelis and the hosts refused to play the Israeli national anthem when one of them won a medal.

Such churlishness is not just poor sportsmanship but it goes against the very principles of international sport. Discrimination based on nationality, as Muslim states have long been practicing against Israel, goes against the charter of the IOC which aims to promote not just various physical competitions but also the proper ethics that accompany such activities. Under ‘Fundamental Principles of Olympism,’ the charter reads, “The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Olympic Charter shall be secured without discrimination of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” Furthermore, it is the IOC’s role “to act against any form of discrimination affecting the Olympic Movement.”

If the plaintiffs are indeed correct about Israeli athletes creating a legal crisis for the Tunisian government, it can be argued that the country – and all who support it – should be expelled from the IOC, for member states must take an oath that promises, among other things, “to keep myself free from any political or commercial influence and from any racial or religious consideration; to fight against all other forms of discrimination.” In fact, it is the duty of the National Olympic Committees to “ensure that no one has been excluded for racial, religious or political reasons or by reason of other forms of discrimination.”

Regular discrimination against Israeli athletes has unfortunately not yet pricked the conscience of the West or other major powers. Confrontation over principles is not convenient in geopolitics and Israel just does not have the economic or strategic footprint to force the moral issue. The indignation, however, is not difficult to imagine if, say, the United States were to cut all sporting contacts with Middle Eastern states.

The commonly repeated argument in support of the Muslim boycott of Israel is that it is not racist or anti-Semitic but a response to specific “Zionist, imperialist” policies of the State of Israel. The international sporting community does not accept political justifications for discrimination but even if the argument were allowed to stand for a moment, the Muslim states’ general political position towards the existence of the Jewish state betrays their rancour to be primarily religious in nature and contrary to the spirit of the United Nations Charter and several human rights statutes.

In the mid-1960s, the world began to turn its back on apartheid South Africa. Most sporting associations expelled the white-minority ruled country from its ranks and those who did not were shamed into doing so by massive boycotts such as the 21st Olympic Games in Montreal by 25 African states and the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh which was boycotted by 32 of 59 member states. The same outrage is sadly not present for anti-Semitism and Israel must bear the brunt of international hypocrisy – as it long has. If Muslim states genuinely believed that a boycott of Israeli athletes served as an ethical cudgel to Jerusalem, they could perhaps start within their own ranks – Pakistan for its persecution of the Baloch, Saudi Arabia for its treatment of women, minority Islamic sects, and homosexuals, and Iran for human rights excesses.

The irony of the situation is that many of the states that piously condemn Israel in public have security relations with it in private. The harsh condemnations and meaningless boycotts are empty virtue signalling to the street that has been stoked for decades on propaganda; the international community, ever fearful of the Islamophobia tag, seems to be doing the same as well but with its own domestic minority audience in mind. In the process, the moral persuasive power of their own democratic principles is weakened.

Although the geopolitical consequences of a sports boycott are not particularly significant, it does have some economic fallout. More importantly, it wreaks havoc on the careers of individual athletes. The international governing bodies of various sports must step up to not just condemn the boycott of Israeli athletes but take punitive action against the states that continue to discriminate against athletes at international events. Such states should not be allowed to host events and must run the risk of being disbarred from international competition themselves. The risk of a boomerang effect of a boycott might dissuade states from a display of poor ethics and sportsmanship. If not, it will at least prevent the disruption of events and careers at the whims of state officials.

It is the casual acceptance of discrimination against Israel that brings out how difficult it still is to be Jewish in this world. The last century and a half saw the tide turn against slavery and racism; perhaps, with the economic rise of Asia and states not of the Abrahamic religious order, the vigour behind anti-Semitism might also ebb – ironically so, given that Judaism is the fount of all Abrahamic faiths.


This article was written for The Indic Collective Trust.

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Not Our War

13 Mon Jun 2016

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review

≈ Comments Off on Not Our War

Tags

Britain, colonialism, imperialism, India, racism, World War II

Karnad, Raghu. Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War (London: William Collins, 2016). 320 pp.

Khan, Yasmin. The Raj at War: A People’s History of India’s Second World War (Gurgaon: Vintage Books, 2015). 448 pp.

Raghavan, Srinath. India’s War: The Making of Modern South Asia, 1939-1945 (New Delhi: Allen Lane, 2016). 550 pp.

The history of World War II is the most popular college course in the United States. Each year, thousands of undergraduates pour into classrooms to learn about, in that cloying phrase coined by Studs Terkel, the last good war. Young Americans learn how their grandfathers – perhaps great grandfathers – fought and won on the distant battlefields of Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific. The narrative is, not surprisingly, centred around the American war effort; most history, at least at the introductory levels, still focus on forging citizens rather than cosmopolitan elites. No wonder, then, that similar courses in Britain would drill the island’s lone and courageous resistance to the Germans, and in Moscow, take credit for the greatest Nazi casualties despite immense losses and suffering.

Yet another view can be had from India. Then a part of the British empire, the colony – which then comprised of modern-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh – was dragged into the war by its imperial overlords without as much as a by-your-leave to the elected Indian representatives in the administration or to the leaders of the independence movement. This is perhaps one reason why Indians never saw the war as quite their own; another reason could be that the Indian republic has never celebrated the profession of arms, save for the annual Republic Day parade. In India, the military is not particularly visible in mainstream public life as it is in other countries such as the United States. There are few national memorials for those who fell in in its wars; what chance would the memories of a conflict not its own have?

The centenary celebrations in Europe of the Great War and the diamond anniversary celebrations of the Second World War have turned the attention of some, especially in this era of our globalised community, to India’s role in the conflagration the previous century. In these archival excavations, a fuller story of the war emerges – not necessarily surprising but damning in many ways – that apportions credit for Allied victories more fairly.

Farthest FieldRaghu Karnad’s Farthest Feld: An Indian Story of the Second World War is not as much a historical work as it is a quasi-biographical novel. Nonetheless, the tale he recounts offers a glimpse into a certain segment of middle class India of the late 1930s. This is a far cry from the overwhelming majority of Indian conscripts, to be sure, yet there emerge a few threads common to the pan-Indian experience. These are held together by the broader historical and political events that shaped Indian views on the European war.

The war came to India first by way of rising prices, followed by the tugs of ideology and opportunism. These were not necessarily aligned and it showed in how South Asia’s myriad communities responded differently to the war. The Communists boycotted it until the Soviet Union was invaded in June 1941; the Congress, burned by the poor returns despite their enthusiasm during the previous war, opposed it unless London was willing to guarantee political concessions; the nobility, completely dependent on the Raj for their very existence, worked tirelessly to provide the British with materiel; some communities, such as the Parsis, embraced the economic windfall that war meant for merchants; and a very few felt a familial loyalty towards the Crown and enlisted.

In the upper middle class setting of Karnad’s quasi-novel, the war was initially seen as a grand adventure. However, as the fighting crept closer to India from Dunkirk and Manchuria, as scarcity and inflation set in, the rosy tint evaporated. In the Pacific theatre, the widely spread Indian diaspora were overrun by the rapidly expanding Japanese co-prosperity sphere towards the end of 1941 and into 1942. As England, France, and the Netherlands lost their possessions, over half a million Indian labourers employed in British work camps began stream west to the relative safety of their homeland.

The Raj at WarThough Farthest Field gives a general feel of wartime India, it still telescopes a very thin socio-economic slice of the Indian populace as any quasi-biography is wont to do. Still, it raises several troubling hypocrisies in the British war propaganda that others like Yasmin Khan have explored further in The Raj at War: A People’s History of India’s Second World War.

True to its subtitle, Khan offers a thorough exposition of the home front during the turbulent years of World War II. Khan’s work, an academic tome, makes extensive use of not just personal diaries and memoirs some soldiers may have left behind but also government and military archives around the world. The Raj at War does not delve into the politics as much as one might expect but analyses the national experience and social disruptions World War II brought India.

In the early days of the war, the British could afford to be choosy about whom they recruited into the imperial army and they maintained their theory of martial races despite it having been proven wrong in the great European war just a quarter century earlier. However, as time passed and Axis gains became overwhelming, London was forced to expand its selection pool to all of Indian society. From the Indian side, the reasons for enlisting were varied and not usually patriotic. Some young men signed up because they hailed from a martial tradition that had sent at least one son into the army for generations – which political authority that army served seemed not to matter. Others joined up to escape marriage proposals, debt collectors, or law enforcement; yet others were lured by pecuniary enticements offered them or their families by the maharajas who sought to curry favour with the Crown in anticipation of the difficult post-war years. Many saw the military as an employer or even an educator who would provide skills that would prove useful after the war. It is not clear if any of these volunteers ever saw a contradiction in fighting for a country that had colonised and oppressed their own; did nationalism not exist in the Indian heart even as late a 1939 or were these decisions simply about daal-chawal? Khan does not venture into the Indian soldier’s mind.

With more and more scholarship in recent years exposing Western hypocrisy about freedom in the first half of the 20th century, it would not come as a surprise to readers to discover that racism was rampant in the British military. Not only were Indian soldiers paid only about a quarter of what their British counterparts received, soldiers of colour were also not entitled to the same perks as white men in uniform. This included not just rations of tobacco and other war-time luxuries but extended even to the war front where Indian soldiers were assigned separate messes, hospitals, and even brothels! It is difficult to imagine what motivated Indians to remain in uniform despite suffering such indignities. Even more puzzling are some of the letters exchanged between home and front in which the men or their fathers expressed their prayers and good wishes towards the King of England. While the pre-enlistment sense of service and duty or pecuniary expectations might be explained away by utilitarian reasoning, differential treatment under fire is harder to fathom.

Khan also discusses the impact of the war on Indian industry. Although, normally, wars spur industrial growth, World War II had a mild effect on Indian businesses. Despite shortage of materiel in the Asian and African theatres, there was severe opposition from London to setting up advanced armaments plants, shipyards, and ammunition factories in India for the war effort, no doubt with a partial eye to the post-war colonial order. The more immediate concern was that if industry grew, wages would rise too and this would hurt recruitment. After all, why would anyone volunteer for a foreign army to fight on distant shores when there were opportunities to be had right at home? Even with the modest growth in Indian industry in the 1940s, this was exactly what happened.

It is interesting to note how Indians reacted to Japan’s early victories in Southeast Asia. Here was an uncolonised Asian power that was shellacking the Europeans out of the region. The mixture of awe and distaste – awe for the accomplishments and distaste for the inhumanity shown to the conquered fellow Asians – filled Indian leaders and people alike. While Khan does not explicitly talk about this, Japanese successes must have surely inspired confidence in the possibility of a technologically advanced, independent, and prosperous Asia in the near future. Until the fall of Singapore, it was just a plausible theory but since, it was a virtual certainty.

Khan’s The Raj at War is a splendid analysis of the impact of World War II on India – how the European war changed the Indian economy, society, and politics. Some of these changes would last – the skills Indian officers and soldiers picked up in Africa, Italy, and Burma, for example, would serve the new republic well in its own conflicts with the equally new and irksome western neighbour, Pakistan. It is beyond the scope of the book, however, to consider how many of these changes stuck – despite the nudge towards industrialisation and Jawaharlal Nehru’s scientific temper post independence, India steadily fell back in the community of nations in industrial production and scientific achievement. How much of this was due to stifling government policies and how much was simply because India was a largely illiterate country that was not yet ready for an industrial revolution?

indias-warTwo aspects Khan does not cover in her otherwise marvelous survey of India at war are the global and military dimensions. Khan’s focus was clearly on the domestic front, but over two and a half million Indian men were shipped abroad to fight England’s enemies around the globe. This lacuna is addressed by Srinath Raghavan in his India’s War: The Making of Modern South Asia, 1939-1945.

Perhaps erroneously titled and sporting a slightly grandiloquent subtitle, Raghavan’s work is nonetheless a fantastic and much needed contribution to Indian military history. By this, I do not mean a dry recounting of battles and casualty figures interspersed by the occasional map, but a rich weaving of economics, politics, and war as any good military history ought to be. India’s War begins by explaining at length the various positions taken by the dramatis personae – London, the British government of India, the Congress party, the Hindu Mahasabha, and the Muslim League just to name the most prominent. At times, these positions would prove to be dynamic, depending upon the reactions of other parties. This may explain the near-bipolar Congress response to how the British dragged India into the war.

Raghavan’s analysis of the politics is not restricted to India and Indians just because his is a subcontinental story. In fact, India is shown as a more autonomous limb of the British Empire and a decision maker in its own right; it is also shown as a strategic region with a direct bearing on geopolitics in Southeast Asia as well as the Middle East. New to many readers will be the disagreements between London and its servants in Delhi on military strategy – for example, General Claude Auchinleck was convinced that an unsettled Iraq threatened Iran and Afghanistan and therefore India, while General Archibald Wavell did not want to be distracted from more important missions around the Mediterranean.

Of course, one might ask of what significance this is – a difference of opinion between London and its representatives in Delhi hardly makes it an Indian story. At best, Raghavan has shown that each command had its own priorities in the war in much the same way the Army, Navy, and Air Force compete with each other for strategic significance and hence the budget. In favour of the author, one can argue that this sort of autonomy was seen nowhere else in the British Empire – after World War I, the British mandate of Mesopotamia had technically fallen to India, not England. And towards the end of the war, India nationalists’ interests fascinatingly coincided with imperial interests in retaining Indian pre-eminence in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Still, even if not satisfactorily Indian for some, that (white) Delhi’s views on arms production and military strategy clashed with the High Command in London is an interesting facet of the history of World War II.

The sinews of war receive their share of Raghavan’s attention, too. India contributed not just men but also materiel to the war effort. Although modern industries such as armaments, heavy machinery, and vehicles was actively discouraged by London, Whitehall retained India in its traditional role as an exploited colony. The subcontinent provided ores, agricultural products, and other raw materials which were then fashioned into supplies. In monetary terms, these outflows were enormous. Since Britain insisted on administering India with local revenues alone – with fees and fines added for imperial upkeep, such as compensation to the British families affected by the 1857 mutiny or the Anglo-Afghan Wars, for example – the Raj had been in debt to Britain at the beginning of hostilities in Europe in 1939. By the end of the war, Britain owed India £1.3 billion.

This is not to say that these resources were spent on the defence of the subcontinent or even in training and equipping units raised from India. In fact, Indian units were frequently ill-equipped and insufficiently trained even when fighting far away from South Asia, in the Middle East or Europe. While the administration in India begged London for fighter planes, radios, artillery, and other equipment, these were luxuries for Indian troops even at the front.

An interesting nugget in India’s War is the revelation of the importance placed by Winston Churchill on American views. From the start, each major policy decision that involved India was additionally examined in the light of what effect it would have on American public and political opinion. Washington’s sympathies towards Indian independence are well known, and with wartime Britain’s desperate need for American aid, it seems only natural that these factors would come together. However, as the United States itself joined the war, one would have expected such considerations to take a back seat to the strategic imperative. Whether this was so in American minds or not, Raghavan explains that Whitehall was certainly not taking any chances.

Perhaps one of the most useful contributions Raghavan makes is his coverage of Indian troops under fire. Although the trend has so far been to depict World War II battles as a colossal clash between two Western (and white) sides, the fact is that millions of colonial troops – black, brown, and others – participated in the war in the British, French and other armies. India’s War lives up to its title at least in this regard, in volume of Indian blood spilled in the pursuit of European goals. Indian soldiers were deployed everywhere from Hong Kong to England and everywhere in between – France, Italy, Crete, Greece, Cyprus, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somaliland, Yemen, Singapore, Burma, Thailand, Malaya – and fought with such bravery that even Churchill had to accept the “unsurpassed bravery of Indian soldiers and officers.” After the war, they found themselves staying on to restore colonial regimes all across Southeast Asia.

Farthest Field, The Raj at War, and India’s War all portray a different history of World War II, a refreshing narrative that is not Manichean. The same Allies who fought in the name of holy liberty also enslaved half the world in the shackles of imperialism. As the Japanese advanced into Burma, the Raj preferred to use the few available lorries to evacuate their lawn furniture back to India over the tens of thousands of Indian men, women, and children caught up in the turmoil; many perished in the jungles during their long march. For all of India’s importance to the war effort – in terms of men, resources, strategic geography, money – Indians remained casual objects in the imperial scheme of things, ones that may be useful and cherished at times but ultimately not in the same hierarchy. The Second World War was not India’s war, though millions of Indians bled and fought in it.


This article first appeared in the February 2017 print edition of Swarajya.

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