state of Pakistan, a substantial number of Muslims chose to remain in
India. No such similarities existed in Palestine. Though a signifi cant
number of Palestinians remained in areas that became Israel, there was
no Palestinian leadership, or ga nized or unor ga nized, that was prepared
to give partition a chance. The Indian government, through its UNSCOP
representative, was aware of the intercommunity tension, animosity, and
noncooperation in Palestine. Despite this, it chose to advocate a path that
was rejected by Nehru and the Congress Party for the subcontinent.
Sixth, the federal plan highlighted contradictions between Rahman’s
public pronouncements and his private actions. Both in his minority re-
port and in his dissenting note to the majority plan, he followed the tradi-
tional INC opposition to religion- based nationalism. He was highly criti-
cal of religion entering the po liti cal realm, especially in the nation- state
discourse. In his report, he observed: “it is important to avoid an accelera-
tion of the separatism which now characterizes the relations of Arabs
and Jews in the Near East, and to avoid laying the foundations of a dangerous
irredentism there, which would be the inevitable consequence of partition
in what ever form.”^73 He was more forceful in his dissenting note, stating
that if the Jewish demand for statehood in Palestine was conceded, Jews
elsewhere would be charged with “double loyalty.” Upholding the princi-
ple of self- determination, he argued that it would be diffi cult to “refuse
the majority, the right of forming the government.”^74 On the religious
side, he contended: “it is impossible to forget that the Jews as a whole, are
not a nation but only a community which follows a par tic u lar religion....
Moreover the so- called nationalism is of too recent a growth to be any
value... there is no reason why po liti cal considerations should be mixed
up with religious considerations and why po liti cal rights in a state
should be confused with religious rights.”^75 His views refl ected the pre-
vailing INC position toward similar demands made by Islamic separat-
ism in the subcontinent and spearheaded by Jinnah. In short, democracy
was the rule of the majority, and church and state are distinct and sepa-
rate spheres.
What Rahman did subsequently was rather ironic. Despite vehemently
rejecting any links between religion and statecraft, shortly after the sub-
mission of the UNSCOP report, he emigrated to Pakistan, a state formed
on the basis of the same arguments put forth by the Zionists.^76 He even-
tually retired as a judge of Pakistan’s Federal Court.^77 Describing the
prevailing mood among Muslims immediately after World War II toward
the partition of palestine 103