7. Domestic Politics
Like the child in Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale, one is
tempted to shout, But the Emperor has nothing on at all! The domestic
dimension is the most diffi cult aspect of India’s Israel policy to research
and analyze; it is hard to quantify and support with evidence. Po liti cal
correctness, partisan politics, and a paucity of offi cial papers compound
the problem. The nonparochial and inclusive nationalist struggle under-
taken by the Congress Party meant that its policies before and after in-
de pen dence have to be seen and presented within a secular paradigm.
However, most scholars argue that India’s Middle East policy is shaped
by a host of factors, ideas, and currents, but not by domestic po liti cal cal-
culations. The farthest that they will go is to discuss Pakistan’s eff orts
toward creating an Islamic bloc to undermine and counter secular Arab
nationalism. Any suggestion of other domestic factors infl uencing India’s
Middle East policy remains taboo. A. Appadorai, who was active at the
Asian Relations Conference of 1947, remains the sole exception: he has
discussed the Islamic aspects of the domestic roots of India’s foreign
policy.^1
In the absence of documents, how does one establish that domestic
po liti cal calculations substantially helped determine India’s Israel policy?
I am sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are
anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of
Arabs among my constituents. —President Harry S. Truman