144 d omestic politics
The Middle East is the second example for this link between domestic
dynamics and foreign policy. While a comprehensive treatment of the do-
mestic inputs into India’s Middle East policy has yet to be written, it is
possible to sketch the larger contours. As the following narrative will indi-
cate, India’s interest and involvement in the Middle East, and more par-
ticularly Israel, since the early 1920s was infl uenced, and at times domi-
nated, by the Islamic factor. Secularism thus does not mean the absence
of Islamic inputs in India’s Israel policy. With the notable exception of
Mahatma Gandhi, Indian leaders and academics ignored or belittled
the religious dimension and in the pro cess settled for an unscientifi c and
nondemo cratic paradigm. Under such circumstances, how can we estab-
lish this link? Nehru’s personal choices regarding the region off er some
interesting insights.
Nehru’s Choices
Unlike the Mahatma, it is not easy to establish that Islamic cal-
culations infl uenced Nehru’s views on Palestine. He was a socialist by
conviction and had little interest in, knowledge of, or patience for reli-
gion. Much of his secularism was a sign of atheism rather than the tradi-
tional separation of church and the state. A scientifi c temperament, not
religious sentiment, dominated his worldview. He understood the world
through the emerging lenses of anticolonialism and anti- imperialism. At
least in public, he did not view the problem in Palestine through a reli-
gious prism, as the Mahatma did.
Despite his secular bias, Nehru did not ignore the Islamic dimension
of the problem. The “sentiments” of Indian Muslims fi gured prominently
in his post- 1947 policy toward the Middle East. In his conversations with
Israeli diplomats, he sought their understanding of the trauma of parti-
tion and its eff ect upon the Muslims of India. He felt that the Muslims
who had opted to stay in India after partition were already being pressured
to prove their loyalty to India by distancing themselves from Pakistan,
a state conceived as the homeland of the Muslims of the subcontinent.
Spearheaded by the Jan Sangh, the Hindu right wing was accusing Indian
Muslims of being a “fi fth column” that was seeking to further fragment
“Mother India.” He confi ded to Israeli diplomats that Indian Muslims
should not be burdened with further emotional strain over his Middle
East policy.^16