normalization and after 243to this view, nothing substantial had changed to warrant an abandonment
of a policy that had survived for over four de cades. Mahatma Gandhi’s
arguments were resurrected to question the need to abandon the past.
For them, India should not have supported the 1991 UN decision on
Zionism. When Israel “was founded and continues to exist on the basis
of a racist ideology, that is, Zionism,” what was the need for India to
change its stance?^17 The establishment of relations was seen as a hasty,
untimely, and even unnecessary move. Such sentiments were expressed
by the leaders of the communist and Janata Dal parties. Some even
blamed Dixit “for the unseemly haste with which he has tried to improve
relations with Israel.”^18 According to these critics, India should have
“waited” until the resolution of the Palestinian problem and the creation
of an in de pen dent Palestinian state. In the words of one critic, Prime
Minister Rao “should have waited till the ground realities in the West
Asian theatre changed substantially so as to remove the very basis of our
decades- old anti- Israeli policy.”^19 While the Palestinians and Arab states
were ready to negotiate with Israel, critics wanted India to continue with
its policy of nonrelations. This more- Catholic- than- the- Pope attitude can
only be characterized as an ideological hangover.
Ideological hangover. Criticism of normalization came largely from
those who were shocked at the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of
the cold war. Having lived on a diet of anti- imperialism for de cades, they
were unable to adjust to the new reality. The disappearance of commu-
nism in the Soviet Union and rapid changes in eastern Eu rope orphaned
them ideologically. For this segment of population, opposing Israel and
its policies was a sign of a “progressive” worldview. The Soviet Union’s
demise not only ended the ideological debate but also forced them to see
Israel as a normal state, if not as a friend. Some found this ideological
transformation too sudden and harsh to digest. The attitude of Mani
Shankar Aiyar, a former career diplomat and a close aide of Rajiv Gandhi,
highlights this point. In May 1993, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres be-
came the fi rst offi cial visitor from Israel. Describing the Israeli leader as
“a known terrorist with forty- fi ve years of national and international ex-
perience of terrorism,” Aiyar lamented: “Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty
pieces of silver. Foreign secretary J. N. Dixit has been rushed to Tunis to
explain to the Palestinians that we are not about to betray Tirupati for
thirty sprinkler- irrigation sets from Israel. I am glad that I left the for-
eign ser vice before it came to this.”^20 His membership in the ruling Con-
gress Party did not prevent Aiyar from being a prominent critic of the