In the passage I have just quoted you have only to substitute the
name “Israel” for “India” and you have an excellent statement of the
principles of Israel’s foreign policy. I am convinced that with India
thinking this way and Israel thinking on the same lines...Eytan concludes that both India and Israel could join hands and contrib-
ute to world peace.^15
It is unusual and extremely rare to quote the statement of a foreign
leader to explain one’s own policy, but Eytan did exactly that in 1949. One
can also fi nd Nehru’s infl uence in the initial Israeli policy of neutrality
during the Korean crisis and in the Israeli recognition of communist
China.^16 Israel often used such similarities and convergences of views to
highlight and promote its friendship toward India.
Both contrasts and convergences had their utility. Prior to normaliza-
tion, the former dominated Indian thinking and for many they were useful
tools to explain and justify the prolonged absence of relations. Normaliza-
tion of relations has reversed this trend, and noting points of conver-
gence between the two nations has become more common. That both
nations are ancient civilizations and the prolonged absence of Indian
anti- Semitism have become prominent in Indian po liti cal discourse on
Israel. Earlier, such references were po liti cally imprudent, but after 1992
they became essential ingredients of the Indian policy.
India’s Israel policy is also unique in another sense: domestic determi-
nants played a pivotal role in some of the critical decisions concerning
Israel. Although the Indian nationalists understood the history of Jewish
suff ering and persecution, it was accompanied by a marked lack of sym-
pathy for Jewish po liti cal aspirations in Palestine. The absence of a sig-
nifi cant Jewish population in India was compounded by another factor,
namely, the Islamic prism.
The Islamic Prism
During the British rule, India had the largest number of Mus-
lims in the world, and currently it has the third largest Muslim commu-
nity, after Indonesia and Pakistan. This demographic reality was amply
refl ected in India’s policy on Israel. Its unfriendly approach toward Jew-
ish aspirations was partly because its nationalists viewed the problem in
Palestine through an Islamic prism. The demand for a Jewish national
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