the Jews in India?... It was not from the point of view of helping Jews
that I considered this question, though such help was desirable where
possible without detriment to our country, but from the point of view of
helping ourselves by getting fi rst- rate men of science, industry, etc., on very
moderate payment. Quite a number of countries sent special commis-
sions to Vienna, after the Nazi occupation, to pick out good men.
Turkey has profi ted greatly from such specialists. It seemed to me an
ideal chance to get the right type of technicians and specialists. Their
coming here on low salaries would have helped us also to bring down
other salaries. They would have come for a period and not to settle
down for ever. And only a limited number would have come, and only
such as were of defi nite use to us and accepted our standards and po-
liti cal outlook.^42Nehru felt that India, on the threshold of freedom, would benefi t from
the expertise and skills of Jewish refugees, while also off ering refuge to
the persecuted Jews of Eu rope. Though appearing selfi sh, he was not
alone in making such calculations and indeed was better than many of
his contemporaries in other parts of the world.^43
However, the central issue of the Holocaust still remains. Nehru’s de-
sire to host Jewish refugees fl eeing Nazi Germany was accompanied by
an indiff erent attitude of the Congress Party toward the Holocaust. The
end of World War II revealed the magnitude of the problem and provided
some opportunities for the party to articulate its stance. Indian leaders
were not ready to admit any link between the Holocaust in Eu rope and
Jewish aspirations in Palestine. When the Special Session of the UN
General Assembly met in April 1947 to deliberate the future of Palestine,
India vehemently opposed the proposed UN Special Committee on Pal-
estine (UNSCOP) visit to the Displaced Persons camps in Eu rope. Even
the UNSCOP, of which India was a member, rejected such a linkage, and
the majority of the members recommended that “any solution for Pales-
tine cannot be considered as a solution of the Jewish problem in gen-
eral.”^44 This line of argument is more poignantly refl ected in post- 1947
Indian writings. Whenever Indian scholars discuss the Holocaust, it is
invariably linked to Israeli policies regarding the Palestinians. In the
words of one: “Close to a million Palestinian Arabs were evicted from
their ancestral homelands just as Hitler’s tyranny had uprooted many
Jews from theirs.”^45 Palestinians being asked to pay for Hitler’s sins re-
mains their theme song.
52 the congress party and the yishuv