Jewish problem in the non- European and non- Christian Palestine. Thus,
predominantly Christian Latin America played a crucial role at the United
Nations, and Christian or Christian- majority countries contributed the
bulk of the thirty- three votes in favor of the partition plan. In short, the
Judeo- Christian heritage contributed signifi cantly to the popularity and
international support for Zionism.
Similarly, Islamic countries or countries with a large or sizable Mus-
lim population viewed the Jewish claims in Palestine through an Islamic
prism. Persecution of the Jews was alien to Islamic civilization, and there
are no Islamic parallels to the Holocaust, blood libel, or pogroms. Under
the rubric of Dhimmi, the Jews were considered as a protected people
with a revealed sacred text. So long as they accepted Islamic rule, their
lives and properties were protected. At the same time, the concept of
po liti cal equality between Muslims and non- Muslims was singularly
absent. As Bernard Lewis pertinently asks: “How could one accord the
same treatment to those who follow the true faith and those who willfully
reject it?”^49 Seen in this Islamic tradition, the demand for a Jewish home-
land in Palestine, among others, challenged the traditional Islamic para-
digm of Dhimmi. As a result, not only Islamic countries but also countries
with sizable Muslim populations, such as India, opposed the partition
plan in 1947.
In short, countries with large Muslim or small Christian populations
were unfamiliar with the historic links that the Zionists sought to estab-
lish with their ancient home. Even though most of the Indian national-
ists, including the Mahatma and Nehru, were Western educated, they
did not understand or comprehend the prolonged Jewish suff ering that
culminated in the Jewish nationalist aspiration. Like most Arab and Is-
lamic peoples, they traced the problem primarily to the Balfour Declara-
tion. Prolonged Jewish statelessness and their longing for po liti cal rights
were unfamiliar to them. As a result, Indian nationalists never viewed
Zionism as a genuine liberation movement. As an offi cial Indian narra-
tive puts it, “the seeds of the present tension” in the region were “sown at
the beginning of [the twentieth] century, when the proposal to create a
‘Jewish National Home’ in Palestine received the sanction of the British
Government.”^50 The world was born yesterday.
Second, the imperialist connections of the Zionists fi gured promi-
nently in Indian thinking. The compulsions that made Herzl highlight
“international guarantees” as a precondition for the success of Zionism
was never part of the Indian thinking. The Indian nationalists settled for
54 the congress party and the yishuv