15DiFFerent WorlDvieWs
Nehru’s worldview was shaped by India’s colonial experience. When India
joined the UN as its founding member in 1945, the world body had 51
members and it rose to 115 when Nehru passed away in 1964. Hence,
fighting colonialism had dominated Nehru’s thinking. Like India, much
of the Arab world suffered from European colonialism, which left a deep
and lasting impact upon their nation-building process. The shared anti-
colonial experience resulted in many Arab nationalist leaders and societies
seeking to befriend the Indian nationalists during the inter-war period and
sought political support in their anti-colonial struggle. Since the early
1920s, the Congress party, for example, sympathized with anti-colonial
sentiments of the region. As the doyen of the Middle Eastern studies in
the country observed, “While the nationalist movement in India sympa-
thized with the nationalist aspirations of the Arabs, the latter realized that
their own emancipation was tied up with the outcome of the Indian strug-
gle” (Agwani 1976 , 63). In continuation of this process, Nehru sought to
forge closer ties with the countries of Asia and Africa and organized the
Asian Relations Conference (Asian Relations Organization 1948), weeks
before India’s independence and played a pivotal role in the first Afro-
Asian conference in Bandung in April 1955 (Appadorai 1955 ).
Wedded to socialism since his youth (Nehru 1964 ), the first prime min-
ister was not enamoured by the Arab monarchies and their feudal approach
towards nation building and social transformation (Mudiam 1994 , 202–3)
As he was trying to bring about social changes within the country through
state-centric economic reforms and modernization, he was looking for allies
elsewhere. Though the newly established State of Israel was committed to
democracy, socialism and liberal values, Nehru viewed Zionism as an
“agent” of British imperialism and adopted a policy of recognition- without-
relations towards it (Kumaraswamy 2010 ).
Moreover, the ideological differences and competition with Pakistan
resulted in Nehru espousing secularism as an article of faith both within
and outside the country. He needed secular-national leaderships which
were committed being free from the European domination and with lesser
emphasis on conservatism rooted in religion (Balasubramanian 1980 ).
His close and enduring political ties with U Nu of Burma (now Myanmar),
Sukarno of Indonesia and Josip Broz Tito of the then Yugoslavia had to
be seen within their anti-colonial and secular worldviews.
THE NEHRU ERA