21Quresh tribe, to which Prophet Mohammed belonged. In the Saudi case,
the politico-ideological marriage between the Wahhabi brand of Islam and
al-Saud family forms the basis of the modern Saudi state. Even the Shah of
Iran, who was often criticized by Egypt for his dependence upon the West,
felt threatened by Nasserism (Singh 1977 ). These countries who were try-
ing to forge an Islamic bloc as a counter to Nasser’s pan-Arabism were
often joined by Pakistan (Khan 2003 ).
At the same time, until the mid-1960s pan-Islamism remained a minor
force in the region. The pre-eminence of Nasser, wider sentiments against
imperialism, secular nature of various anti-colonial movements and wide-
spread appeal of socialism prevented pan-Islamism from emerging as a
powerful alternative. However, the pan-Arabism met its waterloo in the
June War when Israel resoundingly defeated the armies of Egypt, Jordan
and Syria. Though Nasser remained president until his death in September
1970, the secular Arab nationalism gave way to pan-Islamism driven by
Saudi Arabia. The World Muslim League formed by King Saud in 1962
took a more potent force in the Middle Eastern politics.
The unpopularity of pan-Arabism in Arab monarchies, the latter’s pref-
erence for pan-Islamism and the al-Saud-Nasser tensions over domestic
and regional developments meant that Nehru was seen in Riyadh as a
friend of the enemy than as a friend. This was compounded by the Pakistani
factor and had adverse consequences for the Indo-Saudi relations.
Writing in December 1950, an Israeli diplomat posted in Ankara
described Pakistan as India’s “centre of gravity” (Kumaraswamy 2010 ,
170). While Pakistan has been occupying an important place in India’s
domestic debates and foreign policy calculations, the severity of this
aspects manifests in the Middle East. Its preoccupation with Pakistan has
hampered India’s ability to approach and engage with the Arab-Islamic
world. For long, New Delhi looked at the outside world only through the
Pakistani prism, which in turn made India a hostage to Islamabad. One is
not suggesting that Pakistan is unimportant, let alone irrelevant, in India’s
geostrategic calculations but an excessive focus has hindered its ability to
develop a productive relationship with other countries. This drawback was
more visible with regard to Saudi Arabia which has been traditionally sup-
portive of Pakistan (Choudhary 1974 ; Weinbaum and Khurram 2014 ;
Razvi 1981 ). As would be discussed in the later section of this volume, it
was only after India was able to delink Pakistan from its bilateral engage-
ments one could notice an exponential growth in Indo-Middle Eastern
and Indo-Saudi relations.
THE NEHRU ERA