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The centrality of Pakistan in India’s political, strategic and foreign
policy calculations can be traced to the early part of the twentieth century
when India was fighting British colonialism. The Indian National Congress
which was spearheading the struggle recognized the meagre participation
of the Muslim, the largest Muslim community in the world at that time, in
the national movement. The Government of India Act of 1858 and proc-
lamation of the British in 1877 formally ended the Mughal rule, the last
Muslim Empire in India but the Indian Muslims had misgivings about the
notionally inclusive but Hindu-dominated Congress party. They were
apprehensive that the post-British political order would result in a Hindu-
dominated India and for its part, the Congress recognized that it could
not legitimately claim to be ‘Indian’ and ‘national’ without the participa-
tion of Muslims.
This understanding resulted in the Congress party endorsing and
taking part in the Khilafat struggle (Qureshi 1978 ; Hasan 1981 ; Krishna
1968 ) when the Indian Muslims were rallying around the caliphate then
concurrently held by the Ottoman Sultan. Mahatma Gandhi saw the
pan- Islamic demand as an opportunity to bring the Muslim masses into
the anti- British struggle and in the process dragged the Congress Party
into the Khilafat cause (Kumaraswamy 2018 , 69–89). The Hindu-Muslim
unity witnessed during the Khilafat phase was short-lived and the abolition
of caliph by Republican Turkey also ended the communal unity in India.
Soon some of the leading figures in the movement such as Ali Brothers
and Mohammed Iqbal drifted towards the Pakistani nationalism spear-
headed by the Muslim League.
This trend brought the simmering Congress-League differences into the
open. The former which visualized an inclusive India found itself competing
with the League’s aspirations for a separate Muslim homeland in the subcon-
tinent. Both found the Palestinian issue useful to exhibit their pro- Muslim
credentials domestically. In the wake of the partition of the subcontinent,
the Congress-League tussle became an Indo-Pakistan political contest and
was largely played out in the Middle East. In November 1947 both coun-
tries adopted a pro-Arab position and voted against the partition plan for
Palestine, but their logics were different; for India, it was a vote for Arab
secularism and for Pakistan, it was an affirmation of its Islamic solidarity. As
discussed in a subsequent chapter, the Indo-Pakistan rivalry became more
acute and intense in the wake of the Kashmir dispute and its referral to the
UN by Prime Minister Nehru. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that
P. R. KUMARASWAMY AND MD. M. QUAMAR