25of the last countries to shift its embassy to Riyadh as demanded by the
Kingdom and this happened in 1985. The erstwhile mission in Jeddah was
converted into consulate to facilitate the haj pilgrimage. Between 1948
and until the present, India had 17 ambassadors to the Kingdom and all of
whom were Muslims (Annexure 1 ), primarily due to the need for the
envoy to travel to Mecca, which is off limits to non-Muslims.
The first political exchange between the two countries had to wait until
May 1955 when Crown Prince Faisal came to prepare for the visit of King
Saud in December, a few months after he met Nehru during the Bandung
conference (Rey 2014 ). Though the Nehru-Nasser friendship was blos-
soming, Saud was also friendly towards Nasser and hosted the Egyptian
leader a few weeks earlier.^3
During his visit to India, Crown Prince and Prime Minister Prince
Faisal informed that “he would like his brother, the King of Saudi Arabia,
to come to India on an ‘educational tour’” (Selected Works of Jawaharlal
Nehru, Series Two, vol. 28; 222). Their conversation covered a host of
issues like recognition of communist China and historical Indian approach
towards the Middle East since the colonial phase, especially the role of
Mahatma Gandhi. Referring to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Nehru observed
that India’s sympathies
had been and were now with the Arabs, who had suffered so greatly... Time
seemed to be running in favour of the Israel and rather against the Arabs.
Israel was likely to become stronger in the military sense... Israel would
never have been formed or would have continued for long but for the sup-
port of the USA and the UK. It was these great powers that had helped
Israel in many ways. (Ibid., 226)For his part, Prince Faisal “agreed with our [India’s] general foreign
policy of keeping free from entanglements” (ibid., 227). Nehru met
Prince Faisal again on 25 September 1956 during his visit to the Kingdom
(Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Series Two, Vol. 35, 485–8).
King Saud visited India in late November 1955, and addressing a civic
reception in the Red Fort in the honour of the King, Nehru flagged
ancient linkages between the two countries and said that
(^3) Earlier King Saud visited Pakistan in February 1954, but a return visit had to wait until
November 1960, when he hosted President Ayub Khan.
THE NEHRU ERA