63the formation of Pakistan posed new challenges to the Indian Muslims and
limited the scope for pan-Islamism especially when the Hindu right was
challenging their commitment and loyalty to India. Though a large num-
ber of Hindus and Sikhs were also killed during the post-partition riots, the
communal division of British India was a trauma for Indian Muslims, the
primary victims of the communal frenzy. Partly to assuage their feelings
and fears, India moved somewhat cautiously towards the Middle East,
especially vis-à-vis normalization of relations with Israel. Though anti-
colonialism and anti-imperialism were commonly used, domestic consider-
ations were equally crucial for Nehru’s recognition-without- relations
policy regarding Israel.
Simultaneously, pan-Islamism has been in vogue in the Middle East
even before the rise of Arab nationalism and the subsequent emergence of
pan-Arabism. Leaders such as Jamaluddin Afghani (1838–97) sought to
create a pan-Islamic awareness to counter European colonialism (Ozcan
1997 ). Indeed, much of anti-colonial discourse in the Middle East in the
early twentieth century had an Islamic dimension. Though Afghani’s ideas
were popular among the Muslim intellectuals of that time, they were
unable to transform into a mass movement. The emergence of fissures and
tensions among different Muslim communities, especially between the
Arabs and Turks—the followers of the same Sunni faith—led to the germi-
nation of nationalistic ideas in different parts of the Middle East. The
debate remained confined to pan-Islamic prisms and the fissures cantered
around the question of leadership of the ummah. The end of the First
World War, the abolition of Caliphate and intensification of Arab-Jewish
conflict in mandate Palestine continued to be debated in pan-Islamic
terms. However, the Second World War and the formation of Israel has-
tened the transformations to pan-Arabism and this manifested most sig-
nificantly in the rise of nationalist-military leadership. They pushed
pan-Islamism to the backburner in local and regional politics with Arabism
and pan- Arabism gaining popularity and secularism and socialism became
rallying points for the Arab masses.
Unlike other countries, Egypt has history to bank upon and emerged as
the centre of Arab unity against colonialism and hegemonic Western
designs. The failure of the Arab countries, including Egypt, to prevent the
formation of Israel in 1948 galvanized popular anger against the
conservative rulers who were dependent upon the colonial powers and
their largesse for survival. The Arab humiliation in 1948 paved the way for
the Free Officers Revolution of July 1952 and soon saw the emergence of
ISLAMIC DIMENSION