part of the Indian delegation to the General Assembly session and, even
before the fi nal vote, he registered his disagreement. In a note dated
April 30, he declared:
As I have told the PM, I think we are making a great mistake in con-
tinuing our opposition to Israel’s coming into the UN. On general
principles we are not maintaining such an attitude toward any other
state. We believe in every state coming into the UN. Also it does not
seem to me right that we should seek Israel’s help in matters of pri-
mary value and signifi cance to us and yet maintain this hostile
attitude.^37Rao was referring to Nehru seeking technical agricultural assistance
from Israel.^38
The legal and po liti cal implications of the Indian position require some
explanation. During this period, the major powers had vetoed the UN
membership of states that were seen to be closer to the rival bloc. For ex-
ample, the Soviet Union vetoed the applications of Ireland, Portugal, and
Jordan; the United States and United Kingdom opposed the membership
of Albania. In a verdict delivered in May 1948, International Court of Jus-
tice in the Hague ruled that a member state voting on the application of a
state for admission to the United Nations “is not juridically entitled to
make its consent to the admission dependent on conditions not expressly
provided by Paragraph 1 (of the Article 4 of the UN Charter).^39 Similarly,
a legal memorandum prepared by the UN Secretariat concluded that “a
member could properly vote to accept a representative of a government
which it did not recognize or with which it had no diplomatic relations
and that such a vote did not imply recognition or a readiness to assume
diplomatic relations.”^40 The converse was also true: “there is no sugges-
tion that recognition binds the recognizing state to vote for the admission
of the candidates.”^41 Therefore, its nonrecognition of the Jewish state could
not legally bind India to oppose Israel’s membership application.
On the po liti cal front, India had always emphasized the universal
character of the United Nations. During the San Francisco Conference in
1945, some countries sought to restrict the membership of the new body
by adding certain preconditions and requirements. India, still a British
dominion, forcefully argued in favor of universal UN membership.^42 Elab-
orating on this aspect in 1949, one se nior Indian diplomat felt that “re-
fusing admission to peace- loving and sovereign states on grounds which
nehru and the era of deterioration, 1947–1964 189