strengthen bonds with Indian Muslims. Hence, despite the explicitly re-
ligious nature of the problem, the Indian nationalists were at the fore-
front of the Khilafat struggle. Around the same time, the Muslim League,
which subsequently championed Pakistani nationalism, began articulat-
ing a hardline stand on Palestine. Gradually, the problem of Palestine
became an instrument for the Congress Party to further its infl uence
among the Muslims. With the Muslim League clamoring to be the exclu-
sive representative of the Indian Muslims, the Palestine issue became
useful to the Congress Party to shore up its pro- Arab and pro- Islamic
credentials. Though couched in secular- nationalist expressions, in the
early 1930s the Palestine issue became the most prominent foreign- policy
concern of the Congress Party.
As time went by, the intensifi cation of Congress Party– Muslim League
tension over Muslim support added a new twist to India’s attitude toward
Jewish nationalist aspirations. Unlike the Muslim League, the Congress
Party presented itself as the representative of all Indians, irrespective of
their religious, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and caste divisions. Within this
context, the religion- based nationalist argument of the Muslim League
became a plot to divide India. The Pakistani nationalism pursued by the
Muslim League and the Jewish nationalism in Palestine appeared frac-
tious to the Congress Party. It saw both nationalist arguments as sinis-
ter attempts to divide and secede from India and Palestine, respectively.
The Congress Party could not accept the Muslim League’s argument
that the Indian Muslims constituted a distinct nation because they fol-
lowed a diff erent religion. Likewise, logically, it refused to concede that
Jews were a diff erent nation.
For the Congress Party, the endorsement of the right of self-
determination did not mean endorsing the Muslims in India and Jews
in Palestine as distinct nations. As its representative eloquently argued
at the United Nations, “there is no reason why po liti cal considerations
should be mixed up with religious considerations and why po liti cal rights
in a state should be confused with religious rights.”^21 Its eventual ac cep-
tance of the partition of the subcontinent in August 1947 was not an en-
dorsement of the religion- based division propounded by the Muslim
League but was the price for India gaining freedom from the British.
That a large portion of Muslims opted to stay in India after the creation of
Pakistan helped consolidate the Congress Party’s opposition to religion
being the preeminent determinant of nationhood.^22 At the same time,
preoccupied with its rivalry with the Muslim League, the signifi cant
introduction 13