32 mahatma gandhi and the jewish national homeIndia. The Zionists were not alone in looking at India through the Islamic
prism. Both the British and Palestinian Arab leaderships were conscious
of the role and infl uence of the Indian Muslims. As will be seen, if the
British were afraid of the attitude of Indian Muslims, the Palestinian
leadership looked to the same community for po liti cal support.
The Islamization of the Palestinian problem by Mufti Hajj Amin al-
Husseini raised alarms in Zionist circles. While it was relatively easy for
them to overlook British apprehensions regarding the Indian Muslims,
the problem posed by al- Husseini was far more serious. Besides being a
passionate speaker, he evoked respect and admiration among the faithful
because of his offi cial position as the mufti of the third holiest place in
Islam. Chaim Weizmann, the president of the World Zionist Or ga ni za-
tion (WZO), was quick to recognize the consequences of the Palestinian
issue spreading to the wider Islamic world. In January 1931, the mufti of-
fered to bury the body of Mohammed Ali, a prominent Indian leader who
led the Khilafat struggle, within the precincts of the Harem al- Sharif/
Temple Mount in Jerusalem. A few days before Shaukat Ali accompanied
his younger brother’s body to Jerusalem for burial, Weizmann met the
Indian leader in London. This was the fi rst known meeting between the
Zionist leadership and an Indian leader. Weizmann’s eff orts to quaran-
tine the Palestine problem from domestic Indian politics proved in eff ec-
tive. While Shaukat Ali agreed to Weizmann’s pleas in London,^32 once in
Jerusalem, he was overwhelmed by the mufti’s hospitality. As a result,
the Indian leader collaborated with his host in or ga niz ing the Jerusalem
Islamic Conference later that year.^33
It was under such circumstances that the Zionists made their fi rst
formal contact with Mahatma Gandhi. The meeting took place on Octo-
ber 15, 1931, in London, while Gandhi was attending the Round Table
Conference. With a formal letter of introduction from Polak, the Mahat-
ma’s old friend in South Africa, the Zionists Selig Brodetsky and Nahum
Sokolov met the Indian leader. Brodetsky was a member of the World
Zionist Executive and head of its po liti cal department in London; Sokolov
had just taken over from Weizmann as president of the WZO. Surpris-
ingly, they did not seek the Mahatma’s support for a Jewish national home
in Palestine. They were aware of failure of the Weizmann– Shaukat Ali
encounter a few months earlier and thus hoped that the Mahatma would
help keep the Palestinian issue away from Indian politics. They wanted
him to assure them that no attempts “to bring the problem of Palestine
into the discussion of the Round Table Conference or into the atmosphere