mahatma gandhi and the jewish national home 37was not convinced that the British were fi ghting tyranny and safeguard-
ing democracy while keeping India under subjugation.^55 Just as he was
critical of Zionist dependence upon the British for their po liti cal goals,
Gandhi also opposed the nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose for
seeking Japa nese help to secure India’s freedom.^56 His advocacy for Jewish-
Arab cooperation in Palestine was refl ective of the prevailing mood in
India. In February 1938, the Congress Party urged the Jews “not to seek
the shelter of the British Mandate and not to allow themselves to be ex-
ploited in the interests of the British imperialism.”^57 Likewise, in a per-
sonal letter to Olsvanger, Nehru underscored his opposition to any col-
laboration with imperialism.^58
Contradictions in the Mahatma’s stance are equally interesting. He was
the fi rst non- Muslim leader to invoke Islam to justify Arab demands. In his
fi rst comments on the subject in 1921, he used religion to dispute Jewish
demands. According to him, the injunction of Prophet Mohammed “does
not mean that Jews and Christians cannot freely go to Palestine or even
reside there and own properties. What non- Muslims cannot do is to acquire
sovereign jurisdiction.”^59 A few weeks later, he reminded his readers that
Jazirat al- Arab had been “under Mussalman control” before World War
I.^60 Under his infl uence, the following year, the Indian National Con-
gress demanded that the “eff ective guardianship of Islam and the Jazirat
al- Arab [be] free[d] from all non- Muslim control.”^61 The introduction of
Islamic claims and religious terminology into the po liti cal discourse by
the Mahatma (and briefl y by the Congress Party) came within the Khila-
fat context. Mahatma Gandhi felt the need to embrace, support, and en-
dorse Muslim religious claims to Palestine.
There is a fundamental problem with Gandhi’s approach. If one ac-
cepts the injunction in the Qur’an, then it is not possible to overlook the
religious claims of the Jews over Palestine. According to the Old Testa-
ment, Palestine was “promised” to the Jews centuries before the birth of
Islam or the arrival of Prophet Mohammed. Thus, one either accepts the
religious claims of both or rejects both Jewish and Islamic injunctions. In
the post- Khilafat period, the Mahatma did not use religious terminology
to justify Arab claims or negate Jewish demands. This could be inter-
preted as his realization of the confl icting religious claims over Palestine.
Second, Mahatma Gandhi never questioned the Jewish longing for a
homeland or for the city of Jerusalem. He treated it as a religious and not
a po liti cal question. He gradually modifi ed his November 1938 position