Squaring the Circle

Mahatma Gandhi and the Jewish National Home

P.R. Kumaraswamy, P. R. Kumaraswamy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367530570
• eBook ISBN: 9781000097856
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

The centrality of the book is Gandhi's disposition and orientation towards the idea of Jewish homeland. When it comes to Jews, Jewish nationalism and their aspirations in Palestine, even Mahatma Gandhi was not infallible. His abiding empathy for the Jews was negated by his limited understanding of Judaism and Jewish history. His perception of the Palestine issue and his support for the Arabs was rooted in the domestic Indian context. The conventional understanding that Gandhi was 'consistently' opposed to Zionism and the Jewish aspirations for a national home in Palestine does not correspond with his later remarks. While demanding Jewish non-violence both against Hitler and in Palestine, Mahatma was prepared to understand, the 'excesses' of the Arabs who were facing 'overwhelming odds.' His position on the domestic situation largely influenced his stand viz-à-viz Palestine and hence his demand for Jews to abandon their collaboration with imperialism and follow the path of negotiation should be read within the Indian context. So long as India pursued a recognition-without-relations policy toward Israel, one could rest on Gandhi's shoulders and adopt a self-righteous attitude. However, can one rely on the Gandhian paradigm to explain India's new-found bonhomie toward Israel without sounding selective, hypocritical or both?

The primary focus of this book is the explication of political constraints and oversensitivity towards the religious minority for political gains, which shaped Gandhi's notion about the Jewish homeland. The author has conducted an empirical survey of the political, religious and strategic constraints behind Gandhi's idea of the Jewish homeland that in common parlance is seen as an ardent disapproval of Zionism by Gandhi.

Please note: This title is co-published with KW Publishers, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

1
Introduction

Is there a need to study Mahatma Gandhi’s understanding of the Jewish demand for a national home in Palestine close to eight decades after his November 1938 article in the Harijan? Why revisit a subject which has remained closed and dormant since Gandhi’s assassination and the birth of the State of Israel? Why remember and invoke Gandhi and his moral positions more than a quarter of a century after India established full diplomatic relations with Israel? Was Gandhi anti-Zionist, as he is normally projected or were there shifts in his position? In short, is it possible to square Gandhi’s ‘consistent’ opposition to Jewish nationalism in Palestine with India’s newly found bonhomie with Israel?

These are not easy questions. Furthermore, one may identify three main reasons for this study, namely, the missing links and files, the unGandhian actions of some of his disciples, and the uncritical adulation and intellectual insincerity in evaluating Gandhi and his positions regarding Zionism, Jewish political aspirations in Palestine, and the future State of Israel.

Knowledge Gap

Either by design or frequent coincidences, there are significant gaps or missing links regarding Gandhi’s position viz-à-viz the idea of a Jewish national home in Palestine. A number of his pronouncements, meetings, exchanges, views and notes do not figure in the 100-volume Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi published by the Ministry of Culture of the Government of India. This holds true for the Gandhi-Kallenbach Papers, which were published as the 96th volume in 1994. The fissures are too many and systematic and, hence, it is not possible to dismiss them as accidental—it is a pattern brought about through deliberate and systematic human interventions over time. Did Gandhi exercise self-control while expressing his views regarding Jewish nationalism or was it the result of censorship of his over-enthusiastic disciples?

Uncritical adulation by his admirers and the selective discussions of his detractors have transformed Mahatma Gandhi into an undisputed moral icon regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, in the process, mystified his unfamiliarity and partisanship toward some of the core issues of Jewish nationalism. If Gandhi’s friends felt it prudent to justify, play down and occasionally even censor his views on Zionism, his ideological opponents—both during and after his lifetime—felt it prudent to seek solace in his ‘consistency’ for justifying some of his controversial positions. Gandhi who was otherwise ignored, marginalized or even disowned on so many social and political issues after India’s freedom, is seen as ‘relevant’ and even indispensible when it comes to Palestine. Even a quarter of a century after the normalization of relations with Israel, his pro-Palestinian remarks of 1938 continue to resonate in official and academic circles.

A number of important encounters pertaining to Zionism and Zionist leaders are conspicuous by their absence in the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. It is possible to list some of these key omissions. One, on 15 October 1931, Nahaum Sokolov, President of the World Zionist Organization, and Selig Brodetsky, a member of the Zionist Executive, met Gandhi when the latter was in London for the Second Round Table Conference. This was the first formal contact between Gandhi and the Zionist leadership and took place against the background of Palestine being dragged into the domestic political contest between the Indian National Congress and Muslim League. According to the notes prepared by Brodetsky, the guests were received by the sister of Gandhi’s long-time Jewish friend H S L Polak. The guests did not meet alone with Gandhi—his aides and support staff were present. Brodetsky writes: “I noticed that the Mahatma referred to a paper lying on the floor; he made no secret of its contents: it was a list of his engagements for the day, from which it was clear that he expected us to stay half an hour, as his next appointment was for ten o’clock” (Brodetsky, 1931). This description, however, does not tally with what we know about Gandhi’s activities in London during that period.

The Collected Works do not carry the “list of engagements” identified by Brodetsky. On the contrary, the diary maintained by Gandhi has no reference to this meeting and his note of that day merely says: “Spun 176 rounds. Talk with Sir Samuel Hoare (1880–1959); talk with [Sir Tej Bahadur] Sapru, [Mukund Ramrao] Jayakar and others, also students’ function. Talk with Latifi” (CWMG, 48: 459). The materials currently available do not indicate that either he or his secretaries who were present during the meeting, made any notes. Gandhi did not make any direct or indirect reference to this meeting in any of his subsequent speeches, communications, correspondence or columns. Most interestingly, during his visit to London, Gandhi was accompanied, among others, by Pyarelal, who was probably present during the meeting. As will be discussed, in later years, Pyarelal admitted having suppressed some of Gandhi’s thoughts and pronouncements on Israel.

Two, in 1936, the Jewish Agency for Palestine sent Immanuel Olsvanger, a Sanskrit scholar, to India as a Zionist emissary to shore up support. He engaged with a host of Indian leaders including Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore and met Gandhi in the Wardha Ashram on 19 September 1936. The Collected Works has no reference to Olsvanger.

Three, in May 1937, Gandhi met Hermann Kallenbach, his old friend from the South African days, after a gap of 23 years and after long discussions, Gandhi handed over an unsigned and undated statement on Zionism to Kallenbach for transmission to the Jewish Agency for Palestine. Sharing this July 1937 statement with Chaim Weizmann (the former President of the World Zionist Organization and the first President of the future State of Israel), Kallenbach observed: “… this is not for publication. M. G [that is, Mahatma Gandhi] considers its publication at this time harmful to our cause. The Islamic world will make full use of this statement to foster their pro-Arab agitation” (cited in Panter-Brick, 2008: 126). As one scholar has pointed out, this statement of Gandhi was not “included in the Gandhi-Kallenbach correspondence in the National Archives at New Delhi” (Ben-David, 2002: 6). A copy of this statement is available in the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem (Gandhi, 1937).

Gandhi, however, was not alone in not wanting to publicize his views. In October 1936, Tagore informed Olsvanger that his sympathies for the Jewish nationalist aspirations expressed during their 1 October meeting were ‘private’ and should not be publicized (Chanda, 1936). The same was true for K M Panikkar who later became India’s Ambassador to China and Egypt. In April 1947, Panikkar wrote a confidential Memorandum on Hindu-Zionist Relations and gave it to the Jewish delegation that attended the Asian Relations Conference. However, in later years, he conveniently forgot this and settled for the official unfriendliness while writing his memoirs (Kumaraswamy, 1995b).

Four, during the Asian Relations Conference held in Delhi in early 1947, Gandhi held a brief meeting with the ten-member Jewish delegation from Palestine that also included Olsvanger whom he met in 1936. The meeting took place some time between 1 and 6 April, but Gandhi made no reference to it. However, on 4 April, he met the Egyptian delegation for the conference, accompanied by Nehru, and after the meeting, he made a report on Talk with Egyptian Delegates (CWMG, 87: 201–2).

A different kind of silence prevails in Gandhi’s references to Jewish and Zionist accomplishments. Shortly after leaving South Africa in February 1917, he makes a flattering reference to the revival of the Hebrew language, one of the profound accomplishments of Zionism. In his introduction to a pamphlet on Vernaculars as Media of Instruction in Indian Schools and Colleges, he observes: “The question of vernaculars as media of instruction is of national importance; neglect of the vernaculars means national suicide.” Rejecting the argument that English should be the principal lingua franca in India, he cited the example of Yiddish (CWMG, 13: 336).

The Jews of Middle and Eastern Europe, who are scattered in all parts of the world, finding it necessary to have a common tongue for mutual intercourse, have raised Yiddish to the status of a language and have succeeded in translating into Yiddish the best books to be found in the world’s literature. Even they could not satisfy the soul’s yearning through the many foreign tongues of which they are masters; nor did the learned few among them wish to tax the masses of the Jewish population with having to learn a foreign language before they could realize their dignity. So they have enriched what was at one time looked upon as a mere jargon—but what the Jewish children learnt from their mothers—by taking special pains to translate into it the best thought of the world. This is a truly marvelous work. It has been done during the present generation, and Webster’s Dictionary defines it as a polyglot jargon used for inter-communication by Jews from different nations.

But a Jew of Middle and Eastern Europe would feel insulted if his mother tongue were now so described. If these Jewish scholars have succeeded, within a generation, in giving their masses a language, of which they may feel proud, surely it should be an easy task for us to supply the needs of our own vernaculars which are cultured languages… (CWMG, 13: 336–7).

Surprisingly, one does not find him voicing similar sentiments in later years and in view of the domestic milieu, Gandhi avoided even indirect references that might be construed as complimenting Zionism and its accomplishments. He was aware of the kibbutz, an idea that was closer to his own Tolstoy Farm in South Africa but this is not reflected in any of his speeches, writings or private communications. Nor are there any references in later years to the revival of Hebrew, as such statements could have been seen as pro-Jewish, especially during and after the Khilafat phase and the emerging Palestine question in the domestic Indian milieu.

UnGandhian Disciples

In My Experiment with Truth, published originally in Gujarati in two volumes in 1927 and 1929, Gandhi was brutally honest, admitting his human follies, fragilities and shortcomings. Among others, he confessed to tasting meat, smoking and even stealing. Gandhi’s greatness lay not in his perfection, wisdom, intellectual superiority or moral self-righteousness but in his rare human quality: an abiding willingness to admit his weaknesses and mistakes, atone for them through various soul purifying exercises and a determination to rectify them. The unpopularity or controversial nature of some his views and experiments did not impede him from practising or advocating them fearlessly. Trying to minimize the eternally challenging word-action gap was the hallmark of his personality and earned him the title, Mahatma.

Some of Gandhi’s disciples were less Gandhian and were economical with the truth. The most significant evidence of the official and organized suppression of Gandhi’s views regarding Jewish aspirations in Palestine is against Pyarelal. He was responsible for the collection and chronicling of Gandhi’s letters, speeches and papers for the publication of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. According to one biographer, Pyarelal “spent twenty-seven years at the Master’s feet, and the next thirty-four years in unremitting labors on a multi-volume biography” (Nanda, 2002: 205). Explaining this, Ved Mehta has remarked:

In 1948, a few months after Gandhi’s assassination, a number of prominent Gandhians and national leaders, including [Prime Minister Jawaharlal] Nehru, invited Pyarelal … to undertake the official biography of Gandhi, which was to be written in English. Pyarelal had served Gandhi since 1920, first as assistant to Mahadev Desai, and then, after Desai’s death, in 1942, as Gandhi’s chief secretary. He has been at work on Gandhi’s biography for the last twenty-eight years—a project subsidized by the Gandhi National Memorial Trust, the Collected Works department, and the Navajivan Trust, among others (Mehta, 1977: 37).

Thus, Pyarelal not only had unfettered access to Gandhi, his actions, observations, thoughts and engagements but also had the unique opportunity to select, steer and even censor the dissemination of Gandhi’s views after the latter’s assassination. It may not be inaccurate to say that the outside world saw Gandhi’s words and thoughts only through the eyes of Pyarelal and after his filtering.

This came out vividly when Mehta interviewed Gandhi’s confidant and secretary in the 1970s for his Mahatma and His Apostles. While discussing the safekeeping of the original handwritten letters of Gandhi and other material, Pyarelal

… says, adding portentously, ‘However, there are some materials I have decided to suppress.’

‘Such as what’ I [Ved Mehta] ask.

‘Gandhi’s views on Israel, for a start’, he says, with a mysterious air. ‘I am able to suppress them from history, since by God’s grace, I am the only one who knows about them. Because of His good will toward me, although I frequently went to prison, my papers miraculously survived …’ (Mehta, 1977: 42; emphasis added).

Nothing could have been more preposterous and unGandhian than suppressing his views but this was what Pyarelal did and was proud of it.

Likewise, the British scholar Panter-Brick has narrated another incident. On 8 March 1946, Gandhi privately received Honick, President of the World Jewish Congress and Sidney Silverman, Labor Member of the British Parliament. According to her, “Pyarelal, abetted in his master’s secrecy, suppressed whatever could be used against him, not only when drafting the minutes of the meetings but also when filing Gandhi’s papers” (Panter-Brick, 2008: 135).

Moreover, Pyarelal appeared to have played a less honorable role when Martin Buber and Judah Magnes responded to Gandhi’s November 1938 article. According to Gideon Shimoni, the separate letters of Buber and Magnes were mailed together to Gandhi’s ashram in Segaon (later renamed as Sevagram in present day Maharashtra) on 9 March 1939, and a second mail which was sent

… on 26 April went astray and it was only in June 1939 that Magnes got a reply from Gandhi’s secretary Pyarelal, thanking him for the original letters of 9 March, but stating that the letter was received at Segaon and Gandhi ‘does not know when he will be able to get back to Segaon (yet the previous letter to Magnes had stated that the letters were forwarded from Segaon!) and whether he will be able to spare time to glance through the literature you have sent. His program is so full and he is so hard pressed with work’… (in Shimoni, 1977: 47).

Expressing doubts about “whether Gandhi ever got to read them”, Shimoni added:

The fact that Magnes and Buber received neither a reply nor further correspondence thereafter suggests that the letters may have gone astray in this period, or that Gandhi never actually read them. This conjecture is strengthened by the fact that absolutely no mention of these letters appears in Gandhi’s published writings or in private letters to Kallenbach (Shimoni, 1977: 47).

In the light of what we know, it is possible that Pyarelal never forwarded these letters to Gandhi. On scrutiny, Pyarelal emerges as a manipulative person who deliberately censored Gandhi’s views on Jewish nationalism, especially after 1948. In the light of these acts of omission and commission, it would be more appropriate to view them as the Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi rather than Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi.

Moreover, there are additional problems with the Collected Works. This work was originally conceived in 1956 and the 90-volume series was completed in 1994. Seven more “Supplementary Volumes” were added in the 1990s dealing “with materials that had become available later, while volumes 98–100 contained the index of subjects, index of persons and a volume containing prefaces to the set” (Suhrud, 2004: 4967). Volume 96 was exclusively devoted to Gandhi-Kallenbach Correspondence.

The efforts to ‘realign’ materials from the Supplementary Volumes into the main series “resulted in the publication of a revised edition of 100 volumes of CWMG, in English and Hindi. A CD-ROM version was also published” (Suhrud, 2004: 4967). Interestingly, “about 500 entries [are] missing from the CD-ROM version, but they must not all be inauthentic” and a fair number of the ‘missing’ ones comprise Gandhi’s communication with Jewish friends, especially Kallenbach and Henry S L Polak. Therefore, Suhrud has concluded that “we now have three versions of CWMG: the original, the revised edition of 2001 in print, and the CD-ROM version” (Suhrud, 2004: 4968). If this confusion is inadequate, in September 2015, the Publications Division of the Government of India published the web version of the original 100-volume series that was completed in 1998. Because of its easy availability and consistency, this work relies on the scanned version of the 100-volume Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi that is available at: https­://ww­w.gandh­iherit­agepor­tal.org­/the-­coll­ected­-works-­of-mah­atma-ga­ndhi.

A far more serious rationale for the present study is the uncritical acceptance of Gandhi’s views on Palestine and Jewish nationalism.

Uncritical Adul...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Jewish Friends
• 3. The Zionist Courtship
• 4. Kallenbach, the Jewish-Zionist Friend
• 5. The Khilafat Phase
• 6. Palestine, the Jazirat-ul-Arab
• 7. Congress vs. League: The Political Tussle
• 8. The Harijan Article: The Jews, November 1938
• 9. Unfamiliarity with Judaism
• 10. Zionism: An Enigma
• 11. Demand for Jewish Non-Violence
• 12. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index