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Mahatma
Gandhi rejected Zionism
By
Professor A. K. Ramakrishnan*
Mahatma
Gandhi University, Kerala, India
Reproduced from The
Wisdom Fund
Link
to this article
Gandhi's major statement on the Palestine and the
Jewish question came forth in his widely circulated
editorial in the Harijan of 11 November 1938, a time when
intense struggle between the Palestinian Arabs and the
immigrant Jews had been on the anvil in Palestine. His
views came in the context of severe pressure on him,
especially from the Zionist quarters, to issue a
statement on the problem. Therefore, he started his piece
by saying that his sympathies are all with the Jews, who
as a people were subjected to inhuman treatment and
persecution for a long time.
"But", Gandhi asserted, "My sympathy does not blind me
to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national
home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The
sanction for it is sought in the Bible and in the
tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after their
return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other
peoples of the earth, make that country their home where
they are born and where they earn their livelihood?"
He thus questioned the very foundational logic of
political Zionism. Gandhi rejected the idea of a Jewish
State in the Promised Land by pointing out that the
"Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a
geographical tract." The Zionists, after embarking upon a
policy of colonization of Palestine and after getting
British recognition through the Balfour Declaration of
1917 for "the establishment in Palestine of a national
home for the Jews," tried to elicit maximum international
support. The Jewish leaders were keen to get an approval
for Zionism from Gandhi as his international fame as the
leader of a non-violent national struggle against
imperialism would provide great impetus for the Jewish
cause. But his position was one of total disapproval of
the Zionist project both for political and religious
reasons. He was against the attempts of the British
mandatory Government in Palestine toeing the Zionist line
of imposing itself on the Palestinians in the name of
establishing a Jewish national home. Gandhi's Harijan
editorial is an emphatic assertion of the rights of the
Arabs in Palestine. The following oft-quoted lines
exemplify his position: "Palestine belongs to the Arabs
in the same sense that England belongs to the English or
France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose
the Jews on the Arabs... Surely it would be a crime
against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that
Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as
their national home."
Gandhi's response to Zionism and the Palestine
question contains different layers of meaning, ranging
from an ethical position to political realism. What is
interesting is that Gandhi, who firmly believed in the
inseparability of religion and politics, had been
consistently and vehemently rejecting the cultural and
religious nationalism of the Zionists.
What follows then is that he was not for religion
functioning as a political ideology; rather, he wanted
religion to provide an ethical dimension to nation-State
politics. Such a difference was vital as far as Gandhi
was concerned. A uni-religious justification for claiming
a nation-State, as in the case of Zionism, did not appeal
to him in any substantial sense.
The history of Palestine in the first half of this
century has been characterized by the contention between
two kinds of nationalism: Zionism and Palestinian Arab
nationalism-the former striving for creating a Jewish
nation in Palestine by colonizing its land through
massive Jewish immigration and the latter struggling for
freedom of the inhabitants of the land of Palestine from
colonial and imperialist control.
Gandhi, in his role as leader of the national struggle
and the Indian National Congress (the organization
embodying that struggle), had been actively engaged
during the 1930s and 1940s in moulding the perception of
the people of India to the nationalist and
anti-imperialist struggles in the Arab world. The 1937
Calcutta meeting of the All India Congress Committee
(AICC) "emphatically protested against the reign of
terror as well as the partition proposals relating to
Palestine" and expressed the solidarity of the Indian
people with the Arab peoples' struggle for national
freedom. The Delhi AICC of September 1938 said in its
resolution that Britain should leave the Jews and the
Arabs to amicably settle the issues between the two
parties, and it urged the Jews "not to take shelter
behind British Imperialism." Gandhi wanted the Jews in
Palestine to seek the goodwill of the Arabs by discarding
"the help of the British bayonet."
Gandhi and the Congress thus openly supported
Palestinian Arab nationalism, and Gandhi was more
emphatic in the rejection of Zionist nationalism. The
major political driving force in such a position was the
common legacy of anti-imperialist struggle of the Indians
and the Palestinians. Gandhi's views on the Zionist
doctrine and his firm commitment to the Palestinian cause
starting from the 1930s obviously influenced the design
of independent India's position on the Palestine
issue.
Gandhi's prescription for the Jews in Germany and the
Arabs in Palestine was non-violent resistance. With
regard to the Jewish problem in Germany, Gandhi noted, "I
am convinced that if someone with courage and vision can
arise among them to lead them in non-violent action, the
winter of their despair can, in the twinkling of an eye,
be turned into the summer of hope." His views on Zionism
and his prescription of non-violent action and
self-sacrifice to the Jews in Germany generated reactions
ranging from anger to despair. Famous Jewish pacifists,
Martin Buber, Judah Magnes and Hayim Greenberg, who
otherwise admired Gandhi, felt "highly offended by
Gandhi's anti-Zionism" and criticized him for his lack of
understanding of the spirit of Zionism. Martin Buber, in
a long reply to Gandhi's Harijan editorial, remarked,
"You are only concerned, Mahatma, with the "right of
possession" on the one side; you do not consider the
right to a piece of free land on the other side - for
those who are hungering for it."
As mentioned earlier, Gandhi refused to view the
Zionist "hunger" for land in Palestine as a right. Gandhi
wrote on 7 January 1939 the following in response to an
editorial in the Statesman, "I hold that non-violence is
not merely a personal virtue. It is also a social virtue
to be cultivated like the other virtues. Surely society
is largely regulated by the expression of non-violence in
its mutual dealing. What I ask for is an extension of it
on a larger, national and international scale."
Also, it is significant to note that, as far as Gandhi
was concerned, non-violent action was not pacifism or a
defensive activity but a way of waging war. This war
without violence also requires discipline, training and
the assessment of the strength and weakness of the
enemy.
According to Paul Power, four factors influenced
Gandhi's position on Zionism:
- "First, he was sensitive about the ideas of Muslim
Indians who were anti-Zionists because of their sympathy
for Middle Eastern Arabs opposed to the Jewish National
Home; second, he objected to any Zionist methods
inconsistent with his way of non-violence; third, he
found Zionism contrary to his pluralistic nationalism,
which excludes the establishment of any State based
solely or mainly on one religion; and fourth, he
apparently believed it imprudent to complicate his
relations with the British, who held the mandate in
Palestine."
Gandhi withstood almost all Zionist attempts at
extracting a pro-Zionist stance from him. G.H. Jansen
wrote about the failure of Zionist lobbying with
Gandhi:
"His opposition [to Zionism] remained
consistent over a period of nearly 20 years and remained
firm despite skilful and varied applications to him of
that combination of pressure and persuasion known as
lobbying, of which the Zionists are past masters."
Apart from responses to Gandhi's anti-Zionism from
Jewish pacifists such as Buber, Magnes and Greenberg,
Jansen points out at least four separate instances of
Zionist attempts to get a favourable statement from
Gandhi. At first, Hermann Kallenbach, Gandhi's Jewish
friend in South Africa, came to India in 1937 and stayed
for weeks with Gandhi trying to convince him of the
merits of the Zionist cause. Then, in the 1930s, as
requested by Rabbi Stephen Wise, the American pacifist
John Haynes Holmes, tried "to obtain from Gandhi a
declaration favourable to Zionism". In March 1946, a
British MP from the Labour Party, Sydney Silverman, an
advocate of Indian independence in Britain, attempted to
change Gandhi's mind. At the end of their heated
conversation, Gandhi stated that "after all our talk, I
am unable to revise the opinion I gave you in the
beginning." The fourth Zionist attempt to change Gandhi's
mind was by Louis Fischer, Gandhi's famous biographer, to
whom Gandhi reported to have said that "the Jews have a
good case."
Later, Gandhi clarified in one of his final pieces on
Zionism and the Palestine question on 14 July 1946 that
"I did say some such thing in the course of a
conversation with Mr. Louis Fischer on the subject." He
added, "I do believe that the Jews have been cruelly
wronged by the world."
Gandhi went back to his initial position by
categorically stating that "But in my opinion, they
[the Jews] have erred grievously in seeking to
impose themselves on Palestine with the aid of America
and Britain and now with the aid of naked terrorism...
Why should they depend on American money or British arms
for forcing themselves on an unwelcome land? Why should
they resort to terrorism to make good their forcible
landing in Palestine?"
There were an influential number of Jews who thought
that force, only force, could ensure the establishment of
a Jewish national home in Palestine. They adopted
terrorism as the method to achieve their national goal.
This policy of subjugation of the Palestinians by Zionist
terror was totally rejected by Gandhi in no uncertain
terms.
A few months before his assassination, Gandhi answered
the question "What is the solution to the Palestine
problem?" raised by Doon Campbell of Reuters:
"It has become a problem which seems almost insoluble.
If I were a Jew, I would tell them: 'Do not be so silly
as to resort to terrorism...' The Jews should meet the
Arabs, make friends with them and not depend on British
aid or American aid, save what descends from
Jehovah."
* Dr. Ramakrishnan is a
senior lecturer, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam,
Kerala, India. He presented this paper on June 13, 1998
at a seminar organized by the Institute of Islamic and
Arab Studies. The seminar was inaugurated by the chairman
of India's National Minorities Commission, Prof. Tahir
Mahmoud, who highlighted the traditional Indian support
for the Palestinian struggle against Zionist
Occupation.
Posted January 6, 2002
Copyright © 2002 TFF
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