The Israel-Palestine imbroglio wants an Indian resolution. Both sides, Jews and Muslims, have a lot to be taught from India’s successes and errors. Without imbibing the Vedantic worth of common humanism, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (The World Is One Family), there is no such thing as a escape from the vicious cycle of violence into which the two sides have been plunging headlong with unfailing regularity. The 75-year-long continuum of war-pause-war can’t be damaged except there’s a paradigmatic shift from the clichéd resolution of both two states or a bi-national one state.
In 1947, India acquiesced to partition and a two-state resolution so as to keep away from civil struggle. Result: We not solely had a civil struggle of holocaust proportions, and a endless sequence of communal riots but in addition 4 wars between the two nations which have remained on the brink of one more, probably, a nuclear one. Like Pakistan, the proposed Palestinian state would intrinsically be a struggle state whose ideological raison d’être could be the reconquest of Israel, very like Pakistan’s has been the reconquest of India.
Though partition was compelled in the title of two irreconcilable nations in India, one-third of the Muslims of undivided India, about 4 crore at the moment, nonetheless remained right here. That India didn’t grow to be a theocracy a la Pakistan is one facet of the story. Another is that it neither grew to become a bi-national state wherein Hindus and Muslims shared political energy in the title of their respective religions. The new India, a nation-state, belonged to its residents, individually, and never to their denominational id. A bi-national state would end in imperium in imperio, a state inside a state, which might sanctify the two-nation concept and accord constitutional sanction to aggressive communalism.
True, pseudo-secular discourse and vote-bank politics have typically compromised the character of the polity, however these efforts have been extra underhand than upfront. A bi-national state of Israel-Palestine would compound the drawback, a lot the identical as the separate citizens did for India.
The confederacy of religions is a medieval mannequin wherein completely different nationalities lived their separate lives below the suzerainty of an overarching imperial energy; the place people had been subsumed of their respective nationalities and had no direct relation with the state. In a contemporary state, the place people depend, each citizen has a direct relation with the state. If nationality had been to be one’s major political affiliation, and relation with the state was to be mediated by it, earlier than lengthy the state would unravel. A bi-national Israel-Palestine state could be the first step in the direction of two mutually hostile states. Therefore, it’s not a viable resolution.
As for the two states, the Muslims mentioned no to it so many instances as to render the concept finally implausible. They mentioned no to the partition plan proposed by the Peel Commission in 1936-37 below which solely about 20 per cent of areas had been earmarked for the Jewish state. Again, they rejected the UN partition plan of 1947 below which the Jews had been to have about 55 per cent of the land. In precept, the Jews weren’t opposed to a Muslim state in obligatory Palestine. The Muslims, nevertheless, wouldn’t have a Jewish state in what they thought-about their nation. The end result, due to this fact, was that whereas the Jews established their state in 1948, the Muslims couldn’t set up theirs.
The deeply ingrained Islamic antisemitism wouldn’t countenance a Jewish state of their midst. Besides, there have been vital structural causes too. Palestine had by no means been a state, and Palestinians weren’t a nation. Therefore, they lacked the political character obligatory for constructing a state. Under the Ottomans, Palestine was a mere district of their Syrian province. Its distinct political character emerged solely in 1920 with the grant of a mandate to Britain for the space west of River Jordan. The space east of the river — as a lot Palestine as the space west — was named Transjordan, which was shaped right into a state below the son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca.
The Muslims mentioned no with such persistence to forming a state till the Jewish one was annihilated that, hurtling by the wars of 1967 and 1973, the areas wherein a notionally viable state might be based, had handed into Israeli occupation. By the time Intifada occurred and the Oslo Agreement led to the formation of the Palestinian Authority, Jewish occupation and settlements had splintered the West Bank into lots of of non-contiguous enclaves, which couldn’t be banded collectively to construct a state with territorial integrity. As is clear, as an alternative of 1 built-in entity, there could be lots of of disintegrated Bantustans, whereby every enclave could be state unto itself.
Having seen the unviability of each the typical options, i.e., two-state and binational state fashions, let’s think about an unorthodox, even heretical, mannequin of 1 state, Israel, the place Muslims would reside as equal residents with full civil rights as obtainable in civilised societies of the day.
The largest hurdle in visualising such a polity is the monotheistic ideological framework to which each the Jews and the Muslims belong. Monotheism doesn’t tolerate distinction, variety and dissent. Thus, the European Christians, belonging to the identical Abrahamic custom, exterminated the native populations of America and Australia. In India, nevertheless, regardless of successive waves of invasions, there have at all times been changes and lodging. Neither the invaders might consider wiping out the native inhabitants nor the natives considered throwing out the newcomers, irrespective of whether or not they had been invaders or immigrants. This might be attainable solely due to the quintessential Indian ethic of coexisting with distinction and variety and recognising all religions to be equally true.
The classical Indian knowledge, pithily summarised in epigrams like sarva dharma sambhav (all religions are the identical), ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti (reality is one, the clever understand it in a different way) and Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam are emblems of the collective psyche which has gone into shaping the temperament of tolerance, acceptance and coexistence. This, and never constitutional interpolations, underlies Indian secularism.
Until each side be taught from Indian tradition, they received’t have the option to break away from the spiral of violence. Neither Abrahamic monotheism nor Western secularism might present the path. A monotheistic faith regards all different religions as false, and their followers misguided. No surprise Jews and Arab Muslims, each progenies of Abraham, each monotheists, each circumcised, discover it inconceivable to construct a shared polity. As for Western secularism, whereas it’s true it has helped them curb Christian antisemitism to a fantastic extent, it’s additionally true that their present Judeophilia has materialised solely after the diaspora vacated Europe to relocate to Palestine.
Therefore, the Indian mannequin wherein folks of various religions, generally with troublesome pasts, reside along with equal rights in a single polity is the solely resolution in the direction of which Jews and Muslims are certain to transfer. One might solely want that they did it earlier than inviting extra miseries upon themselves from one another’s fingers.
One factor, nevertheless, ought to stay clear. As in India, any try to change the Hindu character of the nation would unsettle its secular polity as Indian secularism springs from its Hindu ethos, in Israel, the Jewishness of the state might be challenged solely at the price of a relapse into its racist recess. The state has been shaped by the Jews, and levers of energy ought to stay of their fingers till they themselves elect Muslims like Britons elected Sunak and Americans elected Obama. Principles of equal rights shouldn’t be used to subvert the system which granted it in the first place. In India, utilizing constitutional secularism to promote communalism has had backlash in which there’s a lesson for everybody.
When Prophet Muhammad migrated to Medina, he tried to weld the Jews and Muslims right into a single polity, Ummat Wahida! The experiment failed. Maybe, it’s time to revive it.
Ibn Khaldun Bharati is the pen title of a pupil of Islam who seems to be at Islamic historical past from an Indian perspective. He tweets at @IbnKhaldunIndic. Views expressed in the above piece are private and solely that of the writer. They don’t essentially mirror News18’s views.
