India isn’t the only country where minority groups are accused of influencing government policy. Of course, an authoritarian nation like China will never allow Xinjian’s Uighurs or Tibetans any say in policy-making. But the run-up to Britain’s May 7 parliamentary election finds Jonathan Arkush, vice-president of the Board of Deputies, which is described as the voice of British Jewry, warning the Labour Party leader Ed Miliband that Jews won’t vote for him unless he changes his position on Israel and Palestine.
When Manmohan Singh didn’t attend the Commonwealth summit in Colombo, many Indians blamed him for subordinating India’s relations with Sri Lanka to Tamil sensibilities. Earlier, his landmark nuclear deal with the US almost didn’t happen because Sonia Gandhi was afraid of the Muslim reaction. Indian states with powerful textile and palm oil lobbies have similarly held up agreements with Bangladesh and Malaysia. Mamata Banerjee’s calculations regarding the waters of the Teesta river prevented another pact with Bangladesh. Any democratic government, but especially a coalition regime without a single-party majority, has to be mindful of the views of small groups that control a significant number of votes.
Jews have always been to the fore globally in using their enormous financial and creative powers to serve their political ends. The most famous instance in modern politics concerns President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s commitment to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdul Aziz about a Palestinian homeland. As soon as Roosevelt died, his successor, Harry Truman, told dismayed State Department officials he had to answer to hundreds of thousands of people who wanted Zionism to succeed, but didn’t have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among his constituents. That ended unconditional US support for an independent Palestinian homeland.
As recorded in my book, ‘Waiting for America: India and the US in the New Millennium,’ India took advantage of American Jewry’s obvious clout to build bridges to Israel after decades of a policy of private collaboration but public ostracism. Until then, India and Israel were barely on speaking terms officially. The Israeli consul-general in Mumbai was subjected to all manner of petty indignities and made to feel unwelcome. He was forced once to cancel a reception in New Delhi to celebrate his country’s national day after invitation cards had gone out. Israeli diplomats ascribed this duality to the Congress Party’s dependence on the Muslim vote.
Dr Karan Singh was India’s ambassador to Washington when the change took place with his deputy chief of mission, Lalit Mansingh (later foreign secretary) receiving P.V. Narasimha Rao’s direct instructions to cultivate Jewish groups that exercised considerable influence with the media and lobbied members of the US Congress with speed and efficiency.
The Anti-Defamation League of Bnai B’rith, whose director had visited India in Rajiv Gandhi’s time vigorously tracked down any adverse comment in the media and was in touch with senators and Congressmen within half an hour of any perceived slur. There was also the American Israel Public Affairs Committee with 55,000 members and a $14.2 million budget. Fortune magazine called it Washington’s second most influential lobby, after the American Association of Retired Persons. Friends in the State Department were happy to introduce the genial Mansingh to the league and he was surprised to find how many Americans in high position were Jews with Israeli connections, among them India’s friend, Congressman Stephen Solarz.
Generous with help and advice, the league suggested that diplomatic relations between Israel and India would facilitate cooperation. Their UN delegations already consulted each other, albeit privately, and Israel had helped with setting up the Research and Analysis Wing of the Cabinet Secretariat and trained a batch of 45 commandos when India raised the National Security Guards in 1984. Moshe Yegar, deputy director-general in the Israeli foreign ministry, had visited New Delhi. Like earlier contacts, these were also strictly covert.
Mansingh saw an opportunity for a breakthrough when the Americans invited Turkey and China to the West Asian peace talks. But senior State Department officials who had visited India and Pakistan in 1990 warned him that participants had to enjoy the confidence of both sides: Israel saw India as friend of only the Arabs. By ending its boycott, India might not only join the peace process but also win points in Washington. They added that Yosef Hadas, the Israeli foreign secretary, would soon be visiting Washington and was keen on meeting Mansingh.
Anticipating that Hadas would raise the question of diplomatic relations, Mansingh sought instructions from Narasimha Rao, who was acutely aware that India was in danger of being “the only country left out in the whole world” without proper relations with Israel. Yasser Arafat, who was visiting India in January 1992, assured the prime minister that Egypt had proved that cooperation with Israel only helped the Palestinians. Narasimha Rao sent word back agreeing to both the meeting and to exchanging ambassadors.
There was a problem of where to meet, as both sides wanted to avoid premature publicity; eventually, Hadas, accompanied by Yehoyada Haim, a Kurdish Jewish scholar who taught at Georgetown University, dropped in unnoticed at the Indian embassy in Washington and had a long private chat with Mansingh. The Israelis had a string of grievances. But when Hadas was told of the prime minister’s readiness to enter into full diplomatic relations, he promised to sponsor Indian participation in group meetings on the West Asian peace process. India benefited from the position that Jews enjoyed in the US.
The irony in Britain is that Miliband’s parents were both Jewish immigrants of Polish extraction and he himself has boasted of his ambition of being the first Jew in Number 10 Downing Street. Queen Victoria’s favourite prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, doesn’t count because he had converted to Anglicanism and attended church. But a survey shows that although Jewish intellectuals are traditionally supposed to support socialism, 69 per cent of Britain’s approximately 300,000 Jews today prefer the Tories. Only 22 per cent are expected to vote Labour.
The background to this finding consists of a series of anti-Semitic outrages in Paris, Brussels and elsewhere, which prompted Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to declare that Jews were no longer safe in Europe. He offered them asylum in Israel, and reports suggest that some well-established European Jews may be taking up the offer. Presumably, Israel’s 75,000 Indian Jews will also claim they felt unsafe in their original habitat.
British Jews complain of 1,168 anti-Semitic incidents such as synagogues and graveyards being desecrated and swastikas scrawled on walls in the last year. But the specific reason for turning against the Labour Party is the House of Commons vote on recognising a sovereign Palestine without waiting for Israel’s agreement. Not just that. While Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs were allowed to vote freely on the issue, Miliband enforced a three-line whip in favour of the move. He will not be the first politician to pay a heavy price for opposing a powerful minority group.
