In the spring of 1936, as Palestinians rebelled against British rule and its pro-Zionist policies in what was then called Mandatory Palestine, a wave of fear rippled through the colonial administration in India: what if the violence in West Asia singed the Indian subcontinent?
“There is a possibility that during the present disturbed state of affairs in Palestine, Palestinian Arabs or their sympathisers belonging to other Arab [states] may try to come to India and attempt to arouse sympathy by personal propaganda among Indian Muslims,” the Intelligence Bureau said in a secret memo dated June 30, 1936 to top police officers across India. “It is therefore requested that arrangements may kindly be made to keep a look-out for this and to report to this office anything of interest that may come to notice in this connection.”
In response, police officers from places such as Allahabad, Bombay, Bihar, Peshawar and Tellicherry reported about the observance of “Palestine Day” on June 19, when political leaders in these cities tried to galvanise Muslim crowds but to little success.
More than the Muslim masses, it was the politicians in India who championed the Palestinian cause in the 1930s. “The Indian Muslim elite – of which many claimed descent from various Arab, Iranian and Turkish ethnicities – were always conscious of their membership in trans-Indian, pan-Islamic world- the ‘ummah’ beyond the borders of their own homeland,” wrote Omar Khalidi, long-term research librarian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
One big way the Indian Muslim elite of this period participated in the pan-Islamic world – when there was little wealth in West Asia – was by contributing towards the maintenance of Muslim holy sites in the region. With this in mind, Palestinians looked to India for assistance.
Fundraising trips
As early as November 1923, a delegation from Palestine travelled to India to raise money for the restoration of historic mosques in Jerusalem. Back at home, conflict had erupted, with tensions running high between the Muslim and Jewish communities.
The Palestinian delegation hoped to collect 130,000 pounds sterling in India. In an interview with the Associated Press, its members said this amount “would be just sufficient to restore the historical and dilapidated mosques in the holy city of Jerusalem to their former position”. To restore the mosques completely, with the original decorations, half a million pounds was needed.
In the interview, members of the delegation said they were satisfied with the “reception and encouragement accorded them by the Mussulmans of Bombay, Delhi and other centres they had visited”. But by the end of their visit, they were only able to raise about 25,000 pounds, the bulk of which came from Mir Osman Ali Khan, the Nizam of Hyderabad.
The Hyderabad ruler’s generosity was put to good use in one of Islam’s holiest houses of worship. “The Nizam of Hyderabad donated chandeliers to the Al Aqsa mosque, which till date adorn the mosque,” the Indian Representative Office in Ramallah says on its website.
A decade later, in 1933, one more Palestinian delegation came to India, this time to collect funds for the establishment of a world Muslim university in Jerusalem called the Al Aqsa University. At the head of the delegation was the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, and one of its members was former Egyptian minister Mohammed Ali Pasha.
The delegation spent two months in India and called on several nawabs as well as the spiritual leader of the Bohra community and the ruler of Hyderabad. Mir Osman Ali Khan donated Rs 1 lakh towards the university, an amount that would be worth Rs 4.5 crore in today’s money.
By the time the Arab Revolt began in Palestine in 1936, some British officials had grown suspicious about the Nizam’s donations. In one exchange they worried about the Hyderabad government’s opinion on Palestine and the extent of the Nizam’s generosity.
“A vernacular newspaper of Lucknow, ‘The Haqiqat Daily’, reports that a society styling itself ‘Majlis-i-Dafaa’ has sent a letter of thanks to His Exalted Highness the Nizam for his donation of £5,000 to the Palestinian Arabs,” P Gaisford, an official in the Foreign and Political Department of the government of India, wrote in a September 1936 letter to JH Thompson, Secretary to the British Resident in Hyderabad.
For that time, 5,000 pounds was a sizeable sum. Given that the British had a tight grip on the flow of money from India, the transfer of this large amount through official channels would have been detectable to the government, which it was not.
In his reply to Gaisford, Thompson suggested another possibility: “Possibly the press has got hold of the old story of the gift of Rs. 1 lakh to the Muslim university in Palestine.” He clarified that this older transfer was made through the government of India.
“As regard the attitude of the people of Hyderabad State to the Palestine Arab question, there have been neither public meetings about nor public references to the question and so far as can be seen the public here are not in the least interested,” Thompson said. “Certainly His Exalted Highness’ Government has not addressed itself in any way to the matter.”
The Nizam’s donation for the proposed university finally ended up being diverted to fund the Palestinian uprising.
Sincere gratitude
Apart from the Nizam, another major supporter among the Indian elite of Arab and Islamic heritage was Raza Ali Khan Bahadur, the Nawab of the princely state of Rampur.
In 1934, Raza Ali Khan was asked for financial assistance by Khwaja Nazir Hasan Ansari, the Sheikh of the Indian Zawiah or Sufi centre in Palestine that was established where Indian saint Baba Farid once meditated. Now serving as the Indian Hospice, the Zawiah was originally meant to accommodate followers of Sufism who visited Palestine and Ansari wanted to build four rooms in it.
The Rampur Nawab approved the construction plans before agreeing to send 223.5 Palestine pounds, which would be worth over 20,000 pounds sterling today. He transferred the money through the Political and Foreign Department of the government of India to the Supreme Moslem Council in Jerusalem, which then passed it on to the Awkaf or Wakf that ran the Zawiah.
Aside from this, Raza Ali Khan sent 372.5 Palestine pounds to the Supreme Moslem Council for the restoration and upkeep of sacred Muslim shrines – a donation received with gratitude. “I shall be glad if you will be kind enough to convey to His Highness the Nuwab of Rampur an expression of our sincere thanks for his benevolent contribution which will always be considered as a kind remembrance of His Highness’s visit to the Holy Land,” Mohammad Amin, president of the Supreme Moslem Council, wrote in a letter to the Chief Secretary of the Government Offices in Jerusalem.
The Indian Zawiah that Raza Ali Khan gave money to also managed to raise funds from the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Nawab of Bahawalpur, says Khalidi. “The main building in the hospice was named as Osman Manzil after the Nizam’s name,” Khalidi wrote.
Gandhi’s magazine
Watching these expressions of support made the British administration uncomfortable. One cause of its anxiety was M Bonami, the apparent writer of the article in The Haqiqat Daily that accused the Nizam of sending money for the Palestinian resistance. A Pole who had lived in India since the 1920s, Bonami made similar assertions in a handwritten letter sent to Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy of India, in August 1936.
“This morning a friendly Muhammaden gentleman, a Government servant as secretary to a high official in Calcutta by name Yusouf Ismail (Abdulla) alias James told me that already Rs 15 lakhs have been collected for the fight in Palestine, mostly in six provinces (the little I can remember, not all) Hyderabad – Rs. 2 ½ lakhs, Gawalior [Gwalior] – Rs 1½ lakhs, Bahawalpur – Jhaura [Jaora] – and two more,” Bonami wrote. “There was no time before parting with that gentleman to inquire more. I asked for some publication on it – he said that is going on in secrecy.”
Bonami’s allegations were taken seriously by the British administration, which made attempts to check if there was any clandestine funding for the Palestinians.
The bigger concern for the Raj, however, was the possibility of the events in Palestine resonating with India’s large Muslim population. It had not been long since the violent Malabar Rebellion, triggered in 1921 by the British suppression of the Khilafat Movement, and the memories were still fresh. But no matter how much it wondered, police and intelligence reports in the mid-1930s were consistent in their conclusion that Palestine was an issue only for the political elite, whether Muslims or non-Muslims.
Among those speaking up against the British in Palestine was the Harijan, a weekly magazine founded by Mahatma Gandhi. In its October 1, 1938 issue, the magazine said, “The A.I.C.C. protests against the reign of terror that has now almost assumed the form of war between the British and Arabs of Palestine. The A.I.C.C. trusts that Britain would be well advised in revoking its present policy and leave Jews and Arabs to amicably settle the issues between them, and appeals to Jews to not take shelter behind British Imperialism.”
After the subcontinent attained independence from the British in 1947 and the princely states merged with India (and in some cases Pakistan), the funding for religious and cultural monuments in Palestine from nawabs dried up. Politically, though, India remained one of the strongest supporters of the Palestinian cause for decades.
The Indian Hospice, which stands on 1.5 acres, is the biggest symbol of the country in the land that is considered holy to the practitioners of the Abrahamic faiths. According to the website of the Indian Embassy in Tel Aviv, it is “currently in an advanced state of renovation, enabled by a grant from the Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi”.
Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. His Twitter handle is @ajaykamalakaran.
