March 14 is the birth anniversary of Albert Einstein, who, almost 70 years after his death, remains the most famous scientist in the world. While Einstein was a genius with many scientific breakthroughs to his name, he was also a Jew, who could not escape the political and ideological currents of his time.
Einstein had to take US citizenship after the Nazis came to power in his country Germany, and raided his house while he was away on a visiting professorship at the California Institute of Technology.
Einstein favoured the creation of a state of Israel for all persecuted Jews — the philosophy of Zionism — although he also wanted “reasonable agreement with the Arabs”. When the fate of Israel was to be decided at the UN in 1947, Zionist leaders were trying to secure support from across the world. To persuade the leader of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, they approached Einstein.
Einstein, thus, wrote to Nehru on June 13, 1947, underlining the reasons India should support Israel. Nehru wrote back on July 11, 1947, with a polite but firm no. Here are excerpts from the two letters.
What Einstein wrote to Nehru
Einstein began with congratulating Nehru for India recently abolishing untouchability. “May I tell you of the deep emotion with which I read recently that the Indian Constituent Assembly has abolished untouchability?… I read that the curse of the pariah was about to be lifted from millions of Hindus in the very days when the attention of the world was fixed on the problem of another group of human beings who, like the untouchables, have been the victims of persecution and discrimination for centuries.”
Elaborating on the plight of the Jews and why they deserved a home in Palestine, he then said, “…Long before the emergency of Hitler, I made the cause of Zionism mine because through it I saw a means of correcting a flagrant wrong. I refer to the peculiar disability suffered by the Jewish people by which they were deprived of the opportunity to live on the same basis as other peoples…Jews have been persecuted as individuals; the Jewish people has been unable to develop fruitfully as a cultural and ethnic group… Zionism offered the means of ending this discrimination. Through the return to the land to which they were bound by close historic ties…Jews sought to abolish their pariah status among peoples.”
He then pointed out the development Jews had brought to Palestine, “I find profoundly gratifying the fact that the reconstruction of Palestine has taken not through the exploitation of native workers — the usual pattern of imperialism — but through the heroic toil of Jewish pioneers. The once malaria-ridden swamps, the stony mountain slopes, the salt shores of the Dead Sea, now fertile and blooming, are evidence of a creative impulse whose thwarting would make mankind, as well as Jew and Arab, the poorer.”
He then ended with, “I trust that you, who so badly have struggled for freedom and justice, will place your great influence on behalf of the claim for justice made by the people who for so long and so dreadfully have suffered from its denial.”
What Nerhu wrote back to Einstein
Nehru affirmed India’s sympathy for Jews and horror at the treatment meted out to them, but raised the question of Arab rights too. “Where rights come into conflict it is not an easy matter to decide. With all our sympathy for the Jews we must and do feel that the rights and future of the Arabs are involved in this question,” Nehru wrote.
Foreshadowing what was to come, Nehru further said, “I do not myself see how this problem can be resolved by violence and conflict on one side or the other. Even if such violence and conflict achieve certain ends for the moment, they must necessarily be temporary. I do earnestly hope that some kind of an agreement might be arrived at between the Arabs and the Jews. I do not think even an outside power can impose its will for long or enforce some new arrangement against the will of the parties concerned.”
To Einstein’s claims about the development of Palestine, he said, “I know that the Jews have done a wonderful piece of work in Palestine and have raised the standards of the people there, but one question troubles me. After all these remarkable achievements, why have they failed to gain the goodwill of the Arabs? Why do they want to compel the Arabs to submit against their will to certain demands? The way of approach has been one which does not lead to a settlement, but rather to the continuation of the conflict.”
Historians have since documented how the “development” in Palestine had come at the cost of exclusion of the Arabs, with Jews neither employing nor mingling with them.
Nehru also pointed to the role played by Britain in exacerbating the trouble. “I have no doubt that the fault is not confined to one party but that all have erred. I think also that the chief difficulty has been the continuation of British rule in Palestine. We know, to our cost, that when a third party dominates, it is exceedingly difficult for the others to settle their differences, even when that third party has good intentions, — and third parties seldom, have such intentions!”
He ended with, “I would assure you, with all earnestness, that I would like to do all in my power to help the Jewish people in their distress, in so far as I can do so, without injuring other people.”
What happened at the UN, finally
The partition of Palestine was put to vote on November 29, 1947. Thirty-three countries voted for the creation of Israel, India was among the 13 that voted against. Ten states — including the UK, which had played a large part in bolstering the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine — abstained.
Why India did not support Israel’s creation
As is clear from Nehru’s letter, India, experiencing a bloody partition itself caused by colonial meddling, was not in favour of another nation being divided on religious lines.
Second, Indian Muslims were sympathetic to the cause of the displaced Palestinians, and the Indian government was conscious of this sympathy. With a certain conflict with Pakistan ahead, India also wanted the support of other Muslim countries.
Third, India’s own experience of colonialism made it wary of supporting the carving up of a nation backed by the power and money of the West. India instead advocated a federal state, where both Jews and Arabs had autonomy.
Einstein and Nehru met during the latter's visit to the US in November 1949. (Photo: Harry S Truman library museum) 
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