'Zionists, Indian Nationalists and the Politics of Belonging' explores the phenomenon of nationalism through the prism of two nationalist movements that have had a profound impact on the Middle East, South Asia and the wider world - Zionism and Indian nationalism. It sets out to explain the longing to belong that makes people embrace a cause demanding not just great personal commitment but the abandonment of homes and the dissolution of communities. It also examines how individual Zionists and Indian nationalists sought to address the intolerance and exclusion that disfigures the face of nationalism and lends it its malign capacity to generate hatred and conflict. Focusing on the half-century preceding the independence and partition of India and Palestine within nine months in 1947/48, the book considers aspects of the lives, writings and political activity of several Zionists and Indian nationalists, as well as the story of how an ancient community of Indian Jews - the Cochin Jews - uprooted themselves to go to Israel. It illumines the paradoxes of nationalism using biography, community history, the fascinating story of the encounter between Zionism and Indian nationalism, and the efforts of those in India and Palestine who strove to reconcile the intolerant impulses in nationalism with avowedly universal liberal values and a secular, pluralist state.

Table of Contents

Introduction: the problem of national belonging 1. Imagining nations, creating states: belonging and excluding 2. The Cochin Jews: a community's belonging 3. Abraham Barak Salem: a man's longing to belong 4. The binational Zionists: inclusive belonging? 5. Gandhi and Nehru on Zionism and national belonging 6. Dreams and nightmares: nation and belonging in Israel and India Conclusion: Imagining communities, building states

Author Biography

James Chiriyankandath is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, and edits the journal Commonwealth & Comparative Politics. Born in Kenya to Indian parents, he lived in Sudan and gained a doctorate in modern Indian history from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Hull before joining London Guildhall University as a lecturer in politics in 1993. He was then Principal Lecturer in International Relations, London Metropolitan University, until 2009. He has a lifelong interest in religion and politics and in the course of twenty-five years of teaching and research on South Asia and the Middle East, has published widely on Hindu nationalism, political Islam, communal politics, secularism, and human rights. He belongs to the Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel in Hampstead and now divides his time between London and Cochin (India).