Dear people of Palestine, forgive us our silence

indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/india-abstent-unhrc-resolution-on-gaza-violence-7362384

June 17, 2021

A boy closes his eyes as he plays hide-and-seek at dusk in a neighborhood heavily

damaged by airstrikes during an 11-day war between Gaza's Hamas rulers and Israel in
Beit Hanoun, Gaza Strip. (AP Photo/File)
Written by Manoj Kumar Jha |
Updated: June 17, 2021 8:29:53 am
We would like you to read this letter as an expression of regret from millions of Indian
people for our recent abstention on Palestine’s resolution at the United Nations Human
Rights Council (UNHRC). We not only abstained from voting on a crucial resolution
regarding the large-scale violence in the Gaza strip, but our representatives abandoned
the rich legacy of the Indo-Palestinian relationship that has survived several stormy
phases of history.

India recently commemorated the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. The
current dispensation is very fond of paying lip service to his ideals and teachings. When
the issues concerning Palestine are raised, Gandhiji’s words must be remembered:
“Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or
France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is
going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct…. Surely, it
would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be
restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.” (Harijan, November 26,
1938).

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This invocation from Gandhiji resonates with a majority of thinkers, activists, and citizens
across the world, but somehow does not find favour with our current government. A
majority of Indians still fondly recall how the Indo-Palestine bilateral ties in the first few
decades since Independence were defined by friendship and empathy. Instead of
abandoning this great legacy, the ties between India and Palestine need to be
strengthened with a collective sense of urgency — for the sake of humanity. I am always
very pleased when I hear of young students in Indian universities organising events to
express their solidarity with the Palestinian people. When writers and artists from India
and Palestine come together to discuss their work, it opens up possibilities of imagining a
just, beautiful, and peaceful future for all of us. We must continue to engage and exchange
ideas. We must remember and speak of our shared history.

Indians cannot be a part of what historian Ilan Pappe terms the de-nationalisation of your
history. I am fully aware of the sense of the psychological desertion this situation may
usher on you. For a country that believes in the principles of “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam”
(the world is one family), it is even more critical for us to denounce all that is morally
incorrect and unjust. However, the diplomatic narratives being touted here are making us
take an ambivalent, vague position that does not acknowledge or take cognisance of the
specifics, let alone fully support the cause of a dispossessed people. Seventy-four years
after Independence, we have become silent spectators in a crime committed against
humanity by aligning with those who are responsible for perpetrating what has been
variously termed as “apartheid” and “incremental genocide”.

There has been a systematic attempt at

misrepresenting, invisibilising and vilifying
your heroic struggle against the forceful and
violent dispossession of land, as well as
memory. Hence, this recent abstention in
the UN is part of a paradigm this regime
has nurtured meticulously, wanting us to
forget that when it is about taking sides,
India has always stood with the oppressed
without caring about the might or clout of
the oppressor.

The historical trajectory of our emotional

association with your struggle is being
undone meticulously. Unfortunately, a
considerable section of our mainstream
media has helped the regime by expanding the sphere of the Islamophobic discourse. As a
result, they have reduced your cause into nothing but a Muslim issue, which the Western
world did for so many years.

Let me try to elucidate how we reached such a stage where we have no regret in doing
away with the rich heritage of the Indo-Palestinian relationship. We are at that moment in
history when the government has started believing that an electoral majority is a licence
to trample over anything, including history. We have seen several such instances in our

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domestic sphere and equally so in our relations abroad. There is a vast disconnect
between how the government thinks and how the people who elected the same
government feel. Unfortunately, we do not have any mechanism to check the government
and its decisions before the next general elections, still a few years away.

It is worth recalling the words of Yehudi Menuhin, a Jew and one of the finest violinists,
while receiving Israel’s prestigious Wolf prize for his contribution to music in 1991: “One
fact is abundantly clear, namely this wasteful governing by fear, by contempt for the basic
dignities of life, this steady asphyxiation of a dependent people should be the very last
means to be adopted by those who themselves know too well the awful significance, the
unforgettable suffering, of such an existence”.

We are deeply pained at the death and injury of hundreds of small children. We are also
worried, even as we ourselves struggle with the deadly second wave of Covid-19, that you
remain doubly vulnerable in this pandemic due to the unavailability of medical supplies
and vaccines. Forgive us our Palestinian friends, for what we have done in the recent past.
Forgive us for not living up to your expectations. Forgive us for our loud silence. But let
me assure you that the civilisational ethos of India is far more powerful than any regime
which believes that they can erase and rewrite memory and history.

This article first appeared in the print edition on June 17, 2021 under the
title ‘Dear people of Palestine’. The writer is a Member of Parliament (Rajya
Sabha)

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