Comparative Political Theory in Time and Place pp 155-186 | Cite as
The Jewish Gandhi Question, or, Ich and Swa: Martin Buber and the Five Minute Mahatma
Abstract
On 21 November 1938, a South Indian Jewish lawyer named Abraham Barak Salem attended “a special prayer recited for the German Jews’ persecution by Hitler and [the] Nazis” at his synagogue in the port city of Cochin. Salem is known as the “Jewish Gandhi” for his leadership of non-violent satyagraha campaigns to end caste-based discrimination within his local Indian Jewish community—of which he occupied the lowest rung or meshuchrarim. The special prayer was responding to Kristallnacht, the widespread violence against Jews in Nazi Germany and Austria foreshadowing Hitler’s Final Solution. Kristallnacht’s global profile demanded a response from Gandhi himself, who had hitherto remained silent on the Jews’ position in fascist Europe. On 26 November 1938, Gandhi published “The Jews” in which he claimed “[m]y sympathies are all with the Jews,” dismissed a Jewish Palestine as “a crime against humanity,” and encouraged Jews to engage in non-violent satyagraha against the Nazis:
Keywords
Political Theory Migratory Movement Settler Colonialism Jewish Question Christian MissionaryNotes
Acknowledgments
I thank Helen M. Kinsella and Daniel Kapust for inviting me to participate in the Theory’s Landscapes conference as well as for their comments on this article. Thanks also to the comments I received on my presentation from the other conference participants. The archival research featured in this chapter took place in 2009 on a Fulbright-Hays DDRA grant for a project then tentatively titled “Periyar, Ambedkar, and Gandhi: A Study in Comparative Political Theory” graciously hosted by the Madras Institute of Development Studies; many thanks to the several archivists at the Nehru Memorial Library and Museum, New Delhi, who helped me navigate the Gandhi collection. A closely related piece received feedback at the inaugural panel of the exhibit Global India: Kerala, Israel, Berkeley at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in November 2013, and I thank Lawrence Cohen and Francesco Spagnolo for the opportunity to present there; Francesco also helped me navigate the Magnes Collection, particularly the diaries of Abraham Barak Salem. A more complete version of this chapter benefitted from Stephen Eric Bronner’s generous remarks in 2015. Elements that featured as part of my presentation at the Theory’s Landscapes conference, but which have subsequently become a separate piece, received engaged comments that were indirectly instrumental in shaping the current chapter and thus deserve acknowledgment; work focused on such elements was presented first in Wendy Brown’s dissertation workshop in May 2010 and then at the Seventh Tamil Chair Conference at UC Berkeley in April 2011. Along the way, such work received thoughtful comments from Pradeep Chhibber and Mark Bevir.