Asianism and Its Limits
On contested dreams of pan-Asian unity—from Palestine to India and beyond.
This is an excerpt from Esmat Elhalaby’s Parting Gifts of Empire: Palestine and India at the Dawn of Decolonization (University of California Press, 2025).
Book cover of Parting Gifts of Empire, by Esmat Elhalaby
On the afternoon of February 5, 1947, members of the Egyptian Feminists Union huddled in the bedroom of an ailing Huda Shaarawi, doyen of the Arab women’s movement. A few days earlier the group had received an invitation to the Asian Relations Conference, and they were meeting to decide who would be dispatched to represent them. For the women assembled, the prospect of going to India was daunting. It was an unfamiliar place and would require a long journey by air. This scene is recounted in the memoirs of Hawaʾ Idris, a young cousin and mentee of Shaarawi’s. Idris summons a familiar trope: Arabs and Indians had long had a close relationship, and now was the time to renew it. The conference, she wrote, was a dream come true. “The pioneers of the nahda,” she exclaimed, “could not have imagined such an event would ever be organized.”
Egyptian Feminist Union meeting for the First Arab Women’s Conference bureau election, under the leadership of Huda Sha’rawi. Image: Emily Ibrahim Fares, الحركة النسائية اللبنانية, Beirut: Dar al-Thaqafah, p. 94.
Although Shaarawi herself was too ill to travel, she had already resolved that the group would send representatives to the conference. A woman by the name of ʿIsmat ʿIssam was the first to volunteer, offering to pay her own way and hoping to inspire another woman to join her. The meeting, however, was quickly derailed. Idris wrote that one participant in the meeting objected to attending the conference altogether. The intentions of the organizers, the unnamed woman said, needed to be interrogated. The women noted that Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, had just been in Cairo and warned that the conference was being boycotted by Indian Muslims and its organizers were hiding their anti-Muslim prejudices.
A month and a half earlier, Jinnah had indeed stopped in Cairo on his way back from London. While there he met with prominent political figures, including the mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini and Muslim Brotherhood head Hassan al-Banna. Not everyone in Egypt was enthusiastic about his presence, however. The Wafd Party, long aligned with the Indian National Congress, recounted in its newspaper that Jinnah’s “dependence on the British is not agreeable with Egypt’s great national principles.” Jinnah stoked Pan-Islamic anxieties when he proclaimed that “it is only when Pakistan is established that Indian and Egyptian Muslims will be really free; otherwise, there will be the menace of a Hindu Imperialist Raj spreading its tentacles right across the Middle East." A few days later, Akhbar al-Youm reported that Arab participation in the forthcoming Asian Relation Conference would mean “the virtual declaration of an Arab war on the Muslims of India!” Jinnah’s outrage had been sparked by Nehru’s comments in the Indian Constituent Assembly days earlier that India “has become—let us recognize it—leaders of the freedom movement of Asia, and whatever we do we should think of ourselves in these larger terms.”
Jinnah with Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husayni and other Palestinian and Egyptian delegates in Cairo, Egypt. Image: The Muslim Archive.
Nevertheless, Idris was not convinced by Jinnah’s declarations. She rebuffed the other woman, claiming that press reports were not evidence enough for such claims and that Jinnah himself was an unreliable source. Her opponent was outraged that Idris would challenge such a “great leader.” Shaarawi broke up the fight and decided that reliable information must be obtained before moving forward. She enlisted Idris to contact the Foreign Ministry and the Egyptian consulate in Bombay to find out if the conference was actually an anti-Muslim affair, as it had been characterized. The fact-finding mission determined that everything was sound. The Egyptian Feminist Union was heading to India.
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Hawa Idris and Karima El-Said with Jawaharlal Nehru. Image: Al-Misriyyah (Egyptian Feminist Union magazine).
ʿAbd al-Wahab al-ʿAzzam had himself long wished to go to India. He had a chance in the summer of 1939, when he was invited to attend a conference of Orientalists in Hyderabad, but the Second World War kept him away. After that lost opportunity, he recounts, his longing for India grew along with his “knowledge of its literature and languages.” Earlier in 1939, he had written a series of articles for the inaugural issues of the new Egyptian cultural weekly al-Thaqafa, titled “Islamic Literature of India,” which introduced the magazine’s readers to Mirza Ghalib and Muhammad Iqbal. Indeed, throughout the 1930s he wrote articles about Indian literature generally and Iqbal in particular for al-Risala. Azzam was Egypt’s premier Persianist and the founder of the Institute for Oriental Studies at Cairo University, where he had earned his doctorate in 1932 after receiving an MA at London’s School of Oriental Studies. As part of his doctoral dissertation, Azzam published the first full-length translation into Arabic of Ferdowsi’s epic Shahnameh. In March 1947, after years of longing and study, Azzam finally had his opportunity to go to India. The roster of Arabs, then, was filling up. With the Egyptian feminists Hawaʾ Idris and Karima al-Said, Azzam joined two more Egyptians at the Asian Relations Conference, including Mustafa Momin and Mustafa Kamal (the Egyptian consul in Bombay). A sixth Arab was also there, Lebanese politician Taqi al-Din al-Sulh, representing the Arab League.
“Arab and Indian women activists regularly analogized their plight over the course of the twentieth century, in the face of a reticent international women’s movement headquartered in the West.”
Arabs therefore shared the stage with Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, and Mohandas Gandhi in 1947, when thousands gathered on the grounds of the Old Fort in Delhi to witness the forging of new Asian relations. This Asian stage was already being shared by Arab feminists and their Indian counterparts in the years before the Asian relations conference. Arab women activists had participated in Indian Women’s Conferences in the 1940s, to powerful effect. And Shaarawi herself was well known and beloved by Indian nationalist leaders and writers. Anti-colonial feminism was one of a number of overlapping and sometimes competing forms of social and political thinking that inspired the 1947 conference’s participants. Arab and Indian women activists regularly analogized their plight over the course of the twentieth century, in the face of a reticent international women’s movement headquartered in the West.
Nehru, Gandhi and Abdul Ghaffar Khan at the Asian Relations Conference in Delhi, 1947. Image: Wikimedia Commons.
Meetings of “Eastern Women,” as they were known, took place throughout the first decades of the twentieth century. The days between the two world wars saw London, Paris, Brussels, and Berlin become hosts to many meetings Pan-African, Pan-Asian, and anti-imperialist in sentiment (some of them sponsored by the Comintern). But it was in those years immediately after the Second World War, accompanied as they were by the intensification of anti-colonial demands in the face of weakened, if belligerent, imperial powers in Europe, that postcolonial governments in waiting were finally able to collaborate on their own terms.
“The course of the proceedings themselves revealed the extent of the limits of Asia in world politics. ”
In his indispensable, if partisan, history of nonalignment and Afro-Asia, G. H. Jansen, a journalist and onetime press attaché for the Indian embassy in Cairo, recognized the Delhi conference as the beginnings of a new kind of Pan-Asianism. Indeed, he called it the “apex of Asianism.” “Never again,” he wrote, “would there be such a gushing outflow of the Asian spirit, pure and undefiled.” Despite this enthusiasm, however, the meeting seemed also to announce Asianism’s limits. The conflict between the Congress and the Muslim League revealed the limits of Asia in national affairs. “Thus,” announced London’s Economist, “the first consequence of a gathering theoretically aimed at promoting unity among Asiatics has been to add fuel to the flames of Indian civil strife.” Imperial observers were not the only critics. On the second day of the conference, after the fiery inaugural speeches, the great Indian Marxist and internationalist M. N. Roy released a manifesto casting doubt on the whole enterprise, titled “Asia and the World.” “Representatives of resurgent Asia! May you deserve the distinction! But the demonstration of fictious solidarity will not be enough,” Roy announced at the outset. He was an opponent of the capitalist and undemocratic composition of Nehru’s Indian National Congress. Nehru was, in Roy’s words, “the pale-pink pseudo-socialist idol of which today poses as the would-be liberator of Asia.” Unlike Europe, Roy argued, Asia was not a cultural unit, Japanese imperialism being a case in point. The course of the proceedings themselves revealed the extent of the limits of Asia in world politics. Two controversies in particular soured the mood. First was China’s disapproval of Tibet’s being invited as an independent delegation, an affair with lasting implications. The second controversy was a flare-up over the question of Palestine, an episode that would place the Arab delegates at the very center.
M.N. Roy (center) with Vladimir Lenin and Maxim Gorky at the Second Congress of the Communist International in Moscow, 1920.
Palestine Is Asian
What is perhaps most striking about how the Arab participants in the conference have been written off or their presence overshadowed by the real and imagined specter of Pan-Islam is the impact they had on the event’s actual proceedings. In the opening sessions of the conference, each delegation was asked to introduce themselves. Mostafa Momin declared that “liberty has dawned and the world is destined to see another renaissance in Asia.” Karima al-Said highlighted the persistence of the British occupation of Egypt, despite nominal independence. When Taqi al-Din al-Sulh took the microphone, he struck a historical note. He delineated, in the briefest terms, the colonial geography that bound South and West Asia: “[The countries of the Arab League] run between the East and the West and have always been known as the door to India. Most of the troubles we suffered from came to us because of this position, and we now share with you your freedom, as your freedom is necessary for our freedom.” Sulh ended by noting that “in the heart of these countries is Palestine,” which was being taken advantage of by a “special minority under the defence of British bayonets.” “We object to that,” he continued, “and we hope that you will stand by the side of right with us.” His comments took this particular tenor because of who had preceded him at the podium that day: Hugo Bergman, the head of the Jewish Delegation from Palestine.
Some ten participants strong, the Hebrew University contingent outnumbered the Arab presence at the conference. Ironically perhaps, given the events that would follow, the Egyptian delegation and the Jewish delegation from Palestine arrived on the same flight. According to Idris, they both got on board a plane in Lydd, the Egyptians having just arrived there from Cairo. They flew together, to Dhahran and then Karachi, before disembarking finally in Bombay. It was only then that the Egyptians at last realized who they had been traveling with, as the Hebrew University delegation had sat together the entire time and spoke among themselves. The logistics of the whole affair reflected the conference’s political contentiousness. Idris relates that the British in Egypt had made visas and flights difficult to acquire, constantly delaying information and permissions on clearly false pretenses. The British no doubt had their reasons, as Chatham House’s confidential report on the conference stated that “the Egyptian delegates made more venomous attacks on Britain than anyone attending the conference.”
The Jewish delegation’s remarks were provocative. Their main speaker was Hugo Bergman, a philosopher at Hebrew University. “Those are the greetings of the representatives of an old religion and an old Asian people which was driven from its Asian motherland 1800 years ago,” Bergman introduced himself. He went on to elaborate the superiority of Asian values of religious tolerance to European intolerance, while praising Europe’s “logical reasoning [and] methodical thinking.” “It is our hope,” he continued, “that Palestine, notwithstanding present difficulties, will not go the European way of ‘solving’ so to speak, problems by dispossessing populations.” The Arab delegates were incensed at the Jewish delegation’s summoning of Asian feeling. Before Bergman was even finished speaking, Idris dashed off a note and had it sent up to Nehru. She demanded the Arabs have an opportunity to respond.
“The Arab delegates were incensed at the Jewish delegation’s summoning of Asian feeling.”
Nehru repeated his wish that the conference steer clear of controversial matters; “nevertheless,” he went on “if this conference enters into these questions, we will get involved in them.” He invited Said to speak. “I would like to place before you the views of the Arab women,” Said began her retort. “We strongly object to any settlement in Palestine except for the Arabs,” she continued: “The gentleman himself said that the Jews have been in Europe for the last eighteen centuries. I tell you that the Arabs have been in Palestine for the last fourteen centuries. . . . We have had no trouble with the Jews at all. They have been welcome; they have been our friends; they have settled very happily among us; but we do not want British rule to be replaced by that of European Zionists. We object to them as foreigners. The Arabs must live in Palestine. Palestine cannot belong any more to its original inhabitants.”
Nehru refused Bergman’s request to speak after Said finished, leading Bergman and the rest of the delegation to storm out of the meeting hall. Idris recalls that an Indian delegate followed them out and was able to cajole them back. Upon his return, Bergman shook the hand of Taqi al-Din al-Sulh, the Arab League’s representative. Idris remarks that Bergman’s handshake was clearly a performance, one, however, that had no effect on the Asians assembled. In any case, Chatham House reported that the Jewish Delegation “received a rather cool reception.” Jansen wrote that the event “must have been one of the last occasions on which Zionist and Arab leaders experienced that minimal degree of physical contact.” Nehru, however, had the last word that day, announcing at the end of the plenary session that “the people of India . . . have always said that Palestine is essentially an Arab country and no decision can be made without the consent of the Arabs.” He was echoing—almost to the word—remarks he had made scarcely a week before in the pages of the Bombay Sentinel. In both cases, he attributed support for Palestine not to himself, but to the Indian people more generally. A typical move, perhaps, of the patriarchal and pedagogical mode of nationalism that Nehru was known for, but significant nevertheless, for the Muslim League actively sought to couch the Palestine question in communal terms.
The confrontation between the Arab delegates and the Jewish delegation was a rare sour moment in a conference better characterized by carefully choreographed consensus. It was, however, predictable, even by the organizers themselves, who had planned for a celebration of Asian unity. In one of the Indian Council of World Affairs’s booklets for the meeting, “Racial Problems,” the author, one T. K. Venkatram offered a particularly pessimistic assessment of Palestine’s colonization: “Palestine presents a peculiar problem. It presents an ominous resemblance to [the] Indian problem in that the two elements of the population who have got to live in the country show a complete lack of any spirit of accommodation and refuse to agree about the form of the future constitution. It is difficult to say whether the Inter-Asian Conference could offer a just solution harmonising the interest of the Arabs or the Jews, or whether the Mandatory power will accept any proposal emanating from the Conference.”
While the booklet’s characterization of the situation is not wholly accurate—Palestinians had been working for two decades to accommodate the British-backed colonization of their land—the author’s comparative gesture is one that would be raised repeatedly by Indians and Arabs in their meetings together and writing about each other. In his own postscript to the conference, Kalidas Nag, a Pan-Asianist intellectual from Bengal and one of the chief theorists of the “Greater India” idea, made the comparison in surgical terms. He wrote in New Asia: “As in the case of India, some expert political surgeons have prescribed the remedy of cutting-up the country into two! The patients, of course, have no right of appeal or of protest; and so they must submit to lie on the operation table, with or without anesthesia. Thus within a couple of months from the termination of the first Asian Relations Conference, major operation[s] are being performed on the body-politic of the many oriental nations still under Western masters and caretakers.”
Kalidas Nag with Rabindranath Tagore aboard a ship en route to China. Image: The Telegraph Archive.
Nag’s assessment is significant, as he knew Hugo Bergman personally, having visited Jerusalem and admired the academic work of the Hebrew University, especially the Indology of Immanual Olsavaanger. “It was, therefore, a matter of real joy to me,” Nag wrote, “when I had the privilege of welcoming in Delhi the Jewish delegation.” Nevertheless, despite his sympathies with Bergman and the “Wandering Jews” in general, Nag’s comments are supportive of the Arab position. He again compares Palestine to India when he calls on the Indian press to pay greater attention to the situation: “The whole country of Palestine is convulsed today, like India, with problems of partition or chaos.” Nag’s book was published on August 15, the very day the partition of South Asia commenced.
Esmat Elhalaby is a historian of the transnational Middle East and South Asia. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto.