ABSTRACT
Mahatma Gandhi’s framing of the Palestine issue within the exclusive Islamic paradigm during the Khilafat phase was accompanied by two additional factors that complicated the situation, namely, his unfamiliarity with Judaism and his inability to comprehend Zionism. In his October 1931 interview to the London-based The Jewish Chronicle, he depicted Jerusalem to be a ‘spiritual journey’ Zionism in its spiritual sense is a lofty aspiration. By spiritual sense, the author mean they should want to realize the Jerusalem that is within. Zionism meaning reoccupation of Palestine has no attraction for me. He can understand the longing of a Jew to return to Palestine, and he can do so if he can without the help of bayonets, whether his own or those of Britain. The fundamental problem was that like other Indian nationalists, Gandhi did not recognize, nor was prepared to admit, Jews as a national group. Zionism was a Jewish response to their prolonged treatment as ‘untouchables of Christianity’.
