compromise, from the Nehru government. In a “strictly confidential” memo to John Slawson
dated August 28, 1956, Simon Segal reported that he had a friend meet with Ambassador Mehta,
and that the Indian ambassador would be willing to receive an AJC representative in the future.
Segal enclosed with the letter a memorandum that depicted India in purely instrumental terms:
The problem is how Nehru can help to pacify the Arab-Israeli situation. The assumption is that Nehru is the only important world statesman with influence on the Arabs who also has some sympathy for Israel. The central technique to be used would be a conference between two or three AJC spokesmen personally.252
But there would be no conference, no direct negotiations, and no major breakthrough. In a December 1956 letter to Simon Segal, Slawson reported on a November 29meeting at the Israeli embassy at which he received instructions that Jewish organizations should not negotiate with Nehru during his state visit.253 But the opportunity for AJC engagement, one that had appeared to be so rich in the immediate postwar years, had all but disappeared. As tensions between Israel and Egypt locked the two in a standstill, so did the prospects for brokering a peace deal or really, any engagement with India. In August 1957, AJC President Engel concluded privately that based on the reports of Sidney Herzberg, who had recently met with Mehta, there had been no significant diplomatic breakthroughs. While Engel floated the idea of negotiating with Nehru’s advisor V.K. Krishna Menon, his conclusion was noncommittal:
It was Herzberg’s thought that we might consider approaching Krishna Menon, not so much on the basis of an appeal to the principle as on the basis of what our group might do for India, either in connection with Kashmir or in connection with the forthcoming
251 Eugene Hevesi, “India and Israel,” August 6, 1956, RAJC; RG 347.7.1.; folder 8; YIVO.
252 Letter from Simon Segal to John Slawson, August 28, 1956, RAJC; RG 347.7.1.; folder 8; YIVO. 253 Letter from John Slawson to Simon Segal, December 10, 1956, RAJC; RG 347.7.1.; folder 9; YIVO.
termination of negotiations between India and Pakistan regarding canal waters. This of course would require careful consideration of what, if anything, we might be able to contribute toward a solution of either of those two problems.254
Just as the years of the AJC’s thinking on India began with a question of what the organization might be able to do to help India, so did they end. But even for an organization as dynamic as the AJC, a perception of an unfruitful political environment soon left them with few alternatives. With both Indo-U.S. and Indo- Israeli relations entering a frozen state, and with changes within the American-Jewish community increasingly prioritizing Israel, India permanently lost its once-privileged place.
Toward a More Critical Approach
The story of the American Jewish Committee’s foray into India is a new one, and so with it comes not only new historical lessons, but also methodological and historiographical insights. Returning to Naomi W. Cohen’s call for a cross-border approach to Jewish Studies, this study takes a multidimensional view in order to capture the way in which multiple feeders including institutional structure, old ideologies, external geopolitical events, national governments, intellectual thought, and even local geography could simultaneously intersect in order to produce unexpected historical outcomes, such as successive changes in the views of a Jewish-American organization in its understanding of South Asia. This thesis makes an organ of civil society its subject, in line with Jessica C.E. Gienow-Hecht’s prescription for decentering the federal government in the study of U.S. foreign relations. Through its exploration of the AJC, this study seeks to account for the vast uncertainties that nevertheless structured the scope, nature, and timing of the organization’s advocacy during the postwar period. Bookended by major global events, World War II and the Suez crisis, this project demonstrates how political, intellectual, and social pressures continued to exert authority over institutions even in moments that largely appear as voids in the historiography. The case of the AJC and India is one of processual, nonlinear change.
The history of the AJC’s engagement with India points us to a more progressive model for Jewish
Studies in the United States. It illuminates the self-reflexive nature of political activity: the exploration of the interactive modes between Jewish institutions and a non-Jewish world can capture the organization’s perception and public projection of its own values, goals, or vision. “From New York to the World” also reminds the contemporary reader about the complex nature of Jewish-American advocacy. The emergence of Israel was a unique priority for the AJC that provided the organization with a metaphorical anchor for crafting a more interconnected conceptualization of the decolonizing world; simultaneously, the threat of anti-Semitism and its capacity to shatter a dream of Jewish assimilation considered fragile acted as a major constraint – both ideologically and in terms of the allocation of resources – on the organization. Collectively, these realizations may lead us to a better appreciation of the complexity and sometimes, difficulty, of what it means to be – and to live as – a Jewish American.