Bernard-Henri Levy, a French liberal writer and philosopher, was researching in Pakistan for his book ‘Who killed Daniel Pearl?’ In the process, he discovered some startling revelations.

He would go on to say in an interview to an Indian weekly that he was “stunned by the virulent anti-Semitism which Pakistanis make no effort to conceal” (‘Riveting Tale’, The Week, 10 July 2005). Anti-Semitism has indeed been deep-rooted in the Pakistani movement since its very inception.

The roots of anti-Semitism in India have an interesting origin.

Legends of Jews state that they found refuge on the western coast of South India after the fall of the Temple in 70 CE and then repeatedly in 136 CE, 370 CE and 499 CE. The first Jewish settlement was in the port of Cranganore where the local Hindu king gave, in 849 CE as well as in 1000 CE, copper plate inscription to the Jewish community offering them land for their synagogues.

Travelogue of Muslim writer Ibn Battuta (1315-1354) mentions not just Jewish settlement in Malabar but also Jewish sovereignty at Chendamangalam near Cranganore.

Anti-Semitism was unknown in India until the Portuguese came in the fifteenth century. Both Jews and Muslims fell prey to the predatory looting by Portuguese. Initially, the persecuted Portugal Jews arrived in Kerala and soon the inquisition was installed in India. Governor Albuquerque wrote to the Portugal king to grant permission for “‘extermination of Jews”’ in the new town they had set up in the occupied territories of Kerala.

Though that permission was not granted, all other worships except Catholic worship were banned and became punishable in the occupied area. In the sixteenth century, Arabs assaulted Jews of Cranganore forcing them to migrate to Cochin where the Hindu king gave them shelter.

While the Jews suffered under Portuguese occupation and Arab attack, the Hindu ruler of Old Cochin allowed absolute religious freedom to Jews, Muslims and Christians. The Hindu king even stopped battle on Saturday because his Jewish soldiers were observing Sabbath.

Apart from the Arabs, Indian Muslims untouched by the Pan-Islamist politics were largely free of anti-Semitism. Ironically, it was a non-Muslim who headed an almost Jihad- like Khilafat movement, that brought Indian Muslims in touch with the pan-Islamist revival in the colonized world.

Soon, pan-Islamism also brought with it anti-Semitism which played no small role in the creation of Pakistan uprooting millions of people in the India-Pakistan region.

Akhtar Hameed Khan was a celebrated social thinker of erstwhile East Pakistan (Bangladesh). He had won international acclaim for his successful work in Comila Development Programme in Bangladesh as well as in Orangi Pilot Project at Karachi.

In the anthology of articles titled ‘Mushahidat-o-Ta’asurat’ (City Press, Karachi, 2002), according to him both Mohammad Iqbal as well as Allama Mashraqi were influenced by ideas of ‘Superman’ attributed to Nietzsche, in a deviant form, which were also admired by Hitler. Allama was an admirer of Hitler.

Far from such fancy ideological fascinations another powerful and also a practical connection existed between anti-Semitism and Pakistan from its very origin.

In 1917, at the Socialist International Conference at Stockholm, two brothers Dr. Abdul Jabbar Kheiri and Abdus Sattar Kheiri, submitted a proposal for the partition of India and creating a Muslim nation.

According to Mushuril Hussain, Sattar Kheiri was ‘the ‘red-hot’ Nazi in Aligarh. His pro-German propaganda was funded and supported by the Allianz and Stuttgarter Insurance Bank and other agencies. He also launched a magazine ‘The Spirit of Time’ in June 1938. Hussain says that it ‘was anti-Communist, pro-Muslim and pro-Nazi in tone.’

There was also a small section of Hindu leaders who admired Nazis. But as Prof. Benjamin Zachariah points out they were ‘too easily taken in by the Nazis’ apparent respect for ‘Aryan’ culture and the Aryan race’.

But the fascination from the quarters of political Islam is ‘something that warrants further attention, as it cannot simply be explained by a misreading of the concept of ‘Aryan’.

As the movement for Pakistan grew, Islamists put to use the Palestinian issue. Pan-Islamism was so consumed with anti-Semitism that it was siding with the Nazi state to destroy Jews in whatever way possible. In India, Jews were compared to Hindus in Pakistan rhetoric.

Mohammad Iqbal was the intellectual founder of Pakistani movement, guiding it through each crucial movement in those turbulent periods spanning the late 1930s to 1947.