India’s Arabists and the Question of Palestine in Asia after 1947

This paper examines the life and work of Indian specialists in West Asian affairs. It pays particular attention to how the politics of solidarity and the history of anti-colonial impacted their engagement with the past and present of Palestine. While the history of Western perceptions and misrepresentations of Palestine—and the political effects of that knowledge—is well known, there has been little historical attention to the role of knowledge production in the articulation of Afro-Asian and Non-Aligned politics in the Global South. Through the analysis of the scholarly production, journalism, and memoirs of a group of largely unknown and uncited scholars of West Asian politics and history in independent India, this paper tracks their engagement with the question of Palestine on university campuses, international meetings, and global political movements.