Date/Time
Date(s) - 22/10/2025
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Location
KTH 712

RESEARCH IN PROGRESS SEMINAR

Ghandi on the Jewish and Palestinian Questions

Presented by Dr. Jaby Mathew
Sessional Lecturer Instructor
University of Toronto Mississauga

This paper revisits Gandhi’s controversial 1938 article “The Jews,” which addressed the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany and the “Jewish-Arab” conflict in Palestine. To resist Hitler’s regime, Gandhi urged German Jews to adopt satyagraha, his version of nonviolent resistance. Further, he objected to Jewish claims in Palestine, based on his interpretation of Zionist goals and methods. Gandhi’s Jewish interlocutors accused him of misunderstanding the severity of Jewish persecution and, on the question of Palestine, either falling prey to anti-Zionist propaganda or yielding to political pressures in India. This paper argues that Gandhi’s position was neither naive nor politically expedient. His critics misunderstood his approach to nationalism, which resisted ethnocentric and essentialist definitions of nationhood. Gandhi’s views were based on his consistent position on nonviolent action against oppression as a pragmatic action and the inseparability of means and ends. Further, the paper contends that Gandhi’s views are still relevant for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today, advocating for nonviolence, mutual respect, and friendship as sources for lasting peace.

Jaby Mathew is currently a Sessional Lecturer at the University of Toronto Mississauga. His research interests include the history of modern Indian political thought, contemporary democracy theory, post-colonial thought, comparative political theory, and politics in South Asia. He is currently working on a book project on ideas of political representation in modern Indian political thought and its ramifications for representative democracy in contemporary India. He holds a doctorate in Political Science from the University of Toronto. Previously, Jaby was a Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University and has taught courses at King’s University College at the University of Western Ontario and the University of British Columbia–Okanagan.