Tharoor Revisits the 1918 Battle of Haifa: Celebrated by India and Israel, Resented by Palestinians

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New Delhi. On the 108th anniversary of the Battle of Haifa, fought on September 23, 1918, Shashi Tharoor — the Congress Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs and author of ‘An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India’ — writes in The Hindu that the battle has become “a site of contested memory” for India, Israel and Palestine. In military terms, he writes, it was a small but tactically significant cavalry action in the final phase of the First World War. The Jodhpur, Mysore and Hyderabad Lancers of the 15th Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade, drawn from the forces of princely states, charged up the slopes of Mount Carmel and overcame principally Ottoman forces; contemporary British war diaries call the action decisive in securing the port city and enabling the Allied advance north to Damascus, and it was one of the last great cavalry charges. More than a million Indians served overseas in that war, from Flanders to Mesopotamia, and over 74,000 died. Tharoor gives each memory its due. For India, celebrating the battle, including renaming a First World War memorial in Delhi ‘Teen Murti Haifa Chowk’, is historical recovery: proof that Indian soldiers shaped world events before independence. For Israel, the memory of Indian cavalry ‘liberating’ Haifa is woven into a narrative of gratitude and friendship, with memorials and annual ceremonies; Indian leaders have visited the Haifa memorial. For many Palestinians, the victory helped secure British control of Palestine, the implementation of the Balfour Declaration and the transformations that led to Israel’s creation, so it is a story of dispossession; the Palestinian Ambassador to India, Abdullah Mohammed Abu Shawesh, says in a letter to Tharoor that he sees “a clear Israeli effort to link contemporary India with the history of the establishment of Israel”, and calls the soldiers not heroes but “victims” of British colonial exploitation. Tharoor also notes a scholarly quarrel: some Israeli scholars say the Indian role is overstated and credit British and Australian troops, which he reads as partly discomfort at ‘owing’ much to colonised cavalrymen, while Indian military historians cite British war records crediting the Indian cavalry. His conclusion: the soldiers fought with extraordinary courage but under colonial command, and a mature historical consciousness holds both truths. The memory is live: at the UNGA on Tuesday, Turkey’s President Erdogan urged countries to recognise a Palestinian state, and The Hindu notes India signed a bilateral investment treaty with Israel in 2025. Syllabus: GS1, modern history and the world wars; GS2, India’s West Asia policy.

Static syllabus linkage

1. India’s First World War was fought by an army that belonged to an empire. The Indian Army fought in France and Flanders, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Palestine, Gallipoli and East Africa, and India Gate in New Delhi, designed by Edwin Lutyens and completed in 1931, commemorates Indian soldiers who died in the First World War and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. The Imperial Service Troops were units maintained by princely states and placed at the disposal of the British Indian government for imperial service. At Haifa, the Jodhpur Lancers’ commander Major Dalpat Singh was killed and is remembered in India as the ‘Hero of Haifa’. The Indian Army marks September 23 as Haifa Day, and the Teen Murti memorial in New Delhi, whose three bronze figures represent the Jodhpur, Hyderabad and Mysore Lancers, was renamed Teen Murti Haifa Chowk in January 2018 during the Israeli Prime Minister’s visit.
2. Three wartime British promises created the Palestine question. The Hussein-McMahon correspondence of 1915-16 encouraged the Sharif of Mecca to believe Arab lands would become independent if the Arabs rose against the Ottomans. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 secretly divided the Ottoman Arab provinces into British and French spheres. The Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, promised British support for ‘a national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine while saying nothing should prejudice the rights of existing non-Jewish communities. The League of Nations approved the British Mandate for Palestine in 1922; the UN General Assembly’s partition plan, Resolution 181, followed in 1947, and Israel was established in May 1948, amid the flight and expulsion of Palestinians that they call the Nakba, or catastrophe.
3. India’s policy moved from support for Palestine alone to ties with both. India voted against the partition plan in 1947, recognised Israel in 1950, but established full diplomatic relations only in 1992. India recognised the Palestine Liberation Organisation as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in 1974, the first non-Arab state to do so, and recognised the State of Palestine in 1988. In 2017, Narendra Modi became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Israel, and in 2018 he visited Ramallah separately, an approach often called ‘de-hyphenation’, meaning relations with each are pursued on their own merits. India’s stated position remains support for a negotiated two-state solution.
4. Palestine’s status at the UN is part of the live debate. By General Assembly Resolution 67/19 of 2012, Palestine was accorded non-member observer State status at the United Nations; India voted in favour. Full UN membership requires a Security Council recommendation, where a permanent member’s veto can block it, followed by a two-thirds vote of the Assembly. Recognition of a state, by contrast, is a decision each country makes for itself, which is why Erdogan urged governments individually to review their positions. The gap between wide recognition and blocked membership is itself an example of the veto problem discussed in the multilateralism debate.

Why UPSC loves this

1. GS1 asks about India and the world wars, and GS2 about India and Israel. The GS1 syllabus covers modern Indian history and world history including the world wars and the redrawing of national boundaries, and Haifa joins both. On the GS2 side, the 2018 paper asked whether India’s relations with Israel had acquired a depth and diversity that cannot be rolled back. A good answer today must also show how India keeps its Palestinian relationship intact, and Haifa is a vivid illustration of that balance.
2. Prelims tests treaties and declarations with dates. The Balfour Declaration, Sykes-Picot, the League of Nations mandates and UN resolutions on Palestine are standard world history questions. Memorials such as India Gate and the renaming of Teen Murti Haifa Chowk are also fair game in culture and current events questions.
3. Essay and GS4 reward nuance on memory and history. Essay topics on history, memory and identity recur, and Tharoor’s formulation — courage can serve causes not chosen by those who display it — is a ready ethical argument. Interview boards ask candidates to weigh competing narratives without taking sides crudely; this story is a model of how to do that.

Analysis

1. Holding ‘multiple truths’ is the only honest position, and also the most politically costly one. Tharoor’s argument is that the soldiers’ courage and the empire’s purposes are both true, and that choosing one erases the other. That is sound history, but it satisfies no one fully: nationalists want an unambiguous victory, Israeli commemorations want gratitude, and the Palestinian Ambassador wants the soldiers called victims. A government cannot hold a ceremony in three voices. What it can do is keep the commemoration about the soldiers themselves, their regiments and their sacrifice, and leave out claims about what the victory later made possible.
2. Commemoration is diplomacy by other means, and both sides use it. The renaming in Delhi happened during an Israeli prime ministerial visit, and Israel’s annual ceremonies and memorials keep the Indian role visible; Tharoor accepts that these reflect a genuine historical connection as well as diplomatic purpose. The Palestinian Ambassador sees in them ‘a clear Israeli effort’ to link modern India with Israel’s founding, which is his interpretation, not an established fact. An Israeli view would reply that gratitude to soldiers who fought and died in the city is ordinary remembrance, not a political claim. Students should present both readings and note that the same act can be sincere and useful at once.
3. The Palestinian critique targets the empire, a critique India’s own freedom movement shared. The Palestinian line — ‘we did not ask you to liberate us’ — questions the imperial project, not the soldiers’ bravery, as Tharoor stresses. India’s nationalists made a similar argument when the Congress objected in 1939 to India being taken into the Second World War without its consent. Yet calling the soldiers ‘victims’ also denies them agency, which is exactly what postcolonial historians try to restore; many chose to serve for pay, honour or regimental tradition. The balanced view is that they were brave men in an unequal system, neither simply heroes of Zionism nor passive victims.
4. The quarrel over credit shows how imperial memory ranked soldiers by race. Tharoor reports that some Israeli scholars credit British and Australian troops and suggests this partly reflects discomfort at ‘owing’ much to colonised brown-skinned cavalrymen; that is his reading and should be attributed as such. Indian military historians answer with British war records that credit the Indian cavalry with the breakthrough, and Tharoor cites contemporary British war diaries calling the action decisive. Recovering the Indian role is therefore legitimate historiography, not mere nationalism. The caution is that over-claiming serves present politics too, whether the aim is Indian pride or India-Israel friendship.
5. For policy, the memory should stay Indian, and the Palestine position should stay principled. India’s ties with Israel run deep, from defence to the bilateral investment treaty of 2025 that The Hindu mentions today. India also recognised Palestine in 1988 and supports a two-state solution, while at the UNGA Erdogan is pressing states to recognise Palestine and noting that Mahmoud Abbas could not attend for a second year. India can honour Haifa Day as a chapter of its own military history without adopting either side’s account of 1948. That keeps the memory from becoming a vote in a present-day dispute, which is the practical meaning of Tharoor’s ‘mature historical consciousness’.

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