Coll 6/43 'Pan Arab Congress 1933. Attitude of H.M.G. to a Pan Arab Movement' [‎34r] (68/1144)

Copy or « secret and personal letter No*C/314 oated 21st
September, 39^5, from Lt.-Colonel iv.C, Galloway, lolitj.cal Uesident,
Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. , Shiraz, to S>ir Olaf Caroe , Secy., E.A.Dept.
Your letter No.RB/37^ oX’ tlie luth June 1945 has come via
Muscat and this accounts a good deal for the delay in replying.
The paper is difficult to reply to for in fact it does not repre
sent the title at all. it is not written from an Indian view point
but from a British one. All Howes seems to have done is to
collect un & number of the Hid die Hast problems of today and male
somewhat ranuon. observations on them under the heeding - Arab
Federation as seen from India. •
2. "Arab Xeneration’' is not, as Howes rightly says, a
pan-Islamic movement, though you may not have heard that cei'tain
sections of the Persian press in their searches lor iuug to throw
at the British have accused us of successfully destroying the pan-
Islamic origin of the movement, and ox’ leaving only the dry bones
of Federation. That is a stupidity that one might e?pect from their
so often scurrilous pens.
3. as regards the term ’’Federation, a great deal has already
been written on the subject all pointing to the fact that real
political federation was never intended. The most that the ’’Arab
oeopies" hoped for was a commonwealth of Arabic-speaking people base'
on the unifying factors of languag# ana culture. There was not,
however, to be any capital to the commonwealth, and the movement
in this respect car/ fairly be likened to a revival of the Caliphate
without the Caliph.
4. The term "Arab peoples” is vague end pretty well meaningless
in this connection without explanation. Howes’ explanation
in paragraph 4 that the 11 Arabs’’ mean a Federation of reasonable
human beings using a common civilised language is, in my opinion,
but using words for words’ sake, ano if the last sentence is taken
into consideration he concludes that the Arabs mean a Federation
of ’’men”. This seems mere verbiage to me. He also says that the
words ’’Arab”, or ”the Arab people”, conjure up for us ”hawked-nosed
sons of the; desert in snowy burnous or else the riff-raff of Port
Said”. It would have been more instructive and accurate, if less
picturesque, to have described the people of the Federation concern
ing whom his paper is written as the Araoic-speaking people of the
Middle hast. The illustrations savour of ”3eau Geste” films and
the P.5; 0. passengers impression en route to India. ooth Howes’
illustrations are geograpnicaliy wrong, arad they are unfortunate
for the idea benind them is of western ^radic-sneaking people,
whereas the "Federation” concerns primarily and essentially eastern
Arabic-speaking peoples. The term ’’Federation” is out of date,
and the appellation for the movement met m th today is ’’Arab
League”. This term should be qualified in one’s mind as the Eastern
Arab League, for the tens of millions of Arabic-speaking people from
the Ludan to the Atlantic have no part in the movement.
5. This brings us to another point with regard to the hawk-nosed
and riff-raff gentry, which is that while they are Moslem (or I
should think the more popular term ’’Mohammeaans” would suit the
original thought) and while in conception, the League - 3et us now
call it - was predominantly Islamic; a Tne Sunni at that, in
inspiration, a change has taken place 'recently. The Maronite
community of Syria and the Lebanon nas cast in its lot with the
league, presumably in the common anti-French cause and not because
of any love of Islam. The incipient iaea was Eastern Arabic speak
ing Arabs, as opposed to other religious sects, who were to unite,
federate, league together or whatever it may be on the common grounds
of language and culture. Alreauy this has broadened into the
inclusion of Christian elements, and it would indeed be a full
turn of the wheel if the League and its opposition to the West were
eventually to obtain the cooperation of Palestinian Jewry. 6
6. A parallel which might have been drawn is the rather obvious,
from the Indian point of view, one of Pakistan, and a nimble wit
might even invent a similar term in which to cloak this Arab aspira
tion to pseudo-nationality with its endeavour at eliminating racial,