The undiscriminated Jews

Who Are The Jews of India?

by Nathan Katz, The University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000 Pages: 207. Price: $45, ISBN: 0-520-21323-8

India's smallest and least known religious minority are the Jews, who number less than 10,000 in all. Once a significant community in terms of influence and power at the isolated local redoubts, the Jews of India are today approaching extinction, with the vast majority of the community having shifted to Israel and elsewhere after Independence. Much has actually been written on the Jews of India. This book, while covering familiar ground, offers new insights and perspectives on the life, history and customs of this fascinating community.

Katz, himself an authority on the subject, having already authored two previous books on the Indian Jews, explains that the Jews of the country are far from being a monolithic community. Differences of historical origin, tradition, ritual and custom all justify their being treated as separate communities, albeit united by their common Jewishness. Katz identifies three major Jewish groups in India: that of the Jews of Cochin, the Bene Israel of the Konkan coast and the Baghdadis of Bombay, Calcutta and some cities of North India. These communities adopted varying strategies to come to terms with being Jewish in an overwhelmingly Gentile society. But India, according to Katz, was one of the few countries where the Jews never experienced any form of anti-Semitism, except for a brief interlude at the hands of the Portuguese Catholics in Kerala.

The Jews of Cochin have had the longest recorded history—Katz provides an interesting account of their arrival on the Malabar coast almost 2000 years ago. The key to understanding the rise of the Cochin Jewry to considerable prosperity, even going so far as to establish a small kingdom of its own, he writes, lies in the advantages that the Jews brought for the local rulers. For, they served as soldiers, traders and middlemen, playing a major role in the flourishing commerce between Malabar and West Asia and beyond. The Cochin Jews earned a high status for themselves, in a predominantly Hindu caste-based society, by emerging as a caste themselves, adopting several Hindu customs while remaining true to their Jewish faith.

Another fascinating instance of a Jewish group successfully maintaining its Jewishness while completely adapting itself to the local environment is that of the Shaniwar Telis or the Bene Israel of the Konkan coast. Scattered in villages along the Konkan, they took to oil pressing as their principal occupation, in effect becoming a caste placed low in the social hierarchy. Little seems to have distinguished the Jewish oil-pressers from the Hindu and Muslim counterparts but their Hebrew practice of taking rest from work on the Sabbath, Saturday (shaniwar), which is how they earned the title "Shaniwar Telis". In all other matters, they adopted local cultural practices and customs. According to Katz, it was only from the 18th century onwards, because of the influence of Christian missionaries, and contacts with Cochini, and later, Baghdadi Jews, that the Bene Israel began to consciously discard much of their traditional culture in favour of what they saw as normative Jewish traditions.

The Baghdadis were the latest Jewish arrivals in India, and have not been able to adapt themselves to the Indian cultural environment in the way the others had. Descended from Jews of West Asian extraction, the Baghdadis were proud of their Arab-Jewish culture, and settled mainly in Bombay and Calcutta, and under the British, prospered greatly, producing some of the richest families in India.

The 1857 Mutiny, in which both Hindus and Muslims participated, forced the Baghdadis to stress closer ties with the British. While this may certainly have helped them in seeking a European identity for themselves, it meant a gradual erosion of their own culture, and also led to increasing dissension among the various Jewish communities. Katz tells us how the Baghdadis consistently looked down upon the Bene Israel for their Indian customs and habits, casting doubts about their racial purity and seeking to exclude them from the mainstream of the community.

Despite these rivalries that seem to have wracked the Jewish preserves in India, once the state of Israel came into being in 1948, all Indian Jews emigrated to the new state, almost en masse. Yet, even there, reports Katz, invidious caste distinctions remained among the Indian Jews. Bene Israel's Jewishness is still debated in the orthodox circles of Haifa and Jerusalem.

For a broad overview of Jewish life and history in India this book excels. The narrative stops at 1947, and unfortunately, there is little about the remaining Jews in India and about the Indian Jews in Israel today. Nor is there mention of isolated neo-Jewish groups, such as the Dalit families of Andhra Pradesh and some tribals in Northeast India, who have claimed Jewish descent and have, on the basis of that, developed a new Jewish identity for themselves.

The author's own passionate advocacy of Israel as the fulfilment of the millennial hopes of the Jews will certainly strike a jarring note for some, but that should be no reason for ignoring what is probably one of the most interesting studies on the subject of India's Jewry.