[Reader-list] Naresh Fernandes on the rich tradition of Jews in India

[Anuj Bhuwania]

"The Indian Jewish identity is the only one that hasn't been created
by persecution," he said. "We've never felt scared. This is the first
time we've been made to feel like Jews."

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=8e4fc4e9-5298-4f0c-bf66-980c253c43e0

"We've Never Felt Scared"
Tracking the rich tradition of Jews in India.

Naresh Fernandes,  The New Republic  Published: Friday, November 28, 2008


As an Indian Christian, I occasionally remind my Jewish friends that I
owe my faith to them. Indian tradition maintains that a few years
after Christ's death, one of his apostles, Thomas ("the Doubter'),
sailed to the southern Indian state of Kerala to share the Good News
with his co-religionists. Jews have lived in India for thousands of
years, perhaps arriving on a mission from the court of King Solomon to
trade in "elephant's tooth, peacocks and apes". The Jews of Cochin are
said to have been less than receptive to Thomas's message, though he
did make many other converts.

India's ancient Jewish history, evidence of the country's tolerance
for people of all faiths, has long been a source of pride for us. But
an even greater cause for satisfaction has been the fact that Indian
Jews have never faced persecution. To the contrary, Indian Jews have
flourished, and nowhere is that more evident than in Mumbai. Some of
the city's best-known landmarks, including Flora Fountain, the hub of
the city's Fort business district, have been built with donations from
Jewish philanthropists who grew prosperous on trade and manufacturing.
Most notable among them were the Sasoons, a family from Iraq. Their
name is etched in plaques in at least four schools, a magnificent
library, a dockyard, and at least two of the city's nine synagogues.

A more chilling reminder of the city's role as a sanctuary for Jews is
to be found on another set of marble tablets, in a cemetery in
Chinchpokli, in Central Mumbai: One wall bears memorials to people who
died in faraway concentration camps such as Auschwitz; it was donated
by friends and relatives who found refuge here. Many of these exiles
had arrived in India because of the intervention of the man who would
go on to become India's first prime minister. "Few people can withhold
their deep sympathy from the Jews for the long centuries of most
terrible oppression to which they have been subjected all over
Europe," Jawaharlal Nehru wrote, as he lobbied the British government
to allow Eastern European Jews into India. "Fewer still can repress
their indignation at the barbarities and racial suppression of Jews
which the Nazis have indulged in during the last few years."

Many of the exiles soon became an important part of Mumbai society,
serving as catalysts for the modern Indian art scene. Rudolf von
Leyden, Walter Langhammer, and Emanuel Schlesinger had brought with
them full-color reproductions of European masters and a world of ideas
and discussion. They proved vital in helping the Mumbai artists
discover a new way of seeing. These ideas found expression on canvas
when such Indian painters as M.F. Husain, F.N. Souza, and K.H. Ara
founded the Progressive Artists Movement in 1947, bound together by
the desire to find a new way to depict the stories of their newly
independent nation.

Despite the significance of the contributions of the Baghdadis or the
European exiles, the Jewish community that has left the deepest
impression on the city are the Bene Israelis, who believe their
ancestors were shipwrecked just south of Mumbai in 175 B.C.E. For most
Westerners, the Bene Israelis defy conventional images of being
Jewish: They speak the western Indian language of Marathi, the women
dress in saris and they eat rice and spicy fish curry. In those early
days, many Bene Israelis worked as oil pressers and they've even been
incorporated into the local caste structure as "shanivar telis"--the
Saturday oil pressers, in acknowledgement of the day they kept the
Sabbath. Centuries later, many of them migrated to Mumbai city, where
they built a synagogue in 1796.

The Bene Israeli community has produced a mayor, a musician who led an
early rock band, a clutch of Bollywood actors, and a member of the
central bank board of governors. Perhaps the best-known member of the
community was Nissim Ezekiel, one of the pioneers of Indian poetry in
English. My favorite of his poems is "Island," a tribute to my home
city. The first stanza says, "Unsuitable for song as well as sense/
the island flowers into slums/ and skyscrapers, reflecting/ precisely
the growth of my mind./ I am here to find my way in it."

Though there were approximately 25,000 Indian Jews at Independence in
1947, the community numbered only 5,271 people in 1991, the last year
for which figures are available, as members sought better prospects in
Israel. Many Indian Jews, however, have an ambiguous relationship with
the country that offers them the Right of Return. Among them is my
friend Robin David, the author of City of Fear, a gem of a memoir that
describes the horrors he witnessed as a reporter during the bloody
pogrom against Muslims that was unleashed in his home state of Gujarat
in 2002. He also explains his frustration with Israel, a country to
which he has attempted to emigrate three times, only to return. "I
realised that the Promised Land was not my country," he writes. "Even
the strong fragrance of spices, wafting in from the Arab market
through the yellowing Jerusalem sandstone, did not help. Just like
Teen Darwaza [in Ahmedabad, in Gujarat], but not quite home."

Like Robin David, many older Indians, mindful of our own
anti-imperialist struggle, are wary of Israel because of its treatment
of Palestinians, even though it wouldn't even occur to us to suggest
that Indian Jews were somehow responsible for Israeli policy. India
established diplomatic relations with Israel only in 1992, but since
then, the two countries have got along like a house on fire, and have
a roaring trade in defense supplies. Many Indians of a certain bent of
mind admire Jersualem for the tough action it takes against
terrorists, and letters to the editor in Indian newspaper frequently
exhort New Delhi to learn its lessons from Israel.

There's another aspect to the relationship that goes unnoticed by most
Indians. Each year, an estimated 20,000 Israelis take their vacations
in India after finishing their three-year compulsory military service
stints. Their 15,000-shekel bonuses go much further in India and, as
one Israeli told me recently, "It's nice to be in a place where you
don't always have to watch your back." The beaches of Goa and the
Himalayan slopes of Kulu and Manali, notable for their drug-fuelled
trace parties, rank high on the visitors' itineraries. The massive
numbers of Israelis in the subcontinent prompted the Brooklyn-based
Lubavitcher sect to open its first Indian mission center--known around
the world as Chabad Houses--in the western city of Pune in 2000.

Two years ago, I travelled to Pune to interview Rabbi Betzalel
Kupchick, who ran the center. By offering his hundreds of Jewish
visitors a year free meals and the chance to chat in Hebrew, Rabbi
Kupchick believed he was opening an opportunity for dialogue. "There
are many ways that God brings people to Him," he told me patiently.
"Here, without the pressure of family and society, Israelis are more
open-minded. Often, this is their first exposure to spiritual things.
When they're come to India, they're searching."

In addition to the Pune center, Chabad Houses have also been opened
during the tourist season in Manali, Dharamsala, Rishikesh, and Delhi.
The Mumbai Chabad House has been so low key, few Mumbai Jews even knew
of its existence until the attacks on Wednesday. Mumbai's Jewish
community doesn't have much to do with the Israeli visitors and often
complain that despite the large number of visitors from the Promised
Land in town each week, the city's nine synagogues are often
hard-pressed on the Sabbath to find a minyan, the quorum of ten Jewish
men necessary for the service. Besides, the ultra-orthodox leanings of
the Lubavitchers have been regarded with some suspicion by liberal
Indian Jews.

That divide disappeared on Wednesday night. When I spoke to Robin
David on the phone on Friday, he was still trying to make sense of it
all. "The Indian Jewish identity is the only one that hasn't been
created by persecution," he said. "We've never felt scared. This is
the first time we've been made to feel like Jews." That, to me, has
been among the most tragic casualties of this terrorist attack. In a
barrage of grenades and bullets, a part of the Indian dream that's
2,500 years old has now been buried in a pile of bloody concrete
shards.

Naresh Fernandes is the editor of Time Out Mumbai.