Related Reading
- The Four Communities of Indian Jews: An Overview
- The Bene Israel of Maharashtra
- The Jews of Cochin
- The Baghdadi Jews of Mumbai and Kolkata
- Books on the Jews of India
India is home to one of the oldest and most continuous Jewish presences anywhere in the world outside the Middle East. For over two thousand years, Jewish communities settled, flourished, and left indelible marks on the culture, architecture, and commercial life of the Indian subcontinent. Understanding this rich history means grappling with not one but several distinct communities, each with its own origin story, cultural character, and historical trajectory.
Ancient Arrivals: The Bene Israel
The oldest Jewish community in India is the Bene Israel of Maharashtra. According to their own tradition, they are descended from a group of Jewish refugees who were shipwrecked off the Konkan coast over two thousand years ago, perhaps fleeing persecution in the ancient Middle East. Whether or not this tradition is historically accurate in every detail, DNA studies have confirmed that the Bene Israel carry genetic markers associated with Middle Eastern ancestry that set them apart from their Hindu and Muslim neighbors.
Cut off from mainstream Jewish contact for centuries, the Bene Israel developed a practice of Judaism that retained core elements, including circumcision, the Shabbat, and Jewish dietary laws, while adapting to Indian conditions in language, dress, cuisine, and social structure. They spoke Marathi as their mother tongue, adopted Hindu caste-like social divisions within their community, and integrated deeply into Maharashtra’s social fabric while maintaining a distinct religious identity.
It was not until contact with the Cochin Jewish community in the eighteenth century, followed by engagement with Baghdadi Jewish traders from the Middle East, that the Bene Israel were reconnected with mainstream Jewish practice. Today the Bene Israel constitute the largest Jewish community remaining in India.
The Cochin Jews of Kerala
The Jews of Cochin, in present-day Kerala, claim to have arrived in India even earlier, with some traditions placing their arrival as far back as the reign of King Solomon. More historically documented is the presence of Jewish traders in Malabar from at least the fourth century CE. In 1000 CE, the local Hindu ruler Bhaskara Ravi Varman granted copper plates to the Jewish leader Joseph Rabban conferring significant rights and privileges on the Jewish community. These copper plates, known as the Sasanam, are among the most remarkable documents of Jewish diaspora history.
The Cochin Jews are divided into two main sub-communities: the Malabar or Black Jews, who were the original settlers and integrated more deeply into Kerala’s social fabric, and the Paradesi or White Jews, who arrived later from Europe and established their own synagogue in Mattancherry in 1568. That synagogue, the Paradesi Synagogue, is today one of the oldest active synagogues in the Commonwealth and one of the most visited Jewish heritage sites in Asia.
The Baghdadi Jews: Merchants of Empire
The third major community of Indian Jews arrived beginning in the late eighteenth century. The Baghdadi Jews came primarily from Iraq, Syria, and other parts of the Arab world, settling in Calcutta and Bombay and quickly establishing themselves as dominant figures in trade, finance, and philanthropy. The most famous Baghdadi Jewish family was the Sassoon dynasty, whose commercial empire stretched from Bombay to Shanghai and whose philanthropic legacy transformed the built environment of colonial Bombay.
The Baghdadi Jews were culturally Arab in many ways, speaking Judeo-Arabic at home and maintaining close ties to the Jewish communities of the Middle East. Yet in India they built schools, synagogues, hospitals, and cultural institutions that served not only their own community but the broader population of the cities where they lived. Their commercial success and philanthropic generosity made them central figures in the colonial economy of British India.
A History of Tolerance
What distinguishes the Jewish experience in India from nearly every other chapter of Jewish diaspora history is the remarkable absence of antisemitism. India is one of the very few countries in the world where Jews lived for centuries without facing systematic persecution, forced conversion, or expulsion. Hindu rulers, Muslim sultans, and British colonial authorities generally treated Jewish communities with respect and allowed them to practice their religion freely.
This tolerance has deep roots in Indian religious culture. Hinduism’s philosophical pluralism and its acceptance of multiple paths to the divine created an environment in which religious difference was not inherently threatening. Jewish communities in India found that they could maintain their distinct identity while participating fully in the economic and social life of their host communities.
The Contemporary Community
Today the Jewish population of India is a small fraction of what it once was. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, most Indian Jews immigrated to Israel, the United States, and other countries. The communities they left behind are dedicated to preserving their heritage through museums, cultural organizations, and the maintenance of historic synagogues. The Paradesi Synagogue in Kochi, the Magen David Synagogue in Pune, and the Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue in Mumbai stand as architectural testaments to the extraordinary history of Jews in India.