The Jewish communities of India did not arrive all at once, nor did they remain in a single place. Over two thousand years, different Jewish groups settled different parts of the subcontinent through different routes, and the migrations continued long after their initial arrival, carrying communities across India and eventually out of India entirely. Understanding these migration routes is essential for understanding the geography of Indian Jewish life.
The Konkan Coast: Bene Israel Origins
The Bene Israel community’s own account of its origins holds that their ancestors arrived on the Konkan coast of western India, in what is now Maharashtra, following a shipwreck at some time in antiquity. They settled in the coastal villages of the Konkan region, particularly around the town of Navgaon, where a traditional cemetery and an oil-pressing trade became the foundations of their community. Over the centuries they spread northward and southward along the coast, establishing communities in towns such as Alibag, Panvel, Pen, Revdanda, Chaul, and Nagaon.
The great inland migration of the Bene Israel came with British colonial expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As British military and commercial institutions expanded across the subcontinent, Bene Israel men enlisted in the British Indian Army and followed their employers to Bombay, Pune, Ahmedabad, Karachi, Rangoon, and other major cities. By the nineteenth century, Bombay had become the undisputed center of Bene Israel life, with dozens of synagogues and a flourishing communal infrastructure.
The Malabar Coast: Cochin Jewish Movements
The Jews of Cochin have a more clearly documented early history than the Bene Israel, partly because they have preserved copper plates granted by a Kerala ruler, traditionally dated to the fourth century CE, confirming Jewish rights and privileges. The original community settled in Cranganore (Kodungallur), a major trading port on the Malabar Coast. Following the destruction of Cranganore by Portuguese and local forces in the sixteenth century, the community relocated to Cochin, where the Maharaja of Cochin granted them land adjacent to his own palace to build what became Jew Town and the Paradesi Synagogue.
The Cochin community was internally divided between the lighter-skinned Paradesi Jews (often of Sephardic or mixed Middle Eastern ancestry) and the darker-skinned Malabari Jews who had lived on the coast for centuries. Despite this division, both communities remained rooted in the Cochin area for several hundred years before mass emigration to Israel after 1948 reduced them to a handful of families.
Baghdadi Jews: From Baghdad to Bombay and Calcutta
The Baghdadi Jewish community arrived in India beginning in the late eighteenth century, primarily from Baghdad, Basra, and other cities of the Middle East. They were attracted by the commercial opportunities of British-ruled India and established themselves first in Surat and then most significantly in Bombay and Calcutta. David Sassoon, who arrived in Bombay around 1832, became the patriarch of the most powerful Baghdadi Jewish family in India, whose business empire eventually extended from India to China and Britain.
In Calcutta, the Baghdadi community built synagogues, schools, and charities that supported a community that peaked at several thousand in the early twentieth century. The community was largely Anglophone and cosmopolitan, and many of its members held British citizenship, which shaped their identity and eventually their departure. Most Calcutta Baghdadis emigrated to Britain, Australia, or the United States rather than Israel.
Emigration: The Great Dispersal
After Indian independence and the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Indian Jewish communities underwent rapid emigration. The Cochin Jews went almost entirely to Israel, settling in moshavim in central and southern Israel. The Bene Israel divided between Israel and a global diaspora spanning the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The Baghdadis dispersed to Britain, Australia, and North America. Today more Indian Jews live outside India than within it, and the communities that remain in India are maintained by elderly members and a small but growing number of returnees.
Source: Wikipedia: History of the Jews in India | Wikipedia: Bene Israel