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
While the Bene Israel, Cochin Jews, and Baghdadi Jews represent the three oldest and most established Jewish communities in India, the Indian subcontinent has at various points in its history been home to other Jews from the Western world whose presence added further layers to the already complex story of Jewish life in Asia. From the first Portuguese Jewish refugees in the sixteenth century to the European Jewish intellectuals and professionals who arrived during the British colonial period, the history of Western Jews in India illuminates both the cosmopolitanism of the subcontinent and the diverse pathways through which Jewish identity expressed itself in the Indian context.
The Portuguese Jewish Refugees
The first Western Jews to arrive in India in significant numbers came as a consequence of one of the most traumatic events in Sephardic Jewish history: the expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492 and the subsequent persecution of conversos, Jews who had converted to Christianity under duress, by the Portuguese Inquisition. Some of these Sephardic Jews, seeking safety from Inquisition persecution, made their way to the Portuguese colonial territories of India, where the reach of the Inquisition was present but not as total as in Europe.
The Goa Inquisition, established in 1561, did pursue conversos in Portugal’s Indian territories, and its records document the examination and in some cases execution of people suspected of secretly practicing Judaism. Yet India also offered more opportunities for escape and concealment than Europe, and some Sephardic Jewish families managed to maintain their Jewish identity in India despite official persecution. Their descendants merged over generations with the existing Indian Jewish communities, particularly the Cochin Jewish community, which already had Sephardic characteristics.
European Jewish Professionals in Colonial India
The British colonial period brought to India a different kind of Western Jew: educated professionals, merchants, and administrators who came to seek their fortunes in the expanding economy of British India. Some were from the established Jewish communities of England, such as the Sassoon family, which was of Middle Eastern rather than European origin but had deep connections to the British Jewish establishment by the time it arrived in India. Others were from the Continental Jewish communities of Germany, Austria, and France, bringing with them the cultural profile of the emancipated Western European Jew of the nineteenth century.
These Western Jewish professionals occupied a distinctive position in colonial India, often functioning as cultural intermediaries between the British colonial establishment and the Indian population. Their legal training, commercial expertise, and familiarity with European business practices made them valuable to both British and Indian clients, and their Jewish identity gave them a certain independence from the strict racial hierarchies of colonial society.
Jewish Refugees from Nazi Europe
The 1930s and 1940s brought to India a particularly poignant group of Western Jews: refugees from Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe who found sanctuary in British India during the Second World War. Several thousand European Jewish refugees settled in India during this period, primarily in Bombay, Calcutta, and Bangalore. They came as professionals, academics, and businesspeople, contributing their skills to the wartime Indian economy while waiting, sometimes for years, for the opportunity to continue their journeys.
The experience of European Jewish refugees in India during the war years has been documented in memoirs, academic studies, and oral history projects that capture the strange experience of living as a Jewish refugee in an Asian country far from the centers of the conflict. India’s relative safety from Nazi persecution, combined with its unfamiliar culture and climate, created a distinctive refugee experience that is part of the broader story of Jewish survival during the Holocaust.
A Continuous Thread
The presence of Western Jews in India from the fifteenth century to the present represents a continuous thread in the complex tapestry of Indian Jewish history. From Sephardic refugees fleeing the Inquisition to European professionals seeking opportunity in colonial India to Holocaust survivors finding temporary refuge from Nazi persecution, these Westerners added their own dimensions to an Indian Jewish story that was already remarkable for its diversity and depth.