Judaism
Trade contacts between the Mediterranean region and the west coast of India
probably led to the presence of small Jewish settlements in India as long ago as
the early first millennium B.C. In Kerala a community of Jews tracing its origin
to the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 has remained associated with the cities of
Cranganore and Kochi (formerly known as Cochin) for at least 1,000 years. The
Pardesi Synagogue in Kochi, rebuilt in 1568, is in the architectural style of
Kerala but preserves the archaic ritual style of the Sephardic rite, with
Babylonian and Yemenite influence as well. The Jews of Kochi, concentrated
mostly in the old "Jew Town," were completely integrated into local culture,
speaking Malayalam and taking local names while preserving their knowledge of
Hebrew and contacts with Southwest Asia. A separate community of Jews, called
the Bene Israel, had lived along the Konkan Coast in and around Bombay, Pune,
and Ahmadabad for almost 2,000 years. Unlike the Kochi Jews, they became a
village-based society and maintained little contact with other Jewish
communities. They always remained within the orthodox Jewish fold, practicing
the Sephardic rite without rabbis, with the synagogue as the center of religious
and cultural life. A third group of Jews immigrated to India, beginning at the
end of the eighteenth century, following the trade contacts established by the
British Empire. These Baghdad Jews came mostly from the area of modern Iraq and
settled in Bombay and Calcutta, where many of them became wealthy and
participated in the economic leadership of these growing cities.
The population of the Kochi Jews, always small, had decreased from 5,000 in
1951 to about fifty in the early 1990s. During the same period, the Bene Israel
decreased from about 20,000 to 5,000, while the Baghdad Jews declined from 5,000
to 250. Emigration to Australia, Israel, Britain, and North America accounts for
most of this decline. According to the 1981 Indian census, there were 5,618 Jews
in India, down from 5,825 in 1971. The 1991 census showed a further decline to
5,271, most of whom lived in Maharashtra and Mizoram.
this content is derived in part or whole from the
U.S. Library of Congress Country Studies
