Study of past may hold future for India-Israel ties – In conversation with Sanjeev Sanyal

Jewish communities resided even on the Eastern coast of India, which people forget. And some of them have been there for a very long time.Some of them are Telugu speakers. They were in Calcutta (now Kolkata), which was a very major hub of trade
Sanjeev Sanyal is an Indian economist
Sanjeev Sanyal is an Indian economist

Sanjeev Sanyal is an Indian economist, bestselling writer, environmentalist, and urban theorist. Currently he is the Principal Economic Adviser in the Ministry of Finance, Government of India. He is widely regarded as one of Asia’s leading economists and was Deutsche Bank’s Global Strategist and a Managing Director till 2015. A Rhodes Scholar and Eisenhower Fellow, he was named “Young Global Leader 2010” by the World Economic Forum at Davos. He is also the author of four best selling books “The Indian Renaissance: India’s Rise after a Thousand Years of Decline” (published by Penguin and World Scientific), “Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India’s Geography”, and The Ocean of Churn: How human history was shaped by the Indian Ocean (Penguin, 2016).

A 19th century Bene Israel family
A 19th century Bene Israel family

 

Editor: Namaste Shalom! Sanjeev, it’s an honour to speak to you. We are very grateful that in spite of the busy budget days you found the time and a window to speak to us on the Indian Jews’ history.

Sanjeev Sanyal: It’s a pleasure to be here for me too.

Editor: The first Jews arrived in India at Alibaug, in 175 BC. They came from Canon, the northern part of Israel. How do you look at their history and the way they came from various parts of the world to India?

Sanjeev: It is a very long history. So it would take me quite some time to take you through it. But in brief, India and the Middle East have had a relationship going back to the Bronze Age, to the Harappan Civilization. We have records of Indians in the Middle East in the Iron Age, records of Indian soldiers as part of the Persian Army, during the time of Alexander. Even before that, Herodotus mentions Indians. So, Indians were familiar in the Middle East from a very early period although we do not know if these early Indians came across Jewish community.

Even if we are unsure exactly when the Jewish community and Indians first began to interact, we know that by the 3rd century BC, there was a fair amount of trade going back and forth between India and the eastern Mediterranean.

In fact, Emperor Ashoka’s Edicts mention that he sent ambassadors to Egypt and the Levant, which was then under the Macedonian generals. So, there were Indian mercenaries, traders, scholars, going to Alexandria, and the coast of what is now Israel and Lebanon. Similarly, Greek and Roman merchants were coming to India. This is about the time that Jews would have begun to regularly come to India.

Editor: Is it documented?

Sanjeev: Yes, we have a lot of evidence of Indian interactions with the eastern Mediterranean. There is a Greek manual called Periplus of the ErythraeanSea which describes the trade routes of first century AD in detail.

Editor: Interesting.

Sanjeev:

The Periplus also mentions the trade route. So if a Jewish merchant, started out from the Eastern Mediterranean, he probably came from one of the port cities like Caesarea Maratima or Tyre, , and probably made it overland through Petra, in Jordan, to Aqaba. As I said, it is mentioned in Ashoka’s Edicts of sending ambassadors to the Greeks of the Eastern Mediterranean, and of course, what is now the state of Israel, that area was under Greek domination and so, it is highly probable that Indian mercenaries, merchants, and ambassadors would have interacted with the Jewish population there. There are indications that around 175 BC, Jewish merchants turned up in the West coast of India. So, clearly, there was a relationship.

Then, through the Gulf of Aqaba, one reached the Red Sea, and then sailed all the way down the Arabian Sea, to an island called Socotra, which is now a part of Yemen. Its name is derived from Dweepa Sukhadara, which is a Sanskrit name meaning the Island of Bliss.

And from there you had a choice. By about the first century AD, the sailors were able to able to use monsoon winds to cross directly. So, from Socotra, they used the monsoon winds to directly reached Kerala, Karnataka coast. Alternatively, they went further north along the coast of Oman and then along the Makran coast to Gujarat. So, there were two routes from Socotra, and we have records from the Roman period of ships going back and forth. There would have been Roman and Greek and presumably also Jewish ships coming, and there would have been similar ships going outwards. In a way, it was a robust trade route between the two countries. And certainly by the time of the destruction of the second temple, in 72 AD, suddenly a fairly large community of Jews appeared and settled around a major port in Kerala, called Muchiri, which the Romans calledMuziris. And so, just north of Cochin, the area, which is now known as Cranganore, there is a general area where there was a big port, called Muchiri and many Jews settled settle in and around. But there were other settlements along the coast as well.

“India was a peculiarly tolerant place. By the way, the Jews weren’t the only people who thought of coming to India. There were also Zoroastrians, the forefathers of today’s Parsis when they faced persecution in Iran.”

David Sassoon Library, Mumbai
David Sassoon Library, Mumbai

Editor: Wasn’t the main reason to leave their home and seek refuge elsewhere was the religious persecution ? When they arrived in India, did they have the notion that India would give them shelter, which they were denied elsewhere?

Sanjeev: Certainly persecution was an important issue. During the Roman period, there were groups of Jews who came to trade too. In fact, one of the reasons, many of these communities thought of India as a place to go to during periods of persecution was that India was the most tolerant place in the ancient world. The Zoroastrians, the forefathers of today’s Parsis, when they faced persecution in Iran, where did they to? Again, they came to India. Where did the Nestorian Christians and the Syrian Christians decide to go when they were facing persecution? They came to India. So, India has a very long history of taking in those fleeing from persecution.

The reason they always thought India of was not just the tolerance ( of Hindus ) , but due to pre-existing trade relationships, i.e. they were already familiar with Indians. So, it was a place for business in good times, but in bad times a place of refuge. These two relationships are intertwined in many ways.

Editor: Are there records of this Indo-Jewish history?

Sanjeev: Fortunately, there are plenty of such documents. For instance, in the old part of Cairo, today it is called Genizah, there is a large collection of the records of the Jewish merchant community. Wherever a document had the name of God written in it, those documents were deemed by the Medieval Jews as something that could not be thrown away or destroyed. So, when a merchant died, all his papers were taken to this place in Cairo, the old part of Cairo, and were stored in an old synagogue, where they accumulated over time. And in relatively recent times, they have been rediscovered. Due to the extremely dry weather conditions of Egypt, they are still well preserved. So, we have records of Jewish merchants of more than a thousand years ago, who have left us fairly detailed records of what the transactions were, who they were trading with, what they were trading and their disputes.Many of these merchants were trading from Alexandria and they had a trade network going up to Yemen. Yemen had a very sizable Jewish population, and then from Yemen on to India. So, that was the vibrant trading path so to speak. Thus, the Indo-Jewish interaction started in the Roman period, and continued to the Medieval period, well through the Islamic conquests and the Arab domination, and then continues, till the Colonial period. So we have an example of David Sassoon, who was a Baghdadi.

Editor: A legendary figure in Bombay.

Sanjeev: Exactly. In the mid-19th century, he fled the local Ottoman ruler, the Governor of Iraq, who became increasingly despotic, and he arrived in Bombay. Here again, he became fabulously rich in Mumbai, (erstwhile Bombay). It needs to be mentioned here that he has left for us majestic buildings in Mumbai.

Editor: The David Sassoon Dock, Library,

Sanjeev: Correct.

Editor: Schools, colleges…

Sanjeev: Absolutely. Not only that, his own house.

 Editor: Now turned into a hospital.

Sanjeev: If you visit the hospital, it looks like a 19thcentury merchant’s lavish house. This relationship between India and Israel as I said, was like thisduring the good times a place to do business, and a place to seek refuge during bad times.

Editor: Was it just becoming successful traders that brought persecution to their doors or was it religion, their faith and their belief in their traditions?

David Sassoon
David Sassoon

Sanjeev: This is a long subject, which is not directly related to Indian or Indo-Jewish interaction. The Jews were very brutally persecuted throughout history. It is true that their religious beliefs certainly had a lot to do with it. As I said, Indian interactions with the Jews go back to thousands of years and throughout that history, there has been no instance of Hindus persecuting the Jews. It is not just the Jews; the Zoroastrians faced a similar welcome, as did the Syrian Christian community and many others as well. Maybe, as two civilizations that have gone through many ups and downs in their long history, it is a friendship that is interconnected and intertwined.

The discovery of the Jewish links with Mizoram is very modern. Actually, Jewish communities resided even on the Eastern coast of India, which people forget. And some of them have been there for a very long time.Some of them areTelugu speakers. They were in Calcutta (now Kolkata), which was a very major hub of trade. Calcutta also had a close link with the Armenians, another persecuted community. The Ottomans persecuted them too, at about the same time. So, India has, as I said, been linked to many of these communities, but the Jews have been here both as refugees as well as business partners for a very long time.

Editor: And they contributed greatly to India’s growth history.

Sanjeev: Absolutely.

Editor: We have not just David Sassoon; we have had the best of their Military Generals, like General Jacob.

Sanjeev: Absolutely so. The story of the Jews in India is not just that they came and escaped persecution, but they also contributed a lot to our history. For example, if you look at early Indian cinema, these are completely mainstream and similarly as you mentioned, in military field, General Jacob was one of the heroes of the 1971 Bangladeshi Liberation. That period came to an end, when India liberated East Pakistan and made Bangladesh, and a Jewish General was a very important part of that history.

 Editor: We find Indians and Hindus a number of times in the Jewish memory. But where are Jews in the Hindu memory? Because they intermingled and became one of us ?

Sanjeev: They are completely accepted, so became one of us. Nonetheless, there will be clear records, but perhaps we have to look for them. You will find sculptures in Ajanta and Ellora, depicting people from the Middle East, many of those could have been Jewish, we cannot say.

Ancient Sanskrit texts need to be revisited. You will be amazed that the vast majority of Sanskrit texts have not been translated to this day. Till recently, no one thought of looking for Indians in ancient texts of the Eastern Mediterranean. When we began to look recently, we find Indians everywhere in Roman, Greek and even Sumerian texts – merchants, scholars, mercenaries and even astrologers. I have already mentioned the findings in Cairo of Jewish merchant records that are full of India and Indians..

Hindus and Jews are two very ancient civilizations, which have interacted with each other, peacefully and fruitfully for a very long time. So there is certainly a lot more records. Indian texts have not been mined systematically not just about the IndoJewish relationship, but even our own history. You will be surprised at how little of our mainstream history is derived from our own cultural memory and texts. The colonial era historians tended to disregard Indian sources, but sadly this continued to this day.

Editor: And the Indians were going to various parts of the globe since ancient times.

 Sanjeev: Yes but ironically an average Indian, till very recently, knew very little about Indian interactions with South East Asia. In South East Asia, Indian influence can be seen everywhere. Yet, the Indian textbook narrative or the official narrative of India, till very recently, barely spoke of Indian’s outward influence, linkages, and relationships. So, this is a huge failing of Indians thinking about themselves. Very recently though, a lot of interest is generated in India’s eastern relationship going all the way to Korea, through South East Asia. We need to re-think the ancient relationship that we have had across both sides of the globe.

“Very recently some thought is being given to a relationship with Jewish merchants and the refugees who came to India in ancient and medieval times. That is pretty much the limit up to which a part of conversationand general knowledge have come.”

I am sure if the texts are clearly studied, the archaeology is clearly looked and relooked at; you will find lots of new evidence. Similarly, going into our own texts, I am sure, with this long relationship you will find there are many extraordinary characters in Indian history, events in Indian history, which are closely related in some way to Jewish history.

Editor: How would you like to describe IndiaIsrael, India-Jewish relations and the steps that we should take at the people’s level to extend our bonds of our culture, tradition and civilization ties?

Sanjeev: This relationship is a very old one, as you pointed out. And we need to build on it. This is not a relationship between two countries based on today, but a friendship between two people and civilizations over millennia. That relationship needs to be taken forward and made stronger.

ISRAEL AT A GLANCE

 Israel covers roughly 8,000 square miles and is home to 8.65 million people. But it plays a disproportionately large role on the world stage — a function of its longstanding conflict with its Arab neighbors, its vast accomplishments in the high-tech sector and its religious significance for the world’s three monotheistic religions. And while its population is overwhelmingly Jewish, it is also extremely diverse, representing a wide range of religious and ethnic identities.

 The modern state of Israel was founded by a United Nations resolution in 1948. However, the Jewish connection to the land of Israel goes back to biblical times, continuing through the periods of the First and Second Temples. While the Jewish people scattered all over the world following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Israel continued to be a spiritual and cultural focal point.

 

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