Indians are known as one of the friendliest nations in the world. Martin Luther King Jr quotes, “To other countries I may go as a tourist, but to India, I come as a pilgrim.” Eons ago, a community arrived on the shores of Southern India and became an integral part of this wonderful nation. They were Jews. At present, there are approximately 6000 Jews residing in different parts of the country.
Jews in India
According to their geographical location, Jews in India are divided into three different groups - the Cochin Jews, the Bene Israeli and the Baghdadi Jews. As these three types of Jews arrived in India at different points of time, they created their unique Jewish identity as per the historical forces operating in India at that time. It is estimated Cochin Jews were the first to arrive in the state of Kerala around 2000 years ago. When their temple was ransacked in Jerusalem, they moved to India. The king of the Chera dynasty - Cheraman Perumal - welcomed them and offered them shelter.
Talking about Bene Israeli, they are the largest Jewish group in India and spread across Konkan region of Maharashtra. During one of their voyages between the years 1600 CE and 1800 CE, they were shipwrecked on the Konkan coast. Only 14 people survived the accident and decided to take refuge in a village called Nawgaon (near present-day Mumbai). They share some traits with Chitpavin Brahmins of Mumbai who supposedly arrived from outside after a shipwreck as well.
Coming to Baghdadi Jews, who were the usherer of entrepreneurship in the major port cities of British India such as Calcutta (now Kolkata), Bombay (now Mumbai) and Rangoon (now Yangon). They had risen in wealth and status by the mid 19th century and established Jewish schools, kosher markets and ritual baths in India.
Cohesion with Hindus
Years of closeness with Hindu communities brought a beautiful cohesion of Indo-Jew traditions. For instance, the Bene Israeli who went back to Israel still speak Marathi, they wear the local Maharashtrian dresses and tie the Mangal Sutra in weddings. Use of coconut oil and camphor inside the synagogues, haldi and henna in weddings are few other examples of a Indo-Jewish fusion culture, heavily influenced by Hindus.
The famous Jews of India
Jews who made their mark in India through their entrepreneurship, business attitude and kindness. Shaikh David Sasoon who arrived in Bombay in 1828, climbed the steps to success in India. The Sasoon empire built over the years by him soon spread from Bombay to Calcutta to Shanghai, Amsterdam, London and New York. He was also a philanthropist and built many hostels, hospitals, schools, synagogues and charitable institutions.
Kolkata is known for being the home to the famous bakery Nahoum and Sons in New Market. The bakery was established in 1902 by Nahoum Israel. It was famous for its delicious fruit cake among the local British population. Locals enjoy the delicacy at this bakery even today.
Among others, we remember the monumental role of Lieutenant General Jack Farj Rafael (JFR) Jacob during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war with a sense of great pride. He was born in Calcutta in 1924 to a Jewish family. During the war, he served as Chief of staff of the Indian Army’s Eastern Command and was awarded a commendation of merit for his role.
Shalom Bollywood
Jewish women like Nadira, Sulochana (Ruby Myers), Miss Rose, and Pramila dazzled Indian cinema. Sulochna was awarded with the prestigious DadaSaheb Phalke Award. Reportedly at one point, she was able to earn more money than the governor of Bombay. Talking about Nadira’s film era, it came after Sulochana but she was no less and was part of a very famous movie, Shree 420. As her film achievements soared, she became one of the few Indian actors to purchase a Rolls Royce.
Not only this, another famous Jewish lady Pramila, born Esther Victoria Abraham, was an actress who won the Miss India beauty pageant of 1947. Apart from acting in movies, she was also one of the earliest female film producers of Hindi cinema. Not only this, she was one of the few stunt stars in India and took part in 30 films. She was introduced to the Hindi film industry via a dance performance in a Parsi theater company.
Joseph David Penkar, a Jewish lyricist and playwright wrote the very famous and historic blockbuster movie of those times “Alam Ara” in 1931.
Similarly, Ezra Mir, born Edwyn Myers, was a Jewish Indian film producer. He produced more than 170 films before and after independence. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1970.
Holocaust
Although the term “Holocaust” originally meant “sacrifice by fire”, was largely used by Greeks. Nazi regime gave it a completely different meaning to the word with anti-Semitism. Holocaust in Nazi Germany was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews. After coming to power in January 1933, Nazis started working towards purifying Germany of what they termed “inferior races” including Jews, Gypsies, Blacks and many others.
In the early 1930s, the entire Jewish population of Europe stood at about nine million. Most of those Jews resided in nations that Nazi Germany would siege during World War II. The Germans together with their allies killed almost two-third of European Jews by the end of the war in 1945. As soon as they obtained power, the Nazis adopted measures to exclude Jews from German economic, social and cultural life and to compel them to emigrate.
Implementation of the "Final Solution"
World War II provided Nazi officials the opportunity to adopt more radical measures against the Jews under the pretext that they posed a threat to Germany. After occupying Poland, German authorities confined the Jewish population to ghettos, which was later deported in thousands from the Third Reich. Thousands of Jews died from the horrendous conditions in the ghettos in German-occupied Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe.
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, SS and police units perpetrated mass shootings of Jews and Roma. Mass shootings of Jews in eastern Europe continued throughout the war. Of the approximately 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, at least 1.5 million and possibly more than 2 million died in mass shootings or gas vans in Soviet territory.
In late 1941, Nazi officials opted to employ an additional method to kill Jews, one originally developed for the “Euthanasia” Program: stationary gas chambers. Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi Germany and its allies deported Jews from areas under their control to death centers. These centers, often called extermination camps in English, were located in German-occupied Poland. Poison gas was the primary means of murder at these camps. Nearly 2.7 million Jews were murdered at the five killing centers: Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Some able-bodied Jewish deportees were temporarily spared to perform forced labor in ghettos in Nazi-occupied Poland and the Soviet Union. Most of these workers died from starvation and disease or were killed when they became too weak to work.
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, an estimated 250,000 Jewish survivors found shelter in displaced persons camps run by the Allied powers and the United Nations Refugee and Rehabilitation Administration in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Between 1948 and 1951, most displaced Jews immigrated to Israel, the United States, and other nations outside Europe.
Attack on a synagogue at Ahmedabad
Two suspected ISIS operatives were arrested in October 2017 by the Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS). They were plotting an attack on a Jewish synagogue in Khadia area of Ahmedabad.The suspects, arrested in Surat, were identified as Mohammad Kasim Stimberwala and Ubed Ahmed Mirza.
According to the complaint registered by the ATS, the two men have been radicalised by the ideology of the ISIS and were planning to carry out a 'lone-wolf' attack on the synagogue, for which Stimberwala had visited Ahmedabad and conducted a recce of the Jewish centre located in Khadia area.
Surveillance of their social media accounts had revealed that the duo were attracted to the extreme ideology for three-four years, according to the complaint. They were also in contact with Shafi Armar, an ISIS handler who is wanted in various cases of serial blasts triggered by Indian Mujahideen (IM) and is currently believed to be out of India, the official said.
ATS suspects that both the accused were making "intensive efforts to radicalise other youths in India using various mediums, such as social media, one-on-one meetings and telephonic calls".
Bollywood’s Three Khans Boycott Israeli PM’s Event
In January 2018, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Salman Khan had stayed away from a Bollywood event that had been organized for state guest Israeli prime minister Netanyahu. A number of Bollywood actors, including Amitabh Bachchan and his family, met Netanyahu and took a selfie with him. But the three Khans' refusal to attend the event was welcomed by many fans who called them “real heroes”.
It is believed the Khans of Bollywood didn’t attend this friendly meet to show their solidarity towards Palestine.
Holocaust not being taught in history books
Unfortunately, post-independence leaders of India decided that the Second World War was a “foreign” war into which India was unnecessarily dragged by the British colonial rulers. As a result, almost nothing about the war is taught to Indian students. This reluctance extended to missing the Holocaust from history books of Indian students.
There are no memorials in India commemorating the victims, including over 1.5 million children. Senior academics such as Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi are among the few in India who teach Holocaust Studies as a subject at the Presidency University in the city of Kolkata.
Students in Israel are taught about India and the role of Indian soldiers in liberating the city of Haifa. It’s time for India to start taking steps to see that Indian students are also taught about the Holocaust, to better understand the people and the country that has grown so close to us.
India-Israel relations
India and Israel established full diplomatic relations in 1992 and since then the bilateral relationship between the two countries has blossomed at the economic, military, agricultural and political levels. Both countries see themselves as isolated democracies threatened by neighbors that train, finance and encourage terrorism, therefore both countries also view their cooperative relationship as a strategic imperative.
Relations between Jerusalem and New Delhi were not always warm. Although both countries gained their independence from the United Kingdom within months of each other, they found themselves headed in pointedly different directions for nearly four decades – India as a leader in the Non-Aligned Movement that maintained close relations to the Arab world and the Soviet Union; Israel which linked its future to close ties with the United States and Western Europe.
Although India publicly kept a distance from Israel until the late 1980’s, there was in fact a great deal of bilateral activities between the two countries in the preceding years. India extended de-jure recognition to Israel in 1950 and allowed Israel to maintain a consulate in Mumbai (Bombay) to facilitate the voluntary immigration of thousands of Indian Jews to Israel. Thousands of Indians have also traveled to Israel for special courses and training in agricultural technology and community development. Israeli supplied weapons aided India in winning the Kargil War against Pakistan in 1999. Israel also provided humanitarian relief to India. Following a devastating earthquake in 2001, Israel sent an IDF emergency response delegation to India for two weeks to provide humanitarian relief and treatment for the victims.
Since firmly establishing diplomatic ties, both countries have benefited immensely. India has become one of Israel’s largest trading partners, many of the world’s leading high-tech companies in Israel and India are forging joint ventures that are successfully competing in the tough international marketplace. Trade and cooperation between the countries now centers primarily on security-related deals and aid in areas such as agriculture and water desalination.
The key to the growing India-Israel ties, however, is in the realm of security and defense. In the early 2000s, the Indian army declared its intention to implement a modernization program to which resources of tens of billions of dollars would be allocated. Since then, defense deals with Israel have grown exponentially; today, India is the number one export target of Israel’s defense industries.
To give a sense of the tremendous growth in Israel-India trade, in 1992, total trade amounted to $200 million; the figure was $4.13 billion in 2016. Israel exported $1.15 billion worth of goods to India during 2016, not including diamonds, amounting to 2.5% of Israel’s total exports for the year.
Let’s have a look at the pacts between the two countries:
Military Collaboration
In November 2011, India’s elite Cobra Commando unit bought more than 1,000 units of the Israeli X-95 assault rifle
In 2011, India placed orders for four advanced Israeli Phalcon AWACS planes (airborne warning and control systems) which are capable of detecting hostile aircraft, cruise missiles and other incoming aerial threats far before ground-based radars.
During a July 2014 visit to Tel Aviv, Indian Defense Secretary Radha Krishna Mathur on behalf of the Indian Government requested an unspecified number of Sword Fish ground radar trackers, precision-guided artillery, unspecified missiles, and two AWACS units
In July 2014, Israeli and Indian government officials signed an intelligence-sharing agreement to fight radical Islamic extremism
In November 2014, Israel Aerospace Industries successfully tested a jointly developed Indian-Israeli Barak 8 air and naval defense missile system
In 2014, India-Israel cooperation increased dramatically
Between Modi’s election in May 2014 and November 2014, Israel exported $662 million worth of Israeli weapons and defense items to India.
In 2015, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and DRDO began collaborating on a jointly developed surface-to-air missile system for the Indian Army
In 2015, Indian officials purchased 321 launchers and 8,356 missiles from the Israeli military
India uses Israel-made unmanned drones for surveillance and military purposes, and ordered 16 drones during 2015.
In September 2015, the government of India quietly approved the purchase of 10 armored Heron TP drone vehicles from Israel at a price of $400 million
In December 2015, the Barak 8 long-range surface-to-air missile, developed jointly between India and Israel, was successfully tested
The test of the missile system, which cost the Indian government approximately $1.4 billion, was carried out on the Indian warship INS Kolkata.
In June 2016, India again successfully tested the Barak 8
In September 2016, another successful test of the Barak 8 missile was carried out at the Chandipur research and development base in Odisha, on the Bay of Bengal
In March 2016, Indian firm Reliance Defense and Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defense Systems signed a cooperative agreement worth an estimated $10 billion at Defexpo India
In Feb 2017, the Indian Navy launched a new, Israeli-developed Integrated Under Water Harbor Defense and Surveillance System (IUHDSS)
In March 2017, a contract of 8,356 Spike anti-tank guided missiles and 321 missile launchers developed by Israeli Rafael Advanced Defense worth approximately $1 billion, would finally be moving forward.
In April 2017, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) announced that it had struck a deal with India’s Army and Navy to supply them with an advanced air defense system worth upwards of $2 billion
In May 2017, the Indian military carried out their first successful tests of the Israeli-made Surface-to-air Python and Derby missile system (SPYDER)
In May 2017, a new partnership between Indian security firm Punj Lloyd and Israel Weapons Industries, known as Punj Lloyd Raksha Systems, or PLR, was announced
In 2017, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s security service recruited 30 dogs from Israel trained to attack, sniff for bombs and drugs, and track criminals
In Aug 2017, the Indian military deployed an Israeli-developed comprehensive integrated border management system (CIBMS) along its border with Pakistan
In July 2020, India announced plans to purchase additional weapons from Israel due to rising tensions with China
Agriculture
In 2006, Israeli and Indian ministers of agriculture signed a long-term cooperation and training deal
In 2008, the two nations started a $50 million shared agriculture fund, focusing on dairy, farming technology and micro-irrigation
In 2011, India and Israel signed an agreement to foster cooperation on urban water systems
In May 2013, Israel announced that it would help India diversify and raise the yield of its fruit and vegetable crops under the Indo-Israel Agricultural Project
Israel pledged to set up 28 centers of excellence across India focused on specific fruit and vegetable crops
By March 2014, 10 centers of excellence operated throughout India offering free training sessions for farmers in efficient agricultural techniques using Israeli technological expertise
In March 2018, Israel and India inaugurated their 23rd joint center of excellence in the Northeast Indian state of Mizoram
Historic Visit of India’s Prime Minister
On July 4, 2017, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi became the first sitting Indian PM to visit Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu appeared with Modi throughout his three-day visit, accompanying him on visits to Yad Vashem and water desalination plants as well as various cultural events
The government also approved incentives to film Bollywood movies in Israel and plans to increase the number of Indian firms doing business in Israel
The Israel Space Agency and the Indian Space Research Organization signed an agreement to foster partnership in the development of electric propulsion systems for small satellites, and creating systems to accurately measure the extreme conditions of outer space
On July 5, 2017, Israeli officials and their Indian counterparts signed an agreement to create the India Israel Innovation Initiative fund (I4F) modeled after the US-Israel BIRD foundation
In what was hailed as a “huge development for India” by local news agencies, India abstained from a vote at the UNHRC that approved their Gaza Commission of Inquiry report in July 2015. Forty-one countries voted in favor of adopting the findings of the biased report, and India was one of only five others who abstained. This marked the first time that India had ever voted against Palestinian interests at the UNHRC, signaling a potentially significant shift in India-Israel relations.
India’s ambassador to Israel, Jaideep Sarkar, encouraged the approximately 85,000 Israeli Jews of Indian descent to tour their country of origin in August 2015, amid warming ties between the nations.
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