Sephardic Jews in India

Sephardic Jews in India

Regions with significant populations
India India: Chennai, and the Eastern, South-Eastern Coast Israel
Languages
Initially Ladino, later Judeo-Malayalam, now mostly Hebrew & English
Religion
Orthodox Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Chennai Jews Cochin Jews Sephardic Jews Paradesi Jews

Sephardic Jews in India are European Jews who settled in southwest India, in Goa, Madras (now Chennai) and, primarily and for the longest period, on the Malabar coast, after having left the Iberian peninsula at the end of the 15th century and throughout the 16th century, in search of religious freedom due to the Spanish Inquisition in both Spain and Portugal. In Iberia, they spoke the vernacular language of their kingdom (basically Castillian i.e. Spanish-Portuguese or Catalan) and some of them also Arabic. After several generations out of Spain, especially in the Ottoman Empire, their Spanish became a distinctive dialect that combined archaisms and loan words from Turkish, Greek and Slavic languages, besides some Italian and French.

Some of the newer immigrants were crypto-Jews, having been forcibly converted to Catholicism but continuing to practice Judaism in secrecy. Traveling through Asia Minor, the Indian Sephardic Jews went down the west coast of India, settling in the Konkan and Malabar Coast of South western coastal India, joining the more ancient settlements formed by the Malabar Jews and forming settlements nearby. The overland was coupled with the sea route. The Portuguese were able mariners and Sephardic Jews were essential in helping navigate the waters of India. As K. M. Mathew documents, Jews such as Abraham Zacuto, Pedro Nunes, Joao Baptista Lavanha, and Duarte Gomes de Solis were instrumental in charting the waters along the Indian coast. Some of the crypto-Jews also came with the Portuguese colonialists who were taking territorial possessions and expanding into the East, which was given to the Portuguese through the Treaty of Tordesillas. The Treaty of Tordesillas, authorized by Pope Alexander VI gave Portugal the right to found colonies in the Eastern Hemisphere. Thus, as Professor Walter Fischel, the now deceased Chair of the Department of Near Eastern History at the University of California - Berkeley, explains, the Portuguese were able to use the crypto-Jews in Goa and elsewhere in their Indian and Asian possessions as "letter-carriers, translators, agents, etc." The ability of the Sephardic Jews and anusim to speak Arabic made them vital to Portuguese colonial ambitions in the East, where they could interact and go on diplomatic and trade missions in the courts of the Mughal Empire and elsewhere. India attracted Sephardic Jews and anusim for a few reasons. In his lecture at the Library of Congress, Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Chair in Social Sciences at University of California, Los Angeles, explains that crypto-Jews were especially attracted to India because not only was it a center of trade, but India had established and ancient Jewish settlements along its Western coast. The presence of these communities meant that crypto-Jews, who had been forced to accept Catholicism, could operate within the Portuguese Empire but away from the Inquisiton, and, if they wished, the crypto-Jews were able to contact the Jews in these communities and re-adopt the faith of their fathers.

A notable Jewish population once existed in Goa. They had their own synagogues and enjoyed freedom. They had been settled in Goa before the Portuguese arrived. Many of them integrated with the local Goan culture and spoke the Konkani language, whereas some of them were immigrants from Iberia who spoke Spanish. The strong presence of Sephardic Jews from Iberia and local Indian Jews as well as crypto-Jews in this region was the primary justification for the Portuguese to institute the Goa Inquisition in 1560 – 24 years after the Portuguese Inquisition was instituted in Portugal. The famed Sephardic physician Garcia de Orta belonged to this community. There remains an enduring element of crypto-Judaism among various Catholic and Christian communities along the Western coast of India which is a testament to the influence that Sephardic, Indian, and crypto-Jews had in this region. The subject is one of on-going research by academics.

In Kerala they learned Judeo-Malayalam, the dialect developed by the Malabar Jews, descendants of immigrants who had been there for more than 1,000 years from Israel and Yemen. The combined groups in Kerala became known as the Cochin Jews. The European Jews were also referred to as the Paradesi Jews (associated with foreigners) or White Jews, given their European ethnicity. The Malabar Jews, having intermarried in south India, had darker skin.

In addition, some settled in Madras, now known as Chennai Jews, they worked with the English East India Company and stayed in Clive house/Admiralty house in Fort St. George. Sephardic Jewish traders from Portugal, Leghorn, Caribbean, London, Amsterdam and the Netherlands settled there and became highly successful and influential for a time. By the late 18th century, they had mostly shifted their trading companies to London, and the Jewish community in Madras declined.

There were plans to extend the Portuguese Inquisition to their Indian possessions since 1560 and the first trials and burnings at the stake started in 1560. Altogether, more than 16,000 people were put on trial between 1560-1774. The majority of the records are presumed destroyed. The figure of 16,000 is based on the records which did survive. In the first 30 years of the Inquisition 321 people were brought to trial on the charge of crypto-Judaism. Around 200 people were sentenced to death and executed by the Portuguese Inquisition in Goa and their other Indian strongholds in 200 years, an average of one person per year. The targets of the Inquisition were not Jews as such but Crypto-Jews, who had embraced Christianity under duress without ever relinquishing their family faith. Many Jews from Portuguese Goa fled to Bombay, and Portuguese Cochin in Kerala where they joined the Malabar Yehudan. In Kerala, the Malabar Jews and the Malabar Nasranis of Judeo-Christian heritage were also persecuted by the Portuguese as part of the Goa Inquisition. The coming of the Dutch rule beginning in 1663 eased the pressure on the community in India, whereas the same Dutch rule in Manhattan under Peter Stuyvesant denied religious freedom to Sephardic Jews there.

As a result of the inquisition large numbers of Malabar Jews assimilated into the Malabar Nasrani community (thus becoming a community of anusim and Judeo-Christians forced to comply with the wishes of the Roman Catholic Church). Additionally, some of the later Baghdadi Jews who arrived in India, such as the Sassoon family, were of Sephardic origin.