The question is a familiar one. Are you Asian? My dark complexion has always prompted people to ask where I am from and what my identity is. Well the answer is, I'm a British Jew of Indian Jewish heritage. That usually leads to a whole set of follow-up questions.
My mother's family came from the small Kolkata Jewish community, living in the city from the early nineteenth century for approximately 150 years. Over the course of my working and personal life, I must have discussed this with hundreds of people. These have included a whole range of office colleagues I've worked with, Buckingham Palace officials (I worked there for 3 years) and even a former Prime Minister.
I grew up in a Jewish household in north-west London, so naturally came across the local Indian community, and felt a kinship with it. My mother had a number of close (non-Jewish) Indian friends. At my secondary school, which split roughly one-third Christian, one-third Jewish and one-third Asian, I made some good Indian friends. Over the years I have been fortunate to visit India three times, the first time on a month-long visit in 1990 with extended family through the country with a special focus on the places of Jewish and personal interest in Kolkata.
My working life has also brought me into contact with the Indian community. Working for the Jewish religious leader Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, we held a particularly memorable reception at his home in 2005 for the Jewish and Hindu communities. The excitement and energy in the room that evening is something I still remember clearly. In my last job, my boss was a wonderful Indian man, and we had many interesting discussions about the relationship between our two communities.
Nowadays I am honoured to play a role on the Advisory Council of a small but effective charity, the Indian Jewish Association, which seeks to act as a forum for the friendship between our two communities. Its formation was inspired by your very own C B Patel!
I am of course proud of my Indian Jewish heritage. The Jews of India were only ever a small community, peaking at a population of 30,000, but contributed towards India in business, politics, the law, the army (General Jack Jacob, for example, was a respected military hero) and a number of other ways. Whereas Jewish communities experienced persecution and pogroms elsewhere, particularly in Europe, the Jews of India were granted freedom of religion and made to feel welcome. I recall my grandmother saying that they never experienced any anti-Semitism in India.
My ancestors, on my mother's side, were Jews in Iraq and Syria and travelled to Kolkata looking for trade and commercial opportunities around 1800. The founder of the community was Shalom Cohen, who arrived in the city in 1798. Many Jews worked hard as merchants and business people. My great-grandfather Benjamin Elias (1865-1941) set up and grew a business with a range of interests including jute, tobacco, property and electricity. By the mid-twentieth century, it was a significant company in India with 20,000 employees.
Aside from Kolkata, the two main communities were the Cochin Jews and the Bene Israel, who mainly lived in Mumbai. The first group had an ancient charter and dated back to the year 1,000. They lived in an area called Jew Town which still exists and boasts a beautiful synagogue, which is part of the tourist trail and was visited by the Prince of Wales on his 65th birthday in 2013. Meanwhile, the Bene Israel in the Mumbai area were the largest community. By the end of the Second World War, there were 24,000 Bene Israel in India but over half were soon to settle in Israel. Once Israel was formed in 1948, one year after India's independence, most Jews left for the "motherland" or came to the West.
Several decades on, Indian Jews remain proud of their unique heritage. It is no accident that Jews in Britain, whatever their background, feel a close connection with the Indian communities. Granted, the Jewish community, numbering less than 300,000 according to the last Census, is small by comparison to the Hindu and Indian communities, but there are factors that bind us together. The first is a deep desire to integrate into Britain and contribute to British society, without losing our core identity. A second point is that, whilst we both feel British, we have a special relationship with another country - because of historical, family and cultural ties (in your case, India and in the case of British Jews, Israel, the only Jewish state). Finally, both the Indian and Jewish communities place a high premium on education and family. When we meet each other, there is often an instant connection based on these shared values.
As someone with family history in India who admires your wonderful communities, I am honoured to have been asked to write for Asian Voice. Over the next few weeks, I'll be writing about themes of Jewish interest, and seeing what resonance and relevance they have for your own communities.
The author is on the Advisory Council of the Indian Jewish Association.
