Fac­ing per­se­cu­tion, dis­crim­i­na­tion, and vio­lence in the world, Jews have found safe­ty in India for over 2,000 years. In Kochi, Mum­bai, Pune, Kolkata, and Del­hi, men proud­ly donned kip­pahs on their heads. Kosher shops dis­played Magen David in their win­dows with zeal. Street signs point­ed the way in Hebrew. Is it any won­der, then, that when flee­ing the Nazis, five thou­sand Jews sought refuge in the land of san­dal­wood, silk, and peacocks?

And yet, it was a sur­prise to me. I’d nev­er heard of Indi­an Jews.

As an Indi­an Amer­i­can writer of his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, I begin with research about the time peri­od, the peo­ple, and the polit­i­cal cli­mate of my sto­ry before lay­er­ing in ele­ments from my imag­i­na­tion. My upcom­ing nov­el, Six Days in Bom­bay, inspired by the free-spir­it­ed, scan­dalous 1930s painter Amri­ta Sher-Gil, led me to research her life and work in both Europe and India. I found out that Sher-Gil’s father was an Indi­an schol­ar and her moth­er was a Hun­gar­i­an Jew. I want­ed to weave this into my nov­el and mod­eled the char­ac­ter of Mira Novak after Sher-Gil, but I altered Novak’s parent­age to a Czech Jew­ish father and a Hin­du moth­er. Since the real Sher-Gil fam­i­ly had moved from Europe to India, the fic­ti­tious Novak fam­i­ly need­ed to relo­cate from Bohemia (as the Czech Repub­lic was known in 1937, the year the nov­el takes place) to Bom­bay (now Mum­bai). Now I had to answer this ques­tion: why would a Czech Jew move to Bom­bay in 1937? Down I went into a rab­bit hole about the his­to­ry of Jews in India. 

Renowned Indo-Juda­ic schol­ar Dr. Nathan Katz has writ­ten exten­sive­ly about three dis­tinct com­mu­ni­ties of Jews in India. The Cochin Jews, believed to be the old­est group, were mer­chants and traders, deal­ing in com­modi­ties like tim­ber, coral, and spices. They’d set­tled along Kochi in South­ern India, work­ing the land, run­ning coconut plan­ta­tions, and spe­cial­iz­ing in the build­ing trades. 

The Bagh­da­di Jews, so-called because they spoke Ara­bic and Per­sian lan­guages, bought and sold tex­tiles, jute, and indi­go. Joseph Sas­soon wrote about his famous Bagh­da­di Jew­ish fam­i­ly (The Sas­soons: The Great Glob­al Mer­chants and the Mak­ing of an Empire) who amassed copi­ous wealth export­ing opi­um and cot­ton to Chi­na for the British before branch­ing out into build­ing ships and fac­to­ries, and found­ing hos­pi­tals, schools, and libraries along the way. 

Flee­ing per­se­cu­tion from the Galilee region, the Bene Israel com­mu­ni­ty were ini­tial­ly farm­ers, car­pen­ters, and oil pressers in India. Many went into the British Mil­i­tary and were giv­en gov­ern­ment roles dur­ing British rule. A few in the com­mu­ni­ty entered politics.

Each of these com­mu­ni­ties have lived in har­mo­ny in India. Jews assim­i­lat­ed into the major­i­ty cit­i­zen­ry while main­tain­ing a dis­tinct cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty. They learned the local lan­guages, adopt­ed tra­di­tion­al cui­sine and dress and con­tributed to the region’s eco­nom­ic and social progress. At the same time, they built syn­a­gogues, rit­u­al baths, kosher butch­ers and bak­eries, Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ters and Hebrew schools. Dr. Katz was astound­ed by the ease with which these Jews moved about in India, as com­fort­able in their Jew­ish­ness as in their Indi­an­ness. He found no word in Hin­di for anti­semitism. It made him won­der: what would it feel like to be a Jew with­out the fear of persecution?

Despite their minor­i­ty pres­ence in India — some esti­mates put the Indi­an Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion at 30,000 and oth­ers at 50,000 at its height — they had a large influ­ence in cer­tain cul­tur­al are­nas, most notably in India’s film indus­try. At a time when Hin­du and Mus­lim women were for­bid­den from per­form­ing in pub­lic, Jew­ish women became nation­al icons in Bol­ly­wood. Indi­an audi­ences couldn’t get enough of silent-era stars like Sulochana (born Ruby Myers), or talkie stars Prami­la (born Esther Abra­hams), Uncle David (David Abra­ham), and Nadi­ra (born Flo­rence Ezekiel). 

In his film Shalom Bol­ly­wood: The Untold Sto­ry of Indi­an Cin­e­ma direc­tor Dan­ny Ben-Moshe high­light­ed Jew­ish tal­ent behind the cam­era as well: writ­ers, direc­tors, cam­era­men, musi­cians, and pro­duc­ers. Indi­an Jews trav­eled to Hol­ly­wood to learn film tech­niques and brought their skills back to Bol­ly­wood. By 1930, Jew­ish exec­u­tives were run­ning six of the eight major studios. 

Today, only 5,000 Jews remain in India. But in the 1937 world of my nov­el, the Novak fam­i­ly is thriv­ing in Bom­bay and we see the vibrant Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty they join in India. Amrita’s father aban­doned his pros­per­ous Czech glass­works fac­to­ry for the safe­ty of Bom­bay and her eight syn­a­gogues before Hitler could storm Prague Cas­tle. Mr. Novak has raised funds to build a new syn­a­gogue and coaxed the love­ly Sulochana (Ruby Myers) to per­form the rib­bon cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny. In con­trast, the father of Mira’s child­hood friend — Petra Hitzig — believed his busi­ness deal­ings with the Ger­mans could save his fam­i­ly from being sent to a con­cen­tra­tion camp. How­ev­er, his deci­sion has trag­ic con­se­quences as the Hitzig fam­i­ly find them­selves being deport­ed to Terezin; in real-life 75,000 Czech Jews were dis­placed and forced into this camp.

In Prague’s Pinkas Syn­a­gogue I came upon a small room filled with draw­ings of young chil­dren from the Terezin camps. A young woman there had round­ed up scraps of paper, chalk, and pen­cils to keep the chil­dren busy, draw­ing hap­pi­er times in their lives: a birth­day cel­e­bra­tion, a fam­i­ly din­ner, an after­noon at the play­ground with their friends. In Six Days in Bom­bay Petra Hitzig became that coura­geous and hope­ful woman. My vision blurs even now, think­ing about those chil­dren — the draw­ings depict­ing birth­day cakes and hap­pi­er times. 

My new nov­el, Six Days in Bom­bay, draws on the his­to­ry of the Sec­ond World War, as well as 2,000 years of Jew­ish cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ty in India. Weav­ing togeth­er these sto­ries of resis­tance, sur­vival, and luck across time and con­ti­nents, these char­ac­ters offer up a piece of Jew­ish his­to­ry too often overlooked.