Hindus and Jews

In this atmosphere of heightened religious conflict and hatred, it is important to pay tribute to those giants of different times fought for tolerance, understanding and inter faith reconciliation. Among them was the Indian Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin sometimes referred as Abul Kalam Azad, was a Muslim Indian nationalist, and the first Minister of Education in the Indian Government. His contribution to establishing the education foundation in India is still recognized today. In India his birthday is celebrated nationally on November the 11^th throughout India.  Aza, a Muslim, was one of the most important national Indian leaders in his day, opposing partition, pleading the cause of Hindu-Muslim understanding and unity through education and tolerance.  And in his attitude towards the Jews of India.

India is a fascinating example of the tensions between rival religions and the battle for tolerance. The Muslim community feels itself at a disadvantage in relation to the Hindu Nationalists and the Hindus see themselves as being in danger of being overwhelmed by Muslims. Both communities have at different times ruled over India and gone through episodes of intolerance and tolerance.  And there are other important religious minorities, Sikhs and Buddhists are the most prominent that make India a crucial of interreligious affairs. Mughal Emperors worshipped in Hindu Temples and Sufi and Bhakti mystics exchanged ideas and practices.

The small indigenous Jewish communities once thrived. According to some, they dated back thousands of years to the time of King Solomon and then the Ten Lost Tribes!  Cochin Jews arrived in 562 BCE and then in 70 CE after the Temple was destroyed. Although most Cochin Jews have now left, there are still seven synagogues in Kerala. Jewish merchants came later in the seventeenth century to Madras (Chennai). The Bene Yisrael go back to the eighteenth century and although their pedigree was once challenged by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate they have now been integrated into the wider community. The Benei Ephraim from Andhra Pradesh mostly emigrated to Israel in 2011. The most prominent and successful Jewish immigrants came from Baghdad in 1730 and flourished during the British Raj and included such notables as the Sassoon dynasty. But now most Indian Jews live in Israel.

William Dalrymple wrote a piece in The New York Review of Books in which he highlighted a debate going on in India over the historical relationship of Hindus to Muslims. Under Nehru and the Congress Party, India was a secular state from 1947 until 1977, when the Hindu Nationalist BJP party briefly came to power but soon fell apart. In 1999 the BJP return to power rather like in Israel when Likud overturned thirty years of Mapai rule, introduced a new way and less socialist way of looking at things.

The ideological policy of Nehru and his successors was to try to downplay the cultural and religious differences between Hindus and Muslims. Tolerance and good relations always existed between the communities and the cross-fertilization benefited both, making India what it is today.

This was, of course, a remarkable policy since it came on the heels of the horrific massacres, in 1947, of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children on both sides, when India split and the new Muslim State of West and East Pakistan (then Bangladesh) were carved out of a once unified body.

The BJP, on the other hand, grew out of a movement that had an agenda of ethnic cleansing, which its founder, Madhav Golwalkar, had picked up from the Nazis. He wrote in admiration of Kristallnacht as a lesson for what Hindus ought to do to Muslims. He argued that the Hindus were indigenous and the Muslims imperialist colonialists. When the BJP came to power, they encouraged the destruction of the Mosque at Ayodhyia on the grounds that it was built in an earlier Hindu Temple.

Unfortunately, there is tension now in India between Hindus and Muslims in certain locations. And yet Indian Muslims are less aggressive inclined towards Jews and Israelis than many other countries around the world. Unlike the Pakistanis.

From a specific Jewish point of view India is one of the most tolerant societies in the world today. The Muslim community is far less antagonistic than Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia. It was politically opposed to Israel through its leading role in the left leaning era of the Non-Aligned states under the Gandhis and Nehrus. But thanks to the present leader Narendra Modi who is far more friendly towards Israel than most other countries.

There was a time when I had hoped China might rethink its ideological antagonism towards Israel when it seemed it might become more open and less Maoist.  Sadly, in recent years it has dialled back in its sympathy for the Jews. It has become biased and vindictive both in its official policy and now overwhelmingly hostile in its social media.

All the more reason to look with hope and gratitude to India. And hope that the inter faith tolerant example of Abul Kalam Azad continues to be venerated and encouraged.