In 1919, at a public meeting on the subject of Zionism, an Indian Jew named David Erulkar argued that “forming the Jewish nation from peoples who were widely divergent in their civilizations, ways of thinking, and economic conditions…would be to set back the world’s progress by several centuries.” The diversity he felt was threatened is the subject of two books about the Jewish communities of India, one anthropological and the other historical. Those who are unaware of any Jewish presence among the warring Hindus and Muslims will be astounded to learn that not only have there been different groups of Jews in India for hundreds of years but that the differences between them were so great that official intervention was frequently required to bring them together. It’s good to remember that religion and history were once so at odds that they occupied separate spheres—since the common experience of the twentieth century has been the extraordinary harnessing of religion and history under the flag of nationalism, a term that was formerly meaningless.
Source: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/12/06/jews-indians-and-imperialists/
