Are there any Jews in India? No, I’m not referring to the Native Americans who were thought to be remnants of the Ten Lost Tribes by 19th-century clergy. I’m referring to Jews in India.
After all, why not? After all, our forefathers were distributed to all four corners of the earth as a result of victories and expulsions by a series of foes spanning millennia. Following the Assyrian conquest, some Jews went south to Africa, as we’ve seen in prior articles. Some crossed the Atlantic to South America much later. So why haven’t more people gone east to India?
From as early as the 10th century BCE, India has been home to a variety of Jewish communities that arrived at various times throughout history. In reality, Jews were one of the earliest foreign religious groups to be documented in the country, and they have lived there relatively free of the anti-Semitism that is so prevalent in other countries (the important term “relatively”). They have been engaged in all sectors of Indian life, including business, government, the military, and the Bollywood film industry, for generations because of that hospitable atmosphere.
