Sephardic Jews in India
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| India
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Sephardic Jews in India are
In his lecture at the Library of Congress, Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Chair in Social Sciences at University of California, Los Angeles, explains that crypto-Jews were especially attracted to India because not only was it a center of trade, but India had established and ancient Jewish settlements along its Western coast. The presence of these communities meant that crypto-Jews, who had been forced to accept Catholicism but did not want to emigrate to tolerant countries, could operate within the Portuguese Empire with the full freedom of Catholic subjects but away from the Inquisition while collaborating with existing Jewish communities to hide their true beliefs. [1]
In "The Marrano Factory: The Portuguese Inquisition, and its New Christians 1536-1765" Professor Antonio Saraiva of the University of Lisbon in Portugal dedicates a section to the situation of crypto-Jews (New Christians) in Goa. He concludes that once the Portuguese Inquisition began, Goa, along with Italy, the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, and North Africa initially received most of the fleeing Jewish population (regardless of whether they had converted or not), and this situation continued till the middle of the 1500s. Goa was a popular destination till 1560 (when the Goan Inquisiton was initiated).[2]
A notable Jewish population once existed in the
In Kerala they learned Judeo-Malayalam, the dialect developed by the Malabar Jews, descendants of immigrants who had been there for more than 1,000 years from Israel and Yemen. The combined groups in Kerala became known as the Cochin Jews. The European Jews were also referred to as the Paradesi Jews (associated with foreigners) or White Jews, given their European ethnicity. The Malabar Jews, having intermarried in south India, had darker skin.
In addition, some settled in
The Portuguese extended the Inquisition to their Indian possessions in 1560. The presence of crypto-Jews of India, along with their support of the crypto-Muslim arrivals from Iberia alarmed the Portuguese Catholic leadership in India. The Goa Inquisition was instituted by
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References
- ^ LibraryOfCongress (6 December 2013), Jews & New Christians in Portuguese Asia 1500-1700, retrieved 22 February 2016
- ^ S2CID 160138275.
- ISBN 9783161464829.
- ISBN 978-0-226-46754-2.
- ^ "Los Muestros n°41". Archived from the original on 27 June 2013. Retrieved 13 May 2013. Mordecai Arbell, "The Portuguese Jewish Community of Madras, India, in the Seventeenth Century", Los Muestros, No. 41, December 2000, accessed 12 May 2013
- ISBN 9781107003606.
- ^ Parasuram, T.V. (1982). India's Jewish heritage. the University of Michigan: Sagar Publications. p. 67.
- ^ Claudius Buchanan (1811). Christian Researches in Asia: With Notices of the Translation of the Scriptures into the Oriental Languages. 2nd ed. Boston: Armstron, Cornhill
- ISBN 81-87132-06-X, Lib. Cong. Cat. Card. No. 73-905568; B.N.K. Press
- ^ Menachery G (ed) (1982) The St. Thomas Christian Encyclopedia of India, B.N.K. Press, vol. 1;
- ISBN 81-87133-05-8.