History of the Jews in Kolkata

The history of the Jews in Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, in India, began in the late eighteenth century when adventurous Baghdadi Jewish merchants originally from Aleppo and Baghdad chose to establish themselves permanently in the emerging capital of the British Raj. The community they founded became the hub of the Judeo-Arabic-speaking Baghdadi Jewish trading diaspora in Asia.

In the early nineteenth century the community grew rapidly, drawing mostly on Jewish migrants from Baghdad and to a lesser extent on those from Aleppo. Historically it was led by a flourishing merchant elite trading in cotton, jute, spices and opium issued from the leading Jewish families of Baghdad and Aleppo.

Mercantile Baghdadi Jewish families based in the city tied together through bonds of marriage or commerce the smaller Baghdadi Jewish communities trading across Asia including in Rangoon, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai with the larger Jewish communities in Mumbai and the Middle East.

During the late nineteenth century Kolkata was a minor intellectual centre of Iraqi Jews before the Baghdadi Jews began to slowly transition from a Judeo-Arabic identity towards a more Judeo-British and one under the leadership of the mercantile Sassoon, Ezra, Elias, Gubbay, Belilios and Judah families.^[1] In their heyday such mercantile Kolkata Jews sponsored numerous leading religious and charitable institutions in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq.

During the mid-twentieth century the Baghdadi Jewish community peaked at over 6,000 members during the Second World War as smaller communities fled Japanese invasions or internments. This highpoint was followed by a precipitously decline in numbers. The community largely emigrate after Indian independence in 1947, moving mainly to Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Israel and the USA. This migration followed the turmoil of partition, the breakdown of the colonial trading system in Asia, severing historic trade flows between the Middle East and Asia, and the birth of a Jewish state in Palestine. The few remaining maintained their Judeo-Indian identity and achieved prominent positions in the military, politics and the arts.

In the early twenty-first century fewer than twenty Jews remain in the city. The synagogues that remain are some of the last surviving and presently accessible heritage sites founded by Iraqi Jews.^[2] Today, especially in the United Kingdom, to which the wealthier Baghdadi Jewish families were drawn, Jews tracing roots to Kolkata now enjoy prominence in British culture and media.